Sea&Sea YS-D2 TTL Problem with new J Version

31 minutes ago, Interceptor121 said:

You have spent now over a week on this would it not be better to get a cable so at least you can ask for support?

As I said: Sea&Sea is not even responding to my E-Mail . ATM They don't even know what my setup is except that I use a YS-D2 and a Nikon D750. There isn't even an offical contact for europe. Only for US buyers and the europe website is completely in dutch . So I did write to some dutch contact address. So far nothing. Before I even consider buying such a pricy cable, I need some reaction from them. I'm certainly not giving this company any more money just to make them talk to me. If their customer support is so crappy, then I'm better of buying from another company anyways. There are plenty of strobes in the sea .

Since @ChrisH80 has the old version and is living close to my parents I guess before I toss it, I'll get in touch with him and test the old setup with my camera.

If it is indeed a problem with the strobes (as it seems) maybe the firmware change might solve it. 

Bill

It is increasingly looking like it is something with the strobes - firmware issues seem most likely as having a common defect between two strobes seems unlikely.  Unfortunately firmware upgrades require factory service to install.

I know we discounted an LED trigger previously on the basis of the onboard strobe giving better light output - however if it is indeed an issue with strobe firmware with this body the trigger is programmed to only transmit to the strobe signals it can deal with - it may be worth posting a question on the strobes and lighting board about compatibility of triggers with the D750/YS-D2J combination, hopefully Pavel will respond with advice on that possibility.

4 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

It is increasingly looking like it is something with the strobes - firmware issues seem most likely as having a common defect between two strobes seems unlikely.  Unfortunately firmware upgrades require factory service to install.

I agree. Unfortunately Sea&Sea is not answering me on any of the channels that I've been writing to. I'll be trying the US support. I know I'm not supposed to, but its their fault if they don't react on other channels.

4 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

I know we discounted an LED trigger previously on the basis of the onboard strobe giving better light output - however if it is indeed an issue with strobe firmware with this body the trigger is programmed to only transmit to the strobe signals it can deal with - it may be worth posting a question on the strobes and lighting board about compatibility of triggers with the D750/YS-D2J combination, hopefully Pavel will respond with advice on that possibility.

Was thinking about that too. A TTL Trigger might be able to act as a filter / converter if it is programmed accordingly. It would be REALLY interesting to know whether anyone else is using this combo of camera and strobe. After all, neither the strobe nor the camera are of a rare model really. Problems like that should have been noticed in testing or someone else should have this trouble. I'll ask on the Strobes and Lighting board as you suggested.

Tonight I went to the pool with two D2J and my 14 years old fiber optic cables

I never use DS-TTL but I thought of trying it and it worked flawlessly! Definitely is not the cable I would think but the strobes

Guess at one point I have to find another person with a YS-D2 to see whether any other strobe of that model works on my camera. It's all still very fuzzy .

Water was a bit murky with suspended particles anyway it gives an idea!

Yea one can clearly see the shadows of both strobes. Unfortunately there is still no reply from Sea&Sea. Maybe there europe office is closed down at the moment. I'll just have to wait and see then. My usual diving spot / base is currently closed anyway, so there is no testing in water and no diving until further notice for me .

Hi Daniel,

I can comment on the European Sea&Sea representation in Netherlands: Approx. half a year ago I had (another) defective YS-D2 to repair and tried to contact them. No response at all. No matte rwhether there is a virus, they do not want to deal with customers service...

Instead I sent the strobe in to a UK repair workshop:

Aquaphot
40 D'Arcy Way
Tolleshunt D'Arcy
Essex
CM9 8UD
United Kingdom

Decent work and fast!

At a cost of 250 Euro for the repair, however, I am not sure I will invest again in a broken Sea&Sea strobe. Probably I will invest in another new Z330 instead...

Wolfgang

On 3/19/2020 at 9:56 PM, Architeuthis said:

half a year ago I had (another) defective YS-D2 to repair and tried to contact them. No response at all. No matte rwhether there is a virus, they do not want to deal with customers service...

A company that has no working customer service (especially with such fragile hardware) soon does not need it anyway, because they'll have no customers anymore. Especially in such a small community as UW photography that is a damned stupid approach on saving money.

Have you tried UK?

• SEA&SEA
• Philip House
• Aspen Way
• Paignton
• Devon
• TQ4 7QR
• T: 01803 663012
• F: 01803 663003
• E: sales@sea-sea.com

Sea and Sea is a strange brand I have met several people using their housing and they are all extremely happy the items are rugged and don't break. To be honest other than this YS-D2 saga and the fact the customer service is awful the products are well designed and have good ergonomics

Well it explicitly says on their website not to use the .com addresses from Europe.. but yea.. I'll have to try that. The fact that they have good products makes it even more sad that they have such a crappy support. Because that kind of makes all the hard work the people put into development worth less if at some point they get a bad reputation in the community. It definitely saving money on the wrong end.

On 3/10/2020 at 7:34 PM, DanielD said:

To make sure I don't brabble nonsense or misinterpreted some of the result I just retested. Here is what I got:

• Camera: TTL Strobe: TTL => Flashes, LED green but dark picture
• Camera: Manual Strobe: TTL => Flashes, LED not green and picture is completely white
• Camera: TTL Strobe: Manual (ignore Pre-Flash Mode) => Flashes, LED not green and picture is completely white
• Camera: Manual Strobe: Manual (ignore Pre-Flash Mode) => No Flash, dark picture
• Camera: Manual Strobe Manual (manual Mode) => Flashes, LED not green and picture is completely white

I have no experience with Nikon (not since I was shooting film, anyway). But, I have read that some camera systems use more than 1 pre-flash when metering for TTL. I think Nikon is one that does that. I have even read where some systems do not use a fixed # of pre-flashes. With those systems, it may do one pre-flash or it may do 2, depending on the results it got from the 1st pre-flash.

It seems to me that what you are experiencing has to be a case of the strobe expecting a different # of pre-flashes than what the camera is doing. Without knowing whether your system does 2 pre-flashes sometimes, or if it always does 2 pre-flashes, I think it's hard to really analyze your results. If your system does 1 pre-flash always and a 2nd pre-flash under certain conditions, then your results might appear to be random - because the data you gathered does not include the data that the camera uses to determine # of pre-flashes.

Also, I have read that some strobes deal with ignoring pre-flashes of an unknown quantity by simply detecting the 1st pre-flash and ignoring it and all other pre-flashes for a certain interval of time. So, for that, it does not matter how many pre-flashes there are. It only matters that the time interval is not so long that it also ignores the main flash.

Because you had old camera firmware and an old strobe and they worked, I could guess that it is POSSIBLE that Nikon released updated camera firmware (which you were not using) that broke compatibility with S&S strobes. Then, S&S updated their firmware, perhaps in light of newer Nikon firmware, which broke compatibility with old Nikon firmware, but also simply does not work with the latest D750 firmware (but does work with other Nikon models). So, now that you have updated your D750 firmware, you may have lost the ability to even have it work in TTL with old S&S strobes (that worked before).

Now that you have shiny new strobes, it sounds like it might be time for a shiny new D850.  Or, if you got a really good deal on the D2Js, maybe you can sell them for what you paid and then buy some strobes that do work with your camera. Based on your experience so far with S&S Customer Service (i.e. the lack thereof), that latter option is what would be most appealing to me, were I in your shoes.

So Sea&Sea Europe replied now actually (at least that). Generally they are saying since it worked with the old YS-D2 it should also work with the new YS-D2J and that I should turn to my supplier to figure out what is wrong . This is of course not very helpful, considering that the original supplier wants a shitload of money to even look at the setup. And I would certainly not send my camera to them, so the argument is mute. My currently last hope to get this working is another supplier that I was in contact with trough a german forum. He offered me to send me an original S&S cable for testing. As soon as I got that, I'll give an update here. At least then I'll know for sure whether it is the cable or not.

No way it's the cables. If the problem was a cable, it would either not fire the strobes at all, or it would fire at random. And the pair would not behave the same as each other every single time.

Given that you are able to reproduce the behavior consistently, using 2 different cables and 2 different strobes, connected to 2 different fiber optic ports on the housing, there is about a 0.00001% chance that it is cables.

Can you return the strobes to your supplier for a refund? Or, if your price was THAT good, can you possibly sell them for any kind of profit?

20 minutes ago, stuartv said:

No way it's the cables. If the problem was a cable, it would either not fire the strobes at all, or it would fire at random. And the pair would not behave the same as each other every single time.

Acoording to the shop owner that is sending me the test cable, S&S change the port geometry on the new strobe and also released new cables stating that the old cables will not work properly with the new strobe . Apparently the new cables have a thicker core and exit cone and the sensors on the strobe are build accordingly. He also said that they did have a few customers trying TTL with old S&S and other cables and failed to do so, but where successful with new S&S cables .

I do not have my old strobe anymore, I can not compare them and verify those claims. However, since he's sending my a cable to test, I do not loose anything by testing (apart from time, which I do have in abundance at the moment ). Should they also not work, I can sell the strobes pretty easy, as I got them for a good price and every time a YS-D2J is sold on eBay, people are jumping at it. Unfortunately, I broke of one of the fibre port covers on my last dive . The thing is rather useless, but it might drop the price a few Euros.

Suggest you make a decent video of a test firing or two, showing the TTL settings, and being able to see both the subject and the rear LCD of the camera when you fire it (so as to see there was a flash, but also the results on the LCD).

Almost everything you've posted indicates that the YS-D2J is not working with TTL, and not working in a way that suggests it is only firing on the TTL preflashes.  (Any chance you have some weird SU-4 mode set on the strobe in some submenu?)   I can see this with one, bout two new ones? (Any firmware updates for either camera or strobes available?).   It seems the camera itself can nearly be ruled out as a cause, if it worked fine with the older flashes.

I have YS-D1's, which are dead simple in terms of TTL options.  There is a dial with TTL modes 1 and 2 (different camera types) or manual.  No menus to get lost in.  

Sorry for the long silence, but due to the evil C I was unable to go diving for quite a while. Ever dive base in Germany was closed and I didn't have any gas in my cylinders .

This weekend I finally got the chance to a.) test my strobes in manual mode and b.) got lucky and another person with the same strobe did visit the lake, so I was able to test fire my setup with another strobe. The results speak volumes:

a.) In manual mode (ignoring preflash) the strobes do trigger a the correct time, but every picture is massively overexposed. Even when I close the aperture as far as possible, set the exposure to the minimum possible time and set both strobes the the minimum settings, the pictures are massively overexposed.

b.) Testing the same model strobe with the same setup (cable and camera) worked without any problems. Didn't even have to make any special settings. It just worked.

That makes it pretty clear to my that a.) my strobes are the problem and b.) they are either broken or have a firmware version that is incompatible with my camera (which is odd, because the old version worked). The strobe I tested with was an even never version. All very frustrating. I'll contact the shop again, but I have little hope. They weren't to helpful the first time I asked for help.

so to clarify your strobes over expose in manual mode - sounds like they are doing a full power dump.  and part (b) you said you plugged someone else's strobes in and it worked straight away was that in TTL, manual or both?

based on (a) your strobes are faulty - only doing a full power dump is "known" failure state for strobes, the circuit that cuts off the strobe discharge is not working.   If that is the case I would say you should return them for warranty service.

9 minutes ago, ChrisRoss said:

so to clarify your strobes over expose in manual mode

Yes. There seems to be no difference on any of the power settings in manual mode.

10 minutes ago, ChrisRoss said:

you said you plugged someone else's strobes in and it worked straight away was that in TTL, manual or both?

I only tried it in TTL mode (as that was the part most interesting to me) with my own cables (because it was suggested multiple times that the cables are the problem) and only above water (flashing into the camera). Then result was a white picture (which I never had before in TTL mode) and I did not see the flash through the lense (which always happened before in TTL mode).

12 minutes ago, ChrisRoss said:

based on (a) your strobes are faulty - only doing a full power dump is "known" failure state for strobes, the circuit that cuts off the strobe discharge is not working.   If that is the case I would say you should return them for warranty service. 

I agree. I think those strobes are toast. Unfortunately they where bought 2nd hand. My guess is I've been had. Technically I have the receipt and there should even be a warranty on them. Unfortunately the retailer was less then helpful the last time I contacted them. In fact they tried to get more money off me instead of helping. I'll try again with this new information, but I'm less then optimistic. I'll also try to contact Sea&Sea again. They did answer, but they answer was basically: Sorry we have no idea.