Nikon Z8 flash not firing with strobes

[icouldcarelessbutdont]

Good evening,

We bought a Nikon Z8 and along with it we also purchased a Isotta Housing with the ISO-2905 Manual Optical Trigger system. The lights are the Backscatter Hybrid Flash lights and we have Seafrog optical cables.

When testing the new kit out, we have it assembled, turn on the flash trigger, made sure it was connected, we see the lights at the end of the fiber cables where we attach to the strobes, all seems well. The camera has Silent mode OFF and we're in manual mode. The lens is the Nikon 105mm macro lens. The issue we're having is, the strobes simply are not firing.

We have the strobes set to manual a "F". When we turn on the flash trigger the lights will fire, but when we go to take a photo, nothing, no flash. The Flash is set to On but we did notice the "Flash Control" menu in the Nikon Z8 is greyed out. We're a little lost here and looking to see if anyone has any advice.

Thanks in advance.

 

[davehicks]

Contact Backscatter and Isotta with your problem if the suggestion below does not work.

As I understand it, you are getting the strobe to fire, but the resulting photo is not exposed. This would be a Synchronization problem.

Try this from the HF-1 manual. (and read it completely while you're at it)

----

How to Turn Off Learning Mode for Manual Trigger/Flash Users

For shooters who use manual flash triggers or an internal camera flash in manual mode that only emit 1 flash, learning mode can be disabled so the default when powering on the strobe is to fire on the first flash that occurs rather than having to teach the Hybrid Flash each time it is powered on.

Note: If using a manual flash trigger or internal flash, especially with continuous shooting, it is highly recommended to turn off learning mode.

To Turn Off Learning Mode

• Make sure the flash is off and batteries are installed.
• Press and hold the Mode button.
• While keeping the mode button held down, turn the power dial to M
• and keep holding the Mode button down until the Main indicator light
• and Test light both blink, approximately 5 seconds, then release. The
• default blinking color is blue, which is Learning Mode ON.
• Press the mode button to toggle between Learning Mode ON and
• Learning Mode OFF. Learning Mode OFF will be indicated by a green
• blinking light.
• After the selection is made, press the TEST button to confirm. The
• strobe will then exit the Learning Mode menu and is ready to fire.
• This setting will stay in the memory of the Hybrid Flash until it is changed again in the Learning Mode menu

 

[icouldcarelessbutdont]

Contact Backscatter and Isotta with your problem if the suggestion below does not work.

As I understand it, you are getting the strobe to fire, but the resulting photo is not exposed. This would be a Synchronization problem.

Try this from the HF-1 manual. (and read it completely while you're at it)

----

How to Turn Off Learning Mode for Manual Trigger/Flash Users

For shooters who use manual flash triggers or an internal camera flash in manual mode that only emit 1 flash, learning mode can be disabled so the default when powering on the strobe is to fire on the first flash that occurs rather than having to teach the Hybrid Flash each time it is powered on.

Note: If using a manual flash trigger or internal flash, especially with continuous shooting, it is highly recommended to turn off learning mode.

To Turn Off Learning Mode

• Make sure the flash is off and batteries are installed.
• Press and hold the Mode button.
• While keeping the mode button held down, turn the power dial to M
• and keep holding the Mode button down until the Main indicator light
• and Test light both blink, approximately 5 seconds, then release. The
• default blinking color is blue, which is Learning Mode ON.
• Press the mode button to toggle between Learning Mode ON and
• Learning Mode OFF. Learning Mode OFF will be indicated by a green
• blinking light.
• After the selection is made, press the TEST button to confirm. The
• strobe will then exit the Learning Mode menu and is ready to fire.
• This setting will stay in the memory of the Hybrid Flash until it is changed again in the Learning Mode menu

No, strobes are not firing when we take a picture. I tried moving the settings to Learned Mode off, same issue.

 

[davehicks]

No, strobes are not firing when we take a picture. I tried moving the settings to Learned Mode off, same issue.

Ok, your write up is unclear. You said the lights flash. Perhaps you meant the trigger?

Does the manual test fire button on the strobes make them flash?

Is, try putting the flash trigger right up to the (line of sight) to the HF-1 fiber input socket. No cable in between. Can the trigger activate the strobes this way? If so, you may have a cable problem.

Next step is to contact the vendors.

 

[cetacean]

@icouldcarelessbutdont

You need to eliminate the most likely culprit - the cheap optical fiber optic cables.

It may end up being something else, however in similar situations others have identified issues with cheap cables not transmitting enough light to trigger the more powerful strobes.

If you have a Nauticam fiber cable lying around this is an easy test - just swap the cables and see if they fire. If you don't have one (and you want to definitely eliminate the cables from the issue then order one of Backscatter's universal fiver optic cables. If it still doesn't fire it could be the trigger (and it won't be the cable). If it does fire, it's because you were using cheap cables...

@davehicks suggestion of manually lining up the flash trigger output with the HF-1 input (no cable in between) is also a good test to see if the cable is the issue.

It may not seem like it should be the case, however the amount of light needed to trigger each flash on the market actually varies (in some cases, significantly).

 

[icouldcarelessbutdont]

Ok, your write up is unclear. You said the lights flash. Perhaps you meant the trigger?

Does the manual test fire button on the strobes make them flash?

Is, try putting the flash trigger right up to the (line of sight) to the HF-1 fiber input socket. No cable in between. Can the trigger activate the strobes this way? If so, you may have a cable problem.

Next step is to contact the vendors.

Manual test fire works when used on the strobes. Manually lining up the Flash trigger output with the HF-1 input (no cable between) doesn't cause them to fire

 

[icouldcarelessbutdont]

@icouldcarelessbutdont

You need to eliminate the most likely culprit - the cheap optical fiber optic cables.

It may end up being something else, however in similar situations others have identified issues with cheap cables not transmitting enough light to trigger the more powerful strobes.

If you have a Nauticam fiber cable lying around this is an easy test - just swap the cables and see if they fire. If you don't have one (and you want to definitely eliminate the cables from the issue then order one of Backscatter's universal fiver optic cables. If it still doesn't fire it could be the trigger (and it won't be the cable). If it does fire, it's because you were using cheap cables...

@davehicks suggestion of manually lining up the flash trigger output with the HF-1 input (no cable in between) is also a good test to see if the cable is the issue.

It may not seem like it should be the case, however the amount of light needed to trigger each flash on the market actually varies (in some cases, significantly).

I believe these are SeaFrog universal fibre optic cables

 

[icouldcarelessbutdont]

Manual test fire works when used on the strobes. Manually lining up the Flash trigger output with the HF-1 input (no cable between) doesn't cause them to fire

One thing to note, The flash control menu is greyed out on the Z8.

I'm waiting for Backscatter to open and see if they have advice, otherwise there doesn't seem to be any obvious easy wins right now.

 

[icouldcarelessbutdont]

Here is a video of what is happening:


Turned strobes on, manual mode, learning mode disabled

With camera on, shoebox in, turn on flash control, lights fire automatically after the eight flashes on the trigger flash complete on its boot up, connected with optical Cables.

Then I go to take a picture, nothing, no strobes firing.

 

[icouldcarelessbutdont]

Ok here goes what was done to get this working, I called Isotta this morning when I woke up and we hopped on a WhatsApp video call and the first thing they noticed was the LEDs were remaining on, which isn't by design, they should be in the off state by design and only fire (Flash the LED) when you want to strobe to fire. This was my initial confusion as to what the default state is, I wasn't sure if the brief absence of light fires the strobe or the opposite; thus, it started the isolation troubleshooting, which the Isotta team in Italy is incredibly good at and were dedicated to getting this working for us for the trip we have tomorrow.

In a nutshell, after isolating different components it seemed as if the problem is on one end of the "shoebox", either the box itself that connects to the camera or the other board the wires are soldered too. We isolated the wires to just the green and yellow wires since I'm only doing manual optical flash triggering and we noticed what looked like some residue on the solering, so we cleaned the contacts and put everything back together and then it started working as designed.

They normally wouldn't have gone through so much, but they wanted to isolate and get this working prior to our travels and will be sending us a new unit to replace the one we modified to isolate the problem, just to ensure it won't creep back up.