Sootchucker
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Hi all, thought I'd post some thoughts on the new Cactus V6 II wireless flash triggers that I recently purchased (one from a seller on here, and one second hand from WEX). Sorry for it being a bit of a long post.
First things first. I had completely misunderstood how these things work. Naively I thought these would allow you to mount one of the V6 II's on top of your selected camera (be it Fuji, Nikon or Olympus in my case), and not having a dedicated Fuji flash, could fit it onto my X-T2 and in the V6 II's hot shoe stick one of my Nikon SB900's and get TTL on camera flash, just as if I was shooting with a dedicated Fuji brand flash. Well that's not the case. Maybe I didn't read the blurb quite correctly (or maybe it's just a bit confusing on their website), but basically when on camera, the Cactus hotshoe is for TTL pass though to the same brand of flash as the camera only. So for instance if i fit to my Nikon D500, then put an SB900 in the Cactus's hot shoe, I get full TTL pass though as if the cactus wasn't in-between them. However as mentioned, if using my X-T2 or OMD EM1 II, and using the Nikon SB900, it won't work in TTL mode at all, as the flash and the camera brand don't match. I only mention this as I've seen a few other people on the web get caught out with this.
With that said, I did run into what I thought was another little problem. With one Cactus on my X-T2 and set up as transmitter, and one remote on a stand set as receiver with my Nikon SB-900 mounted, the system does flash but again not in TTL mode - only manual, where you can (to be fair) very easily control the power of each remote flash group just by a quick turn of a dial on the Cactus in either 1/10, 1/4, 1/2 or full stop increments. I was a little frustrated though as I thought I'd be getting off camera TTL flash with another brand flash (at least that's what it intimates on Cactus's website).
I then decided to read the quick start guide (duh !!), and noticed the first thing it recommended is downloading the Cactus firmware updater software and seeing if there is a more current firmware (which there was). Now, here's where it gets a little confusing again. Here it gave the the opportunity to download a firmware for "All supported cameras" (i.e. Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Sony, Pentax and Olympus), and going by the date, this was the latest version.I duly downloaded that onto both units, and tried again. Once again the units correctly identified the camera and the flash brand but no TTL. Frustrated, I went back to the website and had a Eureka moment. In addition to the "all cameras" firmware, there are currently individual firmwares for Fuji HSS, Sony and Sigma (with Pentax, Olympus, Canon and Nikon reported to be following later this year). I noticed that the Fuji firmware was dated early July this year, so again I downloaded both on each trigger and bingo !! Full TTL on the Nikon off camera flash using a Fuji X-T2.
Basically my misinterpretation of the system was that you could mix and match cameras and flash brands, on the fly so to speak. However it seems you need to download a specific firmware for your particular camera (so as said currently Fuji, Sony and Sigma are available, with the others to follow) With the appropriate firmware for the camera you are planning to use loaded, it seems to work perfectly. ISO, zoom angle, aperture etc. are all transmitted from the master unit on the camera directly across to the slave with the SB900 on it, and in my limited testing, exposures seem to be pretty much spot on.
My guess is that when Cactus has all the firmware's done and uploaded, if you are a multiple system shooter like me, you just need to hook each V6 II up to a computer, run the firmware updater for the specific model camera you will be working with and you are good to go. Then when you want to go back to another system, run the updater once again for the other camera. Obviously if you are a single system shooter then this is a one off process and you will never need to worry about changing the firmware for other brands. Whilst it's not as simple as I thought (i.e. it seems the Cactus doesn't carry all the camera profiles at once), it's no real hardship to update as necessary. I really purchased this for my Fuji system anyway as I don't own any Fuji specific flashes, but do own 3 Nikon SB-900's one Nikon SB-800 and two Olympus FL-600R's so I didn't see a point of buying an expensive Fuji flash when I already has 6 !
I hope the above is factual (it was my experience), but I'm open to anyone with a lot more experience correcting the above if my assumptions are incorrect ?
I'd like to end with a question which I couldn't find an answer to. Using a Cactus on the X-T2, a quick push of the jog wheel toggles from HSS mode to non HSS mode (simple). However when I look at the screen on the back of my SB-900, it always says TTL FP (FP in Nikon speak meaning high speed sync). I can't seem to find a way of tuning off FP on the flash. If I take the flash off the Cactus, the FP disappears, put it back on, and the FP lights up again. Not a massive problem but my worry is that if the flash is in FP mode, my flash power and range will be severely limited, which is fine when shooting outdoors at 1/8000 sec, but when I'm indoors and at or below the standard sync speed of the camera, I set the HSS mode on the transmitter V6 II to off, but the receiver flash (SB-900) still showed TTL FP ? Am I doing something wrong.
Anyway, the whole point of this post is to help anyone who if like me, is only just starting out with remote off camera flash, and is looking at the Cactus as a low cost solution (my units only cost £110 for the pair), but is a little bemused or mislead by the advertising on Cactus's website. Hope it's off help.
First things first. I had completely misunderstood how these things work. Naively I thought these would allow you to mount one of the V6 II's on top of your selected camera (be it Fuji, Nikon or Olympus in my case), and not having a dedicated Fuji flash, could fit it onto my X-T2 and in the V6 II's hot shoe stick one of my Nikon SB900's and get TTL on camera flash, just as if I was shooting with a dedicated Fuji brand flash. Well that's not the case. Maybe I didn't read the blurb quite correctly (or maybe it's just a bit confusing on their website), but basically when on camera, the Cactus hotshoe is for TTL pass though to the same brand of flash as the camera only. So for instance if i fit to my Nikon D500, then put an SB900 in the Cactus's hot shoe, I get full TTL pass though as if the cactus wasn't in-between them. However as mentioned, if using my X-T2 or OMD EM1 II, and using the Nikon SB900, it won't work in TTL mode at all, as the flash and the camera brand don't match. I only mention this as I've seen a few other people on the web get caught out with this.
With that said, I did run into what I thought was another little problem. With one Cactus on my X-T2 and set up as transmitter, and one remote on a stand set as receiver with my Nikon SB-900 mounted, the system does flash but again not in TTL mode - only manual, where you can (to be fair) very easily control the power of each remote flash group just by a quick turn of a dial on the Cactus in either 1/10, 1/4, 1/2 or full stop increments. I was a little frustrated though as I thought I'd be getting off camera TTL flash with another brand flash (at least that's what it intimates on Cactus's website).
I then decided to read the quick start guide (duh !!), and noticed the first thing it recommended is downloading the Cactus firmware updater software and seeing if there is a more current firmware (which there was). Now, here's where it gets a little confusing again. Here it gave the the opportunity to download a firmware for "All supported cameras" (i.e. Canon, Nikon, Fuji, Sony, Pentax and Olympus), and going by the date, this was the latest version.I duly downloaded that onto both units, and tried again. Once again the units correctly identified the camera and the flash brand but no TTL. Frustrated, I went back to the website and had a Eureka moment. In addition to the "all cameras" firmware, there are currently individual firmwares for Fuji HSS, Sony and Sigma (with Pentax, Olympus, Canon and Nikon reported to be following later this year). I noticed that the Fuji firmware was dated early July this year, so again I downloaded both on each trigger and bingo !! Full TTL on the Nikon off camera flash using a Fuji X-T2.
Basically my misinterpretation of the system was that you could mix and match cameras and flash brands, on the fly so to speak. However it seems you need to download a specific firmware for your particular camera (so as said currently Fuji, Sony and Sigma are available, with the others to follow) With the appropriate firmware for the camera you are planning to use loaded, it seems to work perfectly. ISO, zoom angle, aperture etc. are all transmitted from the master unit on the camera directly across to the slave with the SB900 on it, and in my limited testing, exposures seem to be pretty much spot on.
My guess is that when Cactus has all the firmware's done and uploaded, if you are a multiple system shooter like me, you just need to hook each V6 II up to a computer, run the firmware updater for the specific model camera you will be working with and you are good to go. Then when you want to go back to another system, run the updater once again for the other camera. Obviously if you are a single system shooter then this is a one off process and you will never need to worry about changing the firmware for other brands. Whilst it's not as simple as I thought (i.e. it seems the Cactus doesn't carry all the camera profiles at once), it's no real hardship to update as necessary. I really purchased this for my Fuji system anyway as I don't own any Fuji specific flashes, but do own 3 Nikon SB-900's one Nikon SB-800 and two Olympus FL-600R's so I didn't see a point of buying an expensive Fuji flash when I already has 6 !
I hope the above is factual (it was my experience), but I'm open to anyone with a lot more experience correcting the above if my assumptions are incorrect ?
I'd like to end with a question which I couldn't find an answer to. Using a Cactus on the X-T2, a quick push of the jog wheel toggles from HSS mode to non HSS mode (simple). However when I look at the screen on the back of my SB-900, it always says TTL FP (FP in Nikon speak meaning high speed sync). I can't seem to find a way of tuning off FP on the flash. If I take the flash off the Cactus, the FP disappears, put it back on, and the FP lights up again. Not a massive problem but my worry is that if the flash is in FP mode, my flash power and range will be severely limited, which is fine when shooting outdoors at 1/8000 sec, but when I'm indoors and at or below the standard sync speed of the camera, I set the HSS mode on the transmitter V6 II to off, but the receiver flash (SB-900) still showed TTL FP ? Am I doing something wrong.
Anyway, the whole point of this post is to help anyone who if like me, is only just starting out with remote off camera flash, and is looking at the Cactus as a low cost solution (my units only cost £110 for the pair), but is a little bemused or mislead by the advertising on Cactus's website. Hope it's off help.
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