RETRA Strobe Thread

Hello, 

I am planning to purchase pair of Retra Pro X with supercharger to use with my Sony A1 camera in Nauticam housing. I wanted to ask the experts here what exactly do i need to purchase to use TTL and HSS on the camera? i have heard some limitations with Nauticam housing and wondering if there are workarounds? I am interested to know what would be the final setup look (TTL converter, tigger, cabels, etc..) would appreciate your advises!

1 hour ago, Yehia said:

Hello, 

I am planning to purchase pair of Retra Pro X with supercharger to use with my Sony A1 camera in Nauticam housing. I wanted to ask the experts here what exactly do i need to purchase to use TTL and HSS on the camera? i have heard some limitations with Nauticam housing and wondering if there are workarounds? I am interested to know what would be the final setup look (TTL converter, tigger, cabels, etc..) would appreciate your advises!

I use a pair of original Retra Pros with a UWT converter in a SeaFrogs housing with an A6300 camera. HSS works, TTL is hit or miss - I find that it underexposes on wide-angle, but works well on blackwater, so I generally shoot manual, but use TTL during blackwater dives to avoid blowing out shiny subjects. For cables, I used a pair of Howshot multi-core cables for a few years, but one of them eventually broke - it would trigger the strobe when shooting off pop-up flash, but not from the LED; I assume there's a break somewhere inside the cable that degrades its light transmission capability - so I spent the money on a pair of Sea & Sea cables which have much thicker cladding. Only used those on a single trip so far, I''ll see how they stand up to continued (ab)use.

TRT Electronics s-TURTLE would be another option, and I've seen it used successfully with Retra strobes, but I have no personal experience.

Hi Yehia

Ive been using Retra Pros for just over 2 years and love them. I’ve no experience of a Nauticam housing but with my Subal and a D500, I use the UWT trigger and homemade 712 strand. fibre optic cables with Howshot  connectors. 

I shoot mainly in Manual, HSS quite a bit but seldom TTL. It all works really well. The UWT trigger is very good and support, from Pavel, who is a regular contributor here, is excellent.

The Superchargers are a great edition. I can usually get at least 4 dives from a set of batteries, say 350 shots, with the battery indicator still showing Yellow. 

8 hours ago, Yehia said:

Hello, 

I am planning to purchase pair of Retra Pro X with supercharger to use with my Sony A1 camera in Nauticam housing. I wanted to ask the experts here what exactly do i need to purchase to use TTL and HSS on the camera? i have heard some limitations with Nauticam housing and wondering if there are workarounds? I am interested to know what would be the final setup look (TTL converter, tigger, cabels, etc..) would appreciate your advises!

There is not a limitation with a Nauticam housing. There IS a limitation with a Nauticam trigger.. The Nauticam trigger only does Manual. It does not support TTL or HSS (as far as I know).

You need an optical trigger and 2 fiber optic sync cables.

Your options for the trigger are UWT and TRT (Turtle). 

You need to verify for UWT and TRT that they do specifically support HSS for your model of camera. They both most likely do, but you should still verify before purchasing.

UWT and TRT have pros and cons.

UWT (which I use with a Sony a7rIV):

Pro: Good service and support.
Con: Does not have user-updateable firmware. It only supports certain specific models of strobe for TTL and HSS. If you get new strobes in the future, you would have to wait for UWT to update their firmware to support it - something that has seemed historically very slow on UWT's part - and then send your trigger back to them to have updated firmware installed before the TTL and HSS functions of the trigger would work correctly.

TRT:

Pro: User-updateable firmware. I think they even have a smartphone app you can use to change settings on the trigger. E.g. you are using it with one type of strobe, so the trigger is set for that. Then you have a strobe failure and want to switch to your backup strobes which are a different type. I think you can do that with the TRT without even opening the housing. With UWT, you would have to open the housing and turn a very small dial on the trigger board - if the board even supports your other strobes.

Con: I bought a TRT trigger. They sent me the wrong one. Their factory support to even determine whether I had the correct part or not was horrible. I ended up returning the trigger without ever using it and am not inclined to buy another one simply because of how awful the factory rep was.

Hello everyone. Despite the new Retra Strobe Pro X firmware 3.11; I still can't get a valid TTL with a Nikon D7200 and a TRT I Turtle Smart trigger regardless of the strobe chosen.
Does anyone have a solution to get a real TTl.

On 3/25/2023 at 1:12 AM, Jean Raphael said:

Hello everyone. Despite the new Retra Strobe Pro X firmware 3.11; I still can't get a valid TTL with a Nikon D7200 and a TRT I Turtle Smart trigger regardless of the strobe chosen.
Does anyone have a solution to get a real TTl.

I think you first need to contact Turtle to determine if their firmware supports the strobe/camera combination and see if there is any firmware update.  Also TTL normally requires very good optical fibre cables to work properly.  You could try holding the trigger LED up to the strobe slave sensor without a able and see if TTL seems to work - you could try triggering the strobe with the camera set at at f2.8 and again at f16 - you can normally tell if the strobe is changing power.

As Chris says, there are multiple factors which can impact on TTL. Quality of cables, correct centering of LED initiators, even the quality of cables from the trigger to the bulkhead. 

As an example, I found that using the double-holed Inon bush you can use to connect a fibre optic cable to the Retra could cause TTL issues. Having two holes in the bush, the light is not centred, each hole is very slightly offset. No problems at all for Manual initiation, but not always reliable for TTL. 

So it’s a question of working through and eliminating possible causes. Chris’ suggestion of checking with Turtle is a good starting place. 

But bottom line, go Manual! It’s easy and usually trouble free. 
 

Looks like the Retra Flash lineup is getting refreshed again, with three new models - Retra Flash Pro Max, Retra Flash Prime Plus, and a new, entry-level model, Retra Flash Pure.

The Pro X and Prime X are now listed as out of stock.

Odd that the new models are slightly weaker than their predecessors, although in practice I don't think the 10W/s difference is going to be noticeable. No pricing available yet, but maybe the Pure model will be roughly in line with Inon Z-330 replacement, whenever that comes out?

My understanding is that the new Pro and Prime flashes have more efficient tubes and have been tuned to match the current ones, so that they can be used together seamlessly. Their efficiency means that they have a slightly lower Ws output for the same light. 

I've taken the Pro Max and Pure (as prototypes - without all the new features) both to Raja and Cayman in recent months. Despite being a more budget model, the Pure still packs some punch:

This is a large scene, shot against the light at f/14, with a pair of the forthcoming Pures in Cayman.

While this shot below from Raja Ampat was lit with a single Pure, shooting against the surface at f/13.

Pretty much all my other recent images have been shot with the Pro Max flashes, such as the ones from the Sony A7RV review. You can see them over the first 7 pages here: https://www.amustard.com/library/page/search/"20"/ (this will work until I start adding images from the recent Wetpixel/Lembeh trips.

The light from the Pro Max is identical to the existing Pros and Pro Xs, the main thing I really notice is the battery performance (which benefits from other changes in addition to the reduced Ws). I have not tried the Prime Plus, but it has the same setup as the Pro Max, but with lower Power.

Alex

The way I read yesterday’s announcement made me think a revised design might impact on the Superchargers? Any thoughts, Alex?

I for one would like to see the Pro Max model’s battery compartment straight away take 8 instead of 4 AA batteries to have the power for the longer haul like a pro grade underwater flash.  

it will be nice to switch to Li-Ion battery, like some new strobes, and most of video lights.

It will benefit to to both recharge time and autonomy without the need of supercharger with 16 AA for a 2 strobes setup, 32 for 2 sets.

8 hours ago, TimG said:

The way I read yesterday’s announcement made me think a revised design might impact on the Superchargers? Any thoughts, Alex?

I’ve only tested the insides of the new flashes. I think they will announce more soon. I was hoping I might have some production ready versions to try on a forthcoming trip.

to Retra:

It appears that the new Retro Pro Max does not have the LED on the rear. As this has been a good indicator of recycle status (when capacitors are re-charging) as well as low battery warning due to its various colors and good visibility, I was wondering what the equivalent was or if one even exists in this new model? For example does the OLED change color corresponding to those of the LED. As well does it flash or blink like the LED? This has been easy to see for example when one is some distance from the strobe (too far to read numbers on a display).

It would be good to see what the battery compartment looks like open with and without 4 batteries. How easy is it to pull out batteries minding the need to keep water out?

Hi Tom, thank you for your questions, I will answer below.

The OLED display is a lot easier to read, especially in very bright sunny conditions when the LED is overpowered and on night dives when the power level dial is not illuminated. Battery status, mode, power level, recycle indicator are all clearly displayed (not at once) without the need to know which color represents what. The buzzer is still available as an alternative and can still be turned off.

The battery compartment now has o-rings on the outside which means there is much less chance of getting water inside the compartment during battery exchanges compared to the previous design. Battery exchanges with 4xAA require the same procedure while the 8xAA configuration is now much easier to exchange since the batteries are stacked in one compartment instead of two separate ones.

You case any of you haven’t looked, you can see how the the new redesign for the battery compart on both the new Pro Max + and Prime + is done here - https://www.retra-uwt.com/en-us/products/retra-flash-pro-max-power-pack-bundle

I really like this approach for not only for both flash units can now utilize 8 AA in cleaner way, but also the battery compartment features a raise lip with the O-rings on the outside will make it less prone for water droplets to get down inside when the battery door is removed.

Thanks Walt I missed that on the Retra site which looks like it was designed by entropy. I still have not found any delivery date info.

The external o-ring design reminds me of S6 bulkheads. As well the new fixture bulges out slightly on the formerly straight side - this should provide some tension on the o-ring not present before.

On 5/26/2023 at 3:51 PM, Tom_Kline said:

I still have not found any delivery date info.

"Estimated shipping date: September/October 2023"

If you follow the links to the buy page it shows that for all of the models.