crystal ball 2017: optical or wired strobes?

[KeithG]

Just looking for some opinions regarding where underwater strobe technology is (should be?) heading.

Couple o questions:
- Are wired sync cords finally obsolete?
- is there a different answer for the consumer, prosumer & professional?

I am mostly interested in the "prosumer" arena which (I claim) can involve high end P&S or low end DSLR technology. I am in the high end P&S camp. But welcome all discussions & opinions. Even if they are wrong.

For background info I shot video for many years with Sony / Amphibico rigs before I graduated to the much harder school of stills using a S&S DX1G P&S with a pair of YS110 strobes. Works well most of the time, takes really great macro, but the strobes optical triggering sucks sometimes. Really sucks. Sucks so much that I have converted a housing to wired sync. I claim this setup was bleeding edge technology (think YS100alpha) when it came out & hence my experience & practical knowledge does not reflect current technology. So I may be compensating.

So far on my scuba travels I have only encountered the "consumers" & the "professionals". No one in my camp. Either small P&S setups or $20K DSLR rigs bigger than my head. Very few of the happy snap people had strobes (optical strobes by definition) and the DSLR folks were fully wired.

Please drag out yer crystal ball and give it a good rub...

 

[Interceptor121]

Generally prosumer cameras have now sufficient battery and recycle times that the wired connection does not bring any benefit to the on board TTL system of the flash. If you look at some high end compact like Panasonic LX7 this camera has a flash recycle of 3.1 sec at full power a strobe will recharge in 2. The cost of shooting one second earlier can't be justified. Changing battery on a boat is not an issue if you have a vacuum leak detector and if your housing has a bulkhead in my opinion you better use it for a leak detector than for a wire strobe.

Looking at SLR current housing market leaders you see that some only provide bulkheads on the professional full frame camera housings (nauticam) and not anymore on cropped sensor the only ones that consistently offer bulkhead as optional are brands like subal and hugyfot. The addition of a TTL external circuit and wired connections makes the whole set up more expensive and introduces additional points of failure in the housing. Even Ikelite is abandoning the wired connection for some of their prosumer housing (LX7, Canon G series)

When shooting in manual most SLR have a manual flash mode so there is no benefit with the wired connection as the external strobe recycle time sets the time between the current and next shot.

There will still be an option for wired connections for a few years in the Pro segment (DSLR full frame cameras) but it seems that for cropped sensor this is being already abandoned by manufacturers that make their housing in a production line, whilst those making each one by hand will most likely keep offering as a paid add on.

reef has a good write up on their site
Fiber Optic or Electrical... which is best?

 

[KeithG]

reef has a good write up on their site
Fiber Optic or Electrical... which is best?

Very useful article. thanks for the reference.

 

[bvanant]

I think that the world will move totally to FO connection. Already you can get LED triggers that should be able to do TTL soon on cameras with no flash. By 2017 there will only be FO for new, but some dinosaurs will still be using sync cords.
Bill

 

[Interceptor121]

I don't think many. I have seen the rigs of a few of the most popular photographers here in UK. Age from 35 to 60 all use fibre optic now

 

[James R]

I can't imagine moving to electrical sync, and don't plan to change cameras by 2017. My D7000 still does what I need underwater, and I have a backup body (read: "her" camera).