Sony A6XXX and battery life and strobe considerations

[Nemrod]

Thank you Barmaglot. I did read your earlier post, I was not understanding the unit was a LED and manual only.

With the LED I could shoot my strobes in Auto with the A6600 and I think I can with still with the 6400 with preflash cancel.But only with the A6400 could I do Manual, Auto and sTTL with the camera in either Manual or Av mode?

Always something. Do you notice shutter/focus/flash lag with your rig? No more fish tales (tails)!

Yes, I am pretty versed on Inon, one of mine is the newer Type 4, the other is not. Both have always worked fine with several different cameras but the LED, maybe not for the older unit.

I like the D2000 better than the current unit from Inon.

James

 

[Barmaglot]

With the LED I could shoot my strobes in Auto with the A6600 and I think I can with still with the 6400 with preflash cancel.But only with the A6400 could I do Manual, Auto and sTTL with the camera in either Manual or Av mode?

Correct. If you use the A6400 and its pop-up flash to trigger the strobes, you can pick between s-TTL, manual with pre-flash cancellation and external auto with pre-flash cancellation. In theory, you could do the same with the A6600 and a TTL-capable trigger, but in practice, neither s-TURTLE nor the UW-Technics trigger have a TTL profile for D-2000, so TTL probably wouldn't work well. You can run manual or external auto with the Nauticam manual trigger or this DIY solution, but not TTL.

I suppose that if you really wanted to have access to all three options, along with manual/external auto without the little bit of lag introduced by pre-flash, you could get the A6400 with an s-TURTLE and run it in manual mode when you want manual/external auto, and pop up the flash when you want s-TTL, although this will require you to open up the housing to make the changes.

Always something. Do you notice shutter/focus/flash lag with your rig? No more fish tales (tails)!

Not really; it's generally my own skill that is more limiting than the camera. I don't have hard numbers on the lag added by the pre-flash, but I dimly recall reading a review that measured it at something like 1/3 of a second.

 

[Nemrod]

Will these manual only flash triggers work with the A6400 Nauticam rig? I see of course they will have to with the A6600 but it has a different housing shaped to accommodate them I think?

James

 

[Barmaglot]

I don't own one, but I'm pretty sure that the Nauticam trigger won't fit in their A6000-A6500 housings, as there is not enough room - they seem to have made the A6600 housing taller specifically to accommodate it. It is unlikely to work in non-Nauticam housings either, as the LEDs are built into the box, so they rely on the housing ports being in a specific location with regard to the camera's hot shoe. Third-party triggers such as TRT Electronics s-Turtle usually have LEDs on flexible wires so that they can be placed wherever the housing layout requires them.

Ikelite has a TTL-capable trigger for Sony cameras that can be switched between TTL and manual modes with the push of a button, without opening up the housing, but it only works with their own housing, and worse, only with their own DS-series strobes - Inon, Sea & Sea, etc, are not supported.

 

[Nemrod]

I am afraid I may chicken out again for the third year in a row. Looking at some of the Olympus stuff too. Ordered the Sigma 19mm though for the A6XXX.

My FIX/S90 remains viable as a non-professional camera. The whole Oly Forum is alive with TG stuff and it has a smaller sensor and no manual exposure modes unlike my antique S90 which seems to have a faster flash sync speed, faster flash recycle and manual flash control compared to the A6XXX which does not! But of course a much smaller sensor.

Could I live with the A6400, yes indeed, pretty sure I could. I would have to purchase the onboard booster battery (or two). I would have to accept the slower flash recycle times which might not be much hinderance. I suppose the lack of manual flash is partially offset by the booster battery though this does not solve TTL lag or recycle delay. The larger sensor of course will provide better IQ and better DR and the autofocus is supposedly better and the camera more responsive though it might be partially lamed by the flash TTL lag.

It is really pretty pitiful when a nearly 10 yer old P&S can go head to head with the latest mirrorless and this Olympus TG thing that is so popular. There really should be no comparison of the S90 to either but the fact is there is and this is making me really nervous about investing in a new rig that is better only marginally in responsiveness and has a larger sensor, okay, is this all, is this enough better? I do not know the answer.

Proposed A6400 rig:

Nauticam housing
Nauticam booster battery
Nauticam vacuum leak test system
Nauticam port for the kit lens
Nauticam port for the Sigma 19mm lens
Nauticam WWL-1 wet lens plus optional hard cover
Nauticam wet lens storage for mounting to strobe arms (to dock the WWL-1)
Inon D2000 strobes (existing units)

GoPro would mount up top on a ball socket on housing cold shoe
Video/focus light (existing) (a little fuzzy here)

James

 

[Barmaglot]

It's all a matter of trade-offs. It's easier to shoot small subjects with a small sensor, because you don't need to magnify as much - a subject that will fill the frame at 1:1 for a full-frame camera is at 1:6 or so for a TG-series 1/2" compact - but you lose dynamic range and detail. It's easier to sync strobes at high speed with a fixed-lens camera, as the leaf shutter can open and close much faster than a curtain, but then you lose flexibility of interchangeable lenses.
The internal flash on A6xxx cycles in a bit less than a second, although if you fire a long burst at maximum speed (10 images, IIRC) it trips thermal protection and slows down to something like 3 seconds until the camera is turned off and back on. In general, I don't find it limiting because I have 2-second review turned on so that I can confirm composition, lighting, etc, after each shot, and this gives ample time for both flash and strobes to cycle. If you're really bothered by the internal flash limitations, an LED trigger gets around those. 1/160s sync speed is a bit slower than most other ILCs with curtain shutters (1/250s is common, 1/320s somewhat rare, 1/500s almost unheard of), but I don't find it that big of a deal - wide-angle, unless you're shooting sunballs, it generally takes a slower shutter speed to properly expose the water background at typical apertures.

 

[Nemrod]

Barm, thank you for your information. I am moving towards the A6400 and Nauticam. I have gotten the Sigma 19 and and now have ordered the camera with kit lens.

Despite all my goings on, surely this will be a quantum leap above my old S90. The WWL-1 lens is to die for it seems and it is a must! I will apparently need two ports to use with the two lens I have or will have, so that is more money.

The Fuji XT-3 (?) looks like a better camera overall for my purpose but the housing plus ports jumps up significantly in price for small increase in versatility.

The onboard Nauticam 2500 mah battery pack should squash my battery life concerns. Darn, got to go flip the vinyl--- Rolling Stones are playing this morning.

N

 

[Barmaglot]

For what it's worth, I just did two dives with UW-Technics converter on my A6300, using two SeaFrogs ST-100 Pro strobes - one wide-angle with 16-50mm in a dome and another macro with 90mm in a flat port. TTL worked flawlessly on both, bright and dark subjects, with and without blue water background. A few samples - nothing particularly artistic about them, but they showcase the TTL exposure working pretty well:

 

[Nemrod]

Great shots, love the moray shot. This is more typical of my shooting style if there is such a thing plus I like CFWA:

And this is what I want to avoid, I pressed the button with the ray coming at me, here is the result:

N

 

[Barmaglot]

I don't have objective measurements, or equipment to make them, but subjectively it seems that TTL metering time is shorter with the UW-Technics trigger than with the camera flash. When triggering by pop-up flash, I can barely make out the double pulse of TTL, but with the trigger, I know that the pre-flash is there - it's gotta be! - but I cannot perceive it.

Funny that you mention the white moray - I couldn't get properly close to it, as there was a large lionfish in front of its cubby. The white thing going across the frame is one of the lionfish's rays.