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Review Summary

Lighting for underwater photography has its unique set of challenges but the rewards can be beautiful. And when you're lighting underwater macro photography, it's all the more challenging...and rewarding!

Macro underwater photography is a great place to start your journey in underwater photography. It’s much simpler than wide angle, and good shots can be achieved with much less gear.
The Sea Sea YS-01 is a compact slave strobe that can be used for wide-angle or macro photography. With its circular beam angle of 100 x 100° and a guide number of up to 20 it is the perfect strobe for small Point Shoot cameras or DSLRs. The DS-TTL (Digital Slave TTL) feature gives you automatic exposer control when shooting in slave mode. It is best to connect the strobe to the housing with a fiber optic cable. For finer lighting control it is best to shoot in manual mode. This is easy since the YS-01 has a ten-level power dial located on the back of the strobe.
The YS-01 is powered by 4-AA batteries. You can get up to 330 flashes at full power with NiMH batteries. With NiMH batteries you will get a blazing fast 1.9 second recycle time, so you will not miss all the action on the reef. The YS-01 has a bright 1W LED target light that is bright enough to use as a dive light on night dives.
An external flash is your most important accessory. The ocean is one big, blue filter. As you descend, the reds and oranges quickly become muted shades of blue and gray. Using a color corrected strobe light will bring back your subject's natural color.
The included Sea Sea Grip-Stay S is designed to attach the YS-01 to small camera housings. To keep things stream-lined you can pass the fiber optic cable through the grip.
To complete the package the Sea Sea Strobe Mask Set and Fiber Optic Cable is included. The Strobe Mask Set is used to attach the Fiber Optic Cable to underwater housings that don't have fiber optic cable ports. The mask blocks the on-camera flash from exposing your subject, preventing back-scatter. The grommet allows the cable to be attached in front of the on-camera flash so the light will trigger your external YS-01 strobe.