Fantasea Nano 6115 doubts....

[Bordiver]

Hi! I just purchased an used Fantasea Nano Strobe Unit, to go with my old Fuji F30... I've been messing with it on .. land so far... as I'll dive only in a month...

This is a slave flash with some settings for PS cameras and 3 levels of power adustment.... So it's not a TTL strobe...

But there's a small black hole, on the left-bottom part of the front of the flash and of it's UW case, which is not the sync-receiver. The sync-receiver, for receiving the slave light, or using the fiber optic cable, is situated on the right side of the flash lamp, like a led.

This small black hole on the left is a Flash Light Sensor. I did some tests and when firing the flash with this small black hole sealed (with some sticky paper over it), the pictures got brighter, as the flash emitted more light, brighter even than the max power setting.

Does this mean that this flash analyzes the light of the scene, and fires accordingly? Not the light where the subject the camera is pointed at, but the whole light of the ambient? If so, Why is that for? Is it a slave flash with some.... intelligence? eheheh

Does anyone knows what's that for?


Enviado do meu iPad usando o Tapatalk

 

[KeithG]

It is as you suspect. It is a sensor that reads the amount of light that bounces back to the strobe (which hopefully is similar to the amount of light that bounces back to the camera)? So it has a small amount of smarts since it will attempt to provide consistent amount of light to your subject for each of the 3 power levels.

The strobe unit is also known as the vivitar DF120 (no longer a current model) although there may be some small differences in the unit rebranded by fantasea.

 

[Bordiver]

Hi! Thanks, giffenk!

Actually, I happened to have bought two units of the vivitar DF120 (USD 16 for both, sealed) and was testing one of then with the Fantasea side by side. What I noticed is that, the vivitar output is roughly the same as the Fantasea on it´s LOWEST setting.

But... If I block the vivitar´s sensor, it get´s almost to the same level of the Fantasea on it´s max setting. If I block the Fantasea´s sensor also, the it get´s a little bit brighter than the vivitar (also with the light sensor blocked)...

As I own only one fantasea, I modded one GoPro Hero 2 case to fit in the vivitar. It works. So I´ll dive with these 2 flashes. One Fantasea Nano and one Vivitar, with two optical cords....

I´ll try to block the vivitar light sensor, so it could give it max output, and then use a pieceofdark film (like an xray film) over the Fantasea one to allow it to.. almost block it´s light sensor, but not at all, so I could make then both behave the same as light emission... I´ll run some tests to try to ... equalize them...

Do you think that blocking these sensors would make it harder to adjust the pictures by dealing with the Aperture or Speed?

Does anyone that owns the Fantasea one thinks that it adjust itself naturally to the ambient light, working (underwater) as a TTL or in the end it´s a hit and miss to adjust correct exposure?

Thanks!