RETRA Strobe Thread

1 hour ago, Jerry Diver said:

Why would a LED trigger limit your shutter speed?

It's clear that this so called "E-Opto converter" is only an LED connected to a battery that is triggered by the electronics inside your housing/hotshoe. If you want HSS sync you need special electronics in your housing that mimic a speedlight on a hotshoe and fool the camera to synchronise correctly. Although HSS is an acronym for High Speed Sync the fact is that the system has no basis on speed or how fast the synchronisation is made! Basically it just needs to time the flash correctly and then the strobe does all the works by emitting a special long duration pulse. Here is a nice article explaining HSS: https://www.elinchrom.com/learn/hss-hs.html

Furthermore they say it works only for manual mode, not even TTL. Go figure, since the price is peanuts compared to TTL converters for underwater housings...

I was assuming that the E-Opto worked like the TTL-converters like S&S etc. Now I know better thanks to you.

Thank you Jerry

On 10/18/2019 at 9:56 AM, Jerry Diver said:

If you want HSS sync you need special electronics

What is preventing optical trigger on a front curtain, with a preset pulse duration? If I recall, my D500 allows me to exceed my flash sync (Auto FP), and I just get black banding issues.  If the flash was in a "HSS pulse" mode - shouldn't this get me work? 

I think Canon behaves differently, but as a Nikon shooter... 

*Edit*  maybe the duration is still tied to the pin going low?  

50 minutes ago, g3cko said:

What is preventing optical trigger on a front curtain, with a preset pulse duration? If I recall, my D500 allows me to exceed my flash sync (Auto FP), and I just get black banding issues.  If the flash was in a "HSS pulse" mode - shouldn't this get me work? 

I think Canon behaves differently, but as a Nikon shooter... 

*Edit*  maybe the duration is still tied to the pin going low?  

You could do HSS mode if you put your Speedlite in an underwater housing.

No underwater strobe that I know currently support HSS or the kind of pulse required for HSS, so you could not do that with a TTL cable, even less with an optical converter.

So for the initial question:

On 10/18/2019 at 8:01 AM, Scotzh said:

What is the fastest shutter speed you can use with the E-Opto converter? There is no specs about this on the website.

The answer is on the Retra website: this is a manual strobe trigger. So you can trigger the flash in manual mode, at the highest speed supported by your camera for manual flash mode. This defers from camera to camera, to Retra cannot specify it.

47 minutes ago, Algwyn said:

You could do HSS mode if you put your Speedlite in an underwater housing.

No underwater strobe that I know currently support HSS or the kind of pulse required for HSS, so you could not do that with a TTL cable, even less with an optical converter

I'm not sure I see the relevance?   I'm aware you can use topside flash underwater (with a housing and electrical cable), but this thread is about the Retra flash, which mentions "HSS ready" for the Pro/Prime.  

Are you inferring the "pulses" in HSS are controlled by the camera body?   
 

Sorry, my mistake! Didn't notice that the Retra Pro/Prime are "HSS" ready. We will have to chech how this work when they are released, or when this feature is enabled (maybe through the app).

The retra has no electrical connection, only optical, you can connect to an electrical sync cable with a converter.  So one of two things would be needed to give you HSS - the camera has an onboard flash that it TTL capable or an electrical to optical HSS capable converter would be required to connect up electrically.  Which means it must have the capability to mimic the HSS pulsing via its slave sensor.  If your camera does not have an onboard flash someone would need to develop a TTL capable trigger or electrical-optical adapter for your particular model.  There may be other ways to do it I haven't thought of but that seems to be the basic requirement given the triggering capability of the Retra.

1 hour ago, ChrisRoss said:

The retra has no electrical connection, only optical, you can connect to an electrical sync cable with a converter.  So one of two things would be needed to give you HSS - the camera has an onboard flash that it TTL capable or an electrical to optical HSS capable converter would be required to connect up electrically.  Which means it must have the capability to mimic the HSS pulsing via its slave sensor.  If your camera does not have an onboard flash someone would need to develop a TTL capable trigger or electrical-optical adapter for your particular model.  There may be other ways to do it I haven't thought of but that seems to be the basic requirement given the triggering capability of the Retra.

I'm not aware of any cameras with an onboard flash capable of HSS, so I'm guessing that a trigger will be mandatory. On my Sony A6300, shutter speed is restricted to 1/160 whenever the flash is up. However, Pavel has posted a while ago that UW-Technics converters will support the Retra HSS mode. 

I received this morning an email from Retra: they are postponing by 2 weeks the start of shipping of the new Retra stobes.

I won't be able to get them for my diving trip in November 

I am curious.  Maybe they were not more clear, but if they were, is it two weeks from now, or two weeks from the early November estimated ship date?  I am anxious to see some user reports.

As I read what I wrote above, it isn't very coherent.  What is the current expected shipping time frame, if you know...their website still says estimated delivery in October, so that has not been updated yet.

Two weeks from initial ship date of end of October / beginning of November.

We should now expect first shipments mid-November

We can only hope.

When I contacted Oskar at Retra to place my order 3 weeks ago, he said they would be shipped mid November. They will arrive very quickly after they are shipped. I am guessing by my lateness in ordering, I am at the back of the  queue.

I feel for the guys (and gals) who are planning trips around now, but Retra has been clear that the shipping dates are guidelines only...

It seems nothing moves fast in the heady world of strobe development, and who knows what the holdups are. I will say that when I received my V1.0 strobes, they were definitely worth the wait.

ian

Indeed, the Retra team has been very clear when I ordered that they could not guarantee delivery on time for my trip. But they also indicated that in that case I could cancel my order and get a full refund.

They informed me as soon as the delay was confirmed. Overall I find that they managed that quite well, despite my disappointment at not being able to test these new strobes during this trip.

It'll be a "one strobe challenge" trip, as one of my current strobes is dead (a YS-D2 ... )

On 10/23/2019 at 6:47 AM, Barmaglot said:

I'm not aware of any cameras with an onboard flash capable of HSS, so I'm guessing that a trigger will be mandatory. On my Sony A6300, shutter speed is restricted to 1/160 whenever the flash is up. However, Pavel has posted a while ago that UW-Technics converters will support the Retra HSS mode. 

Many Nikon DLSR"s with pop-up flash have HSS support.   My D300, D700, D800e and D810 all have it.

PhxAZCraig

Just got this email

Quote

Dear Photographers

 

First of all we would like to thank you for your support thus far. The flashgun we are producing would not be made possible without your participation. 

 

Unfortunately we have some bad news. Despite our best efforts to start shipping the new Retra Flash before the end of October we have run into a delay with the production process. To make the flashgun of the highest possible quality we had to change and manufacture additional tools for the production and assembly process. Although this has added more costs it will unfortunately also take more time to complete the production run. Our main priority is to ensure the products will be of the highest possible quality. 

 

The good news is that 80% of the production process is completed thanks to our incredibly hard working team. Please see attached images. 

All the housings are assembled and the majority of electronics components have been pre-assembled and tested. Both sets will be paired during the next couple of weeks once all the necessary tools are available. After this we can start with the final assembly and testing before the flash units are packed and shipped. We are estimating the first flashguns will be shipping before mid-January 2020.

 

We understand that this delay is unexpectedly longer and that many of you will need the flashguns before. We sincerely apologise for the delay. 

 

Thank you for your ongoing patience and support.

 

 

Your Retra UWT Team

Just got a message from Retra that they will delay shipping until mid-January 2020. 

Although I am disappointed because I will not have their new strobes for my December trip I am not surprised in the slightest. Recently I spoke with a friend who is working in development of a strobe product in the beauty industry (hair removal is basically strobes) and after inspecting the specifications of the upcoming strobe by Retra he was surprised they handled it on such short term. They must have a team of super focused engineers and super hard working ones too. 

Anyway I am glad to hear they are putting quality before delivery dates because I plan to use the strobes for many more diving trips.

I had the fortunate opportunity to try a set of pre-production Retra Pros on a recent trip in Raja Ampat. As part of a rotation of eager test-divers I used them on 2 consecutive wide angle dives. (Other equipment: D800 and Nikon RS13)

My impression, similarly to other's is as follows:

- WOW - what a lot of light! And nice quality light too (with the softening filters in place)

- Much more powerful, even at 50%, than my trusty Inon Z240s

- That power comes at a cost of eating batteries rapidly; to be "safe" the batteries were changed after every dive as one dive (~ 200 shots using 25%-100% strobe power setting) brought fresh off the charger Eneloop "Black" batteries from 100% (full green) to yellow advisory charge state.

- The led color indicator is a useful way to get rapid info on the state of the strobe/ batteries/ readiness

- I appreciate the ability to program for custom settings and gain info about the strobe via an app, but wonder how useful those functions would really be in the future. With few reference points for comparison what does the number of strobe activations "mean"?

Do I want a set? Absolutely!

Do I want to be an early adopter?  At nearly $1000 USD/ strobe it's a big investment. I would certainly want any/ all the "bugs" worked out especially as service from the USA adds a level of difficulty/ expense.

Anyone heard back from Retra on the strobes readiness?
Yes, have got a dive trip planned soon (early Feb), and the subject matter would certainly benefit larger strobes


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

I've sent them an email a couple days ago and among other things I also got this reply: "We start shipments in mid-January in the week starting with 20th January. We expect all pre-orders will be sent in 4-5 weeks."

Unless you've ordered early on I wouldn't be counting on them for 1st February.

Would be great if the strobes are indeed sent out mid-January. Was unlucky to have one of my strobes flooded just before the initial shipping date, and have been managing with one strobe since then. If I had known about the delay I would have bought a cheap second hand strobe to use meanwhile. C'est la vie!