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Sea & Sea YS-250 strobe prototype photos
Last Update: 26 June 2007 01:11 PM
6 comment(s)
Author: Eric Cheng ( echeng )
Related Link: Sea & Sea
Jon Davy from Sea & Sea / TUSA has been hanging out with us here in Bonaire at the Digital Shootout 2007. In addition to bringing an underwater housing and strobes to give away as a contest prize, Jon brought two prototype Sea & Sea YS-250 strobes with him. Originally announced at DEMA last year, the YS-250 has been awaited eagerly by photographers because of its high power and relatively compact size. We took a couple photos of the strobes, which are below.
Berkley White and a few other folks took the strobe into the water for a test drive.
NOTE:these are PROTOTYPE strobes, and the final design is subject to change!
Looks like a nice compact unit...any info on specs like size and battery type???
Posted by kcf955 on 06/21 at 03:52 PMHmmmm. I’ll be interested to see what Berkley thinks of them. Having the controls on the back is convenient if you can get your fingers around them but this looks a lot like the back of a YS90 or INON. Lots of small fiddly controls too close to each other and the battery cap. I worry that they might be hard to use with cold, gloved hands. The switchgear on my YS350s is one of the things I really like about them.
Clinton
Posted by gecko1 on 06/21 at 04:32 PMAt the moment, each strobe is 180 grams negative underwater. This seems like a lot, but negativity is the tradeoff for its small size.
I’d definitely like to try them, myself.
As for specs, a google search will reveal some of them. The battery is a removable Ni-Mh, I believe. I saw it, but didn’t take a photo of it before it was packed up. I’ll try to get one tomorrow if Jon is still around.
Posted by Eric Cheng on 06/21 at 10:23 PMDrat. Another thing I really like about the YS350s is that they’re positively buoyant and help even out my rig. I guess I don’t get the fixation on small size. Being able to comfortably handle the rig underwater is much more based on buoynacy than size. Same with travel. The airlines don’t care so much how big it is, they care how heavy it is. Besides, negagtive rigs will need bouyancy arms or floats to make it usuable and you’re back to having a bulky rig.
Clinton
Posted by gecko1 on 06/22 at 10:58 AMI sent a note to Sea&Sea;USA a few weeks ago inquiring about availability and they sent me what appears to be the catalog page for this strobe. The pictures make it look a lot like the ones they had at BTS and/or Long Beach (can’t remember which show I saw pictures from). Not sure if it represents anything final but it lists the strobes as being 1980g above water and -250g below and as having a removable 3000mAH NiMH battery. Charger looks like the old Ikelite model. Controls on the side. Again what they sent me is from a 2007 “full lineup catalog”. I don’t know how they feel about posting things like that but they sent it to me in answer to my simple availability request so send me a PM . . .
Will be interesting to see what they finally release. And when. S&S;USA suggested early July but given the track record for S&S;product releases one wonders how rosy that estimate is . . .
Mike
Posted by MikeO on 06/25 at 02:01 PMHi Mike-
The case design has been streamlined and the strobes are now spec’d at -180g u/w. The main reason the mock-up DEMA sample and 2007 catalog image looks different than refined pre-production sample posted above. All controls are on the backside with visible Ready and TTL indicators on the left and right side. They should be available to Sea&Sea;dealers in the US in late July or early August with an MSRP of 999.Posted by Sea&Sea on 06/26 at 03:11 PM