I was cruising the SUBAL website earlier today and found a strobe tip to ensure that your TTL functionality is working correctly and not been damaged by the intrusion of water or physical damage to the contacts. Anyone heard of this before or tried this?
This rookie is still learning!
From the SUBAL website:
TTL exposure control systems are usually foolproof, however, if you consistently bring incorrectly exposed films to the surface there has to be a reason and we have to find it. TTL systems can be adversely affected by contaminated contacts resulting from connector use and maintenance. To avoid this, unplug connectors slowly add wriggle as you pull. This avoids creation of a vacuum that can suck in droplets and contaminate the contact surfaces. It is also important to apply the protector caps immediately.
Allmost care is warranted when greasing O-rings. Too easily strobe contacts are contaminated and this most certainly will upset the delicate currents involved in TTL metering. Unfortunately the photographer is usually blissfully unaware of the situation because the strobe still goes off - only without TTL metering applied.
Much better to be safe than sorry so spare the two minutes required and execute the TTL test whenever contacts between strobe and camera housing have been interfered with.
Proceed as follows:
- Assemble camera and strobe units
- For NIKON cameras advance film to counter -1-
- Set strobe to TTL
- Keep an eye on the Ready Light
- Flash directly at the lens
Seeing the strobe will only discharge a minute amount of light directly at the sensor the Ready Light should come back on almost instantaneously or stay on in the first place. If this is the case you can trust the electronics are working perfectly!
Should the strobe take as long to recharge as in manual mode, however, then there must be a problem somewhere. Your first step - and in 90% of all cases the right one - is to clean the contacts with ethanol!
