TTL with other brands than Nikon and Canon...

Hello everyone,

I have no idea why but it's seems always easier to build a UW camera kit with TTL for Nikon and Canon.

Some strobes are even design for Nikon and Canon, like the Seaflash 160D from Seacam.

So what about other brands shooters... like Sony for exemple?

Are Nikon and Canon the only solid brand regarding TTL? 

Why strobe manufacturer seems so shy why other brands? It is because of historical reasons?

In the end I really prefer to have full manual control and I'm not a big fan of TTL.

It's more for my culture and to satisfy my curiosity  !

I shoot mostly manuel but do have a Turtle adaptor to shoot TTL with Sony - the adaptor is compatible with many strobe brands

Yep I know Turtle triggers, they are working well and this is a very good exemple to illustrate my point.

Once again, Nikon and Canon had the priority, the first Turtle TLL was developed for this two brands only.

Sony user was alone without any TTL trigger on the market at this time. (nice blog post about that on Smart trt-electronics website)

In the end Turtle finally developed a TTL trigger for Sony camera too, so that's great!

But coming back to my initial reflexion, I'm wondering why, once again Nikon and Canon had the priority?! 

I think that it is related to both time on the market and popularity. All TTL protocols are mostly proprietary. Canon wants to sell their strobes, but other strobe companies figured out how to decode the TTL signals for both Canon and Nikon. At this time Sony was not a real player. Same for UW. Heinrichs Weikamp figured out how to decode Canon and Nikon when they were the major force in UW cameras and before Sony was a  major player in mirrorless cameras. Now you can get almost all camera brand's TTL. 

Bill

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Hey Bill,

I totally agree, historical reason make the more sens to explain this.

And yet, even now that Sony is widely used by professional, some strobes manufacturer keep making Nikon and Canon strobes.

I mean look at the latest Seacam and OneUW high-end strobes...  Again firstly designed for Nikon and Canon... Why is that ? 

There is no more financial reason that justify this choice, Sony market is huge now.

That's why I was wondering if it could be for technical limitation? I have no idea...

I think Bill's right. It's historical. Nikon especially and Canon were the major players until relatively recently.

Perhaps it'll need for Sony to be seen in the same light as Canon and Nikon for some years before developments may streer more in that direction.

5 hours ago, jmbelloteau said:

 

Sony may be a big player above water now, but the underwater market is a very small sector of the overall market and these things take time.  Add to this the fact that the Sony UW lineup is incomplete without native fisheyes and fewer macro options and many of their models are limited to 1/160 or 1/200 sync speed means their numbers in use underwater are more limited then they might otherwise be.

The strobes you refer I think perhaps are the hard wired strobes with internal TTL electronics like the OneUW models or the Seacam strobes, while the TTL triggers are LED based fibre-optic based.   I think perhaps that those triggers maybe easier to develop as they are readily available for many models.   In comparison making strobes that are model specific means you would need many different models of strobes.  Add to this that there are many choices for UW strobes S&S, INON and Retra are all camera brand neutral only the very pricey Seacam and OneUW and perhaps others have Nikon or Canon specific strobes.  With this segmentation the numbers of brand specific strobes made have to be very small.

Hi There.   

Yes You are right . This was a historical question.    When we developed the TURTLE family first two members the Canon and the Nikon was the leader of the market in the UW photographers. After one year we saw the SONY is coming with their MILC full frame bodies.  
...And we pushed the Sony decoding and announced the first Sony at 2018. 
At last not but least the last decision was the olympus line decoding.  . 

If you need more information i recommend the TURTLE BLOG.   We try to share so many useful informations about technology or just some competition or trip. 

https://www.trt-electronics.com/blog/

Regards

Balazs