New to me Sony A7 and old Sea & Sea Strobes

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

jscan1

Contributor
Messages
199
Reaction score
55
Location
Miami FL
# of dives
500 - 999
I am building a new to me rig, have a Sony A7 Mirrorless and housing and have two old Sea & Sea Ys-90 Strobes....Anyone have any knowledge if these will work together (TTL) or are the strobes too old to talk to the camera?
 
If you want TTL capability, you'll need a TTL converter board that will support a Sony camera on one side and YS-90 strobes on the other, but I don't think such a beast exists. UW-Technics and TRT-Electronics make Sony-compatible TTL converters, but neither of them have strobe profiles for YS-90, and trying to use a profile from a different strobe will likely result in poor accuracy (underexposed or overexposed shots). Manual mode, with either wired sync or fiber optic triggering with a manual trigger should work, although if you use LEDs and fiber optics, I don't know how sensitive YS-90 is to the triggering signal - in general, Sea & Sea have a reputation for low optical sensitivity.
 
I also have a newer sea and sea ys 03, says works with any camera, will I still need the board for this newer strobe?
 
YS-03 is worse as it doesn't have a manual mode. If you want TTL, you will need a converter with any strobe, but not every strobe is supported by TTL converters currently available on the market. TRT Electronics s-TURTLE currently supports Ikelite DS160, Inon Z240/Z330, Sea&Sea YS-D1, YS-D2 ,YS-D3, YS-110a, Subtronic Pro 160, Pro 270. OneUW, Isotta RED64, Retra PRO and Retra PRO X, UW-Technics converter supports Inon Z-330 / Z-240 / S-2000, Sea&Sea YS-D1 / YS-D2 (China) / YS-250, Ikelite DS161 /, DS160, Subtronic Pro-270 / Pro-160, Retra Pro.

The thing is, whereas built-in TTL support is common in land strobes, it is almost unheard of in underwater strobes. The only underwater strobes currently on the market with built-in TTL support that I know of are Seacam 160D, and they only support it with Canon and Nikon cameras. Older Seacams actually had separate SKUs for Canon and Nikon support, but the current model supports both. Basically, every major vendor (Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus/Panasonic) has their own TTL flash protocol, and the converter 'speaks' it and translates it into appropriate signals for the strobe in question. Different strobes have different discharge profiles, which the cameras are unaware of, and the converters account for that too.

Note that TRT Electronics don't list support for the original A7 cameras, only A7 II and up - I don't know if that's a simple omission, or if they really have a compatibility issue with a camera that old.

Also, keep in mind that low-power strobes such as YS-90 and YS-03 will really struggle to provide enough light to a full-frame camera in wide-angle scenarios - even if you get it working, you'll be largely restricted to macro.

What housing are you using? Do you have an optical or an electrical bulkhead, or both?
 
It has an electrical bulkhead…thanks for all the info, I’ve been shooting in manual with my current rig for years , so maybe will try that with YS-90’s
 

Back
Top Bottom