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Strobes not firing underwater

Started Oct 11, 2021 | Questions thread
Barmaglot_07 Contributing Member • Posts: 633
Re: Strobes not firing underwater

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

There are TTL triggers available as another possible solution.

TTL, by itself, will not do anything to alleviate the issue. What's needed is raw power. If you look at Sea & Sea's own triggers that work with YS-D3s, they use twin AAA batteries, and chew through them pretty damn quick, as they use very bright LEDs. For comparison, UW-Technics triggers last for months on a coin cell battery.

My rig is using fiber cables I ordered in 2016 for my NA-D810 housing, which used the pop-up flash as a trigger. Never knew there were different fiber types out there.

Pop-up flashes are more forgiving, as they put out a much brighter pulse. The cheaper cables use a single fiber optic core, but better light transmission is achieved by using a bundle of thinner fibers - typically 613 of them. This is what it looks like under a microscope:

As I understand it, the thin individual fibers reduce light transmission losses from cable bends, as the same bend radius is proportionally greater for a thinner fiber. With my old strobes (SeaFrogs ST-100 Pro) I had an issue where one strobe would fire reliably and the other wouldn't, as it wasn't getting as much light from the camera flash due to the way the reflector inside the housing is constructed; swapping to multi-core cables made that problem go away.

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