bradlys 0 Posted May 25, 2021 (edited) There isn't much about this in English online. There might be a lot in Chinese but I don't speak nor can I penetrate the great firewall of China. Thus, I thought I'd start a thread because I bought a Seafrogs SF-01 (Also known a Meikon SF-01 or SF01 or SF 01) recently and I have just gotten the proper batteries for it too. (18650 10A 3500mah protected with button top, about 70mm long - Vapcell P1835A) It is quite particular about battery size - it needs at least 68mm long 18650 batteries with protection board and a particular type of button top that is rather pointy. The Vapcell that I mentioned is exactly what works. I can verify that much. At least 68mm, 69mm preferred (from the manual), and the 70mm that the Vapcell I have seems to be fine too. I saw threads and a video before where folks were unable to get the old Seafrogs ST-100-PRO to do anything except fire at one particular power and had some issues with it... I can say quite confidently - the SF-01 has fixed that particular issue while manually testing! It can indeed shoot at 7 different power levels at the least. I have not received my sync cord in the mail yet - so I cannot do any kind of fancy testing at the moment but when I do receive it - I will do such. It is also just a manual strobe - there is no TTL functionality as far as I can tell (there is no mention of TTL and there is no TTL knob on the strobe itself). Here's a gallery where I took a picture of a greycard that's included with my colorchecker passport. This is a distance of 1 meter from the flash to the subject (±0.5"), F/22 aperture, ISO 100 (Sony A9), exposure length of 2.5" to let me manually trigger the flash in test mode. I did not use the diffuser - bare strobe only as to get maximum output. Maybe I should've just taken a picture of the colorchecker itself to give you an idea of CRI or color correctness from the flash itself. https://imgur.com/a/rf4i4op If someone asks - I'll do that and they can analyze and share the results. (As I don't really have a good way to do it myself - I don't have any special software to determine that I think) Flash recycle time at full power with the "ultra fast" recycle mode is still about 2-3s. It isn't under 2s most of the time for full power shots. Personally, I'm not too bothered at the moment. The actual important part like - will it blow up when I submerge it and will it work with a 5-pin sync cord - I will also be testing. Just wanted to test the flashing part first. Thus, the first post here. Interested in what people want to test/see out of a strobe besides it lasting a single dive. Edited May 25, 2021 by bradlys Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Barmaglot 171 Posted May 25, 2021 Looks pretty good. Can you take a photo of its light pattern, in a way similar to this? https://www.retra-uwt.com/blogs/news/comparing-light-ouput Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bradlys 0 Posted May 25, 2021 10 hours ago, Barmaglot said: Looks pretty good. Can you take a photo of its light pattern, in a way similar to this? https://www.retra-uwt.com/blogs/news/comparing-light-ouput Hmm - that'll be quite difficult as that's requiring some kind of either extremely long cable or a wireless triggering solution - neither of which I have. There is a "learn mode" on the flash that allows it to learn from pulses of light when to fire the strobe. I'll look into that and using a flash light or something. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Barmaglot 171 Posted May 25, 2021 You could do the same long exposure on the camera, then trigger the strobe using a cell phone flash or something similar. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
oskar 6 Posted June 24, 2021 Finally a strobe that takes 18650! When will the classic strobe manufacturers follow suit? I am curious about the performance of this one though. How is the power and spread? It claims 120 degrees. Cheers O Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
