Cool New Athena Ring Flash

[PHIL RUDIN]

Athena has announce a cool new ring flash this week which uses branded Sea & Sea flash heads as the power source. The ring flash can be connected to a modified Sea & Sea YS-01 or YS 110a via a five pin Nikonos type sync cord. The YS-110a flash head has two Nikonos ports so that more than one strobe can be used.

I have been using the discontinued Athena ring-flash model for several years now and have been getting great results with it. The upside of this new design is the ability to disconnect the ring flash from the sending unit for ease of packing. The potential for use of TTL with wired or fiber optic cords and a much more powerful four battery (old unit had two) sending unit.

Looks like the ring flash and YS-01 sending unit will retail in the US for under $1200.00.

http://www.athena-opt.com/ringflash.htm

Phil Rudin

 

[bvanant]

Since I am destined to buy every ringflash in the Universe, I guess I will start saving today. From the pics it looks like it plugs in to an athena box, not a YS but your Japanese is clearly better than mine. Where does it plug into a YS 110?
Bill

 

[PHIL RUDIN]

Athena modifies the two Sea & Sea strobes to accept the ring flash head and then puts the Athena logo on the strobes.

Phil Rudin

 

[bvanant]

I hope that they leave the S&S battery compartment, the one on the old ringflash was less than elegant.
Bill

 

[PHIL RUDIN]

The old version used two AA batteries and was made from an Epoque-150 strobe head.

The Sea & Sea YS-01 and YS-110a units that serve as the sending unit (power supply) for the new models have a much more robust design and use four AA batteries.