Strobes in TTL Camera in Manual

Due to a series of unfortunate events, I learned today that my strobe trigger circuit had a bad LED solder joint which was causing intermittent firing on one of my strobes.  I also have a faulty sync chord and needed to replace my batteries which confounded the trouble shooting process which took the better part of an afternoon of diving as my backup strobe trigger pcb was defective as well.

I now have two functioning strobes but one working sync cord.  The only way to fire both strobes is if they are in TTL and one is in slave mode.  However, my housing does not have a TTL converter and I have no idea what power the strobes are firing at and haven’t worked TTL in forever.

I always shoot in manual and my camera housing is set for macro for the next several days.  

What would the strobes do in TTL/Slave mode with a camera set in manual with no TTL converter in the housing?

D850, Nauticam Housing, Dual Sea & Sea YSD2 Strobes

Thanks in advance for any information.  I will report back what I learn. 

If all goes well, I’ll have new cords and a replacement strobe trigger board in a few days and all will be well again.

I got a little lost in your explanations - you say you have one working sync cord - electric?  And this only fires the strobe when in TTL? and you have tested this?  It won't fire if strobe set to manual?

It would be hard to say what the strobe does in that case, all I can suggest is doing a test on land, you'll soon get an idea of what power the strobe is firing at from two or three test exposures. 

I would suggest you go back to single strobe lighting using the working strobe as a trigger to fire your other strobe via a fibre optic cable (assuming you have one) like set out on page E-22 of the manual.

9 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

I got a little lost in your explanations - you say you have one working sync cord - electric?  And this only fires the strobe when in TTL? and you have tested this?  It won't fire if strobe set to manual?

It would be hard to say what the strobe does in that case, all I can suggest is doing a test on land, you'll soon get an idea of what power the strobe is firing at from two or three test exposures. 

I would suggest you go back to single strobe lighting using the working strobe as a trigger to fire your other strobe via a fibre optic cable (assuming you have one) like set out on page E-22 of the manual.

 

Sorry for the confusion.  I have two working strobes, one fibre optic sync cord and one working channel on my strobe trigger.  The other channel LED had a cold solder joint and is inoperable, my other sync cord is not functioning.  My plan is to fire one strobe via sync; the second strobe in slave mode.  I was under the mistaken impression that this could only be done in TTL mode, hence my question.

I just test fired both strobes in manual; one triggered by the housing via sync cord, the other in slave.  The only manual I don't have with me, of course, are the strobe manuals.  I'll look it up on line, but at this point I have a fully working system.  I'm going to assume the strobe outputs are controlled manually just as if both were firing via sync.

Thanks for your reply.  This forum is a great resource for those times when one gets too far into the weeds troubleshooting camera issues and chasing ghosts!

If the strobes are in manual and fire I believe you are set.  You can run a fibre optic cord from one strobe to the next to ensure it fires - but it sounds like only one fibre optic is working so can't do that.  If it works in slave UW you should be fine if not switch to single strobe shooting I guess.

4 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

If the strobes are in manual and fire I believe you are set.  You can run a fibre optic cord from one strobe to the next to ensure it fires - but it sounds like only one fibre optic is working so can't do that.  If it works in slave UW you should be fine if not switch to single strobe shooting I guess.

So I ended up taking my "bad" sync cord that would not power a strobe when attached to the strobe trigger bulkhead mount and ran it from the working strobe to the slave.  Both strobes fired in manual on my last dive.  Output was controlled on the manual switches.  Go figure.

EDIT:  Maybe there is such a surplus of light from the working strobe that it overcame any defects in the sync chord that allowed the slave to fire even though that same sync cord couldn't transmit enough light when being triggered by the LED on the strobe trigger board.

7 hours ago, Redwing said:

So I ended up taking my "bad" sync cord that would not power a strobe when attached to the strobe trigger bulkhead mount and ran it from the working strobe to the slave.  Both strobes fired in manual on my last dive.  Output was controlled on the manual switches.  Go figure.

EDIT:  Maybe there is such a surplus of light from the working strobe that it overcame any defects in the sync chord that allowed the slave to fire even though that same sync cord couldn't transmit enough light when being triggered by the LED on the strobe trigger board.

Probably not surprising - the YS-D2 is known for difficulty triggering if it doesn't get enough light, there's way more light coming from the strobe itself than the trigger.  You could probably also put the second strobe in TTL so you only have to change one strobe when changing strobe power - it would mimic the pulse from the first strobe at whatever manual power you have it on.

20 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

You could probably also put the second strobe in TTL so you only have to change one strobe when changing strobe power - it would mimic the pulse from the first strobe at whatever manual power you have it on.

I just confirmed on a bench test that placing the slave strobe in TTL and changing strobe power on the master controls the slave power as well.  Thanks for the tip.