Calumet Travelite triggering D1 Profoto light

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Eric Murray

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Anyone out there know if Calumet Travelite with a Pocket wizard connected to it will also fire a D1 Profoto head set as a slave.

I have 3 Calumet Travelite heads one is connected via a pocket wizard and two are being fired as slaves. I have a studio that has a D1 Profoto head that I want to fire as a slave like the other two Travelite's are being fired.

Thanks
 
Yes.
 
Yep, make sure the light by 'slave' on the D1 is on.

Enjoy, they're the best monoblocs out there...
 
Thanks all. Tried it out yesterday and worked really good. I did have some trouble with my Calumet Travelite heads. I had my key light setup as a Travelite 750. I had the dial set at 3 power with my pocket wizard connected to this head. I also had another 2 Travelite 750 heads set as slaves but they would not fire unless I had my power dial on the key light set above 5. If I went any lower it would not trigger the other two slaves. I still can't for the life of my figure out why. I ended up having to shoot at a ridiculously large F stops like F22 because of this. Anyone know why this might have been happening.
 
Slave triggering relies on difference - the difference between ambient light and the flash.
So, if you are shooting in high levels of ambient light, or if you have the modelling lamp from another flash pointing at the slave sensor, sometimes there isn't enough difference between light levels unless you turn the power right up.

That's one of the reasons most of us use radio triggers instead of slave cells.
 
Thanks Garry for the response. I was inside a studio and the only lights that were on apart from the strobes were the fluorescent overheads in the studio itself. I have been in the same kind of environments before with studio fluorescent overheads and this didn't happen.
So you are saying that the head that you have the pocket wizard plugged into always has to be powered higher than any of the slaves you might be using.
I had my slaves at 3 and my main light at 5 and it worked. If I set it to just over 3 or 4 then it didn't work.

"That's one of the reasons most of us use radio triggers instead of slave cells." So you mean have a pocket wizard on each head instead of using the slave sensor?
 
Well, maybe the slaves on your units aren't very sensitive. Or maybe the light from the master flash wasn't reaching the slave sensor for some reason, who knows...

My favourite true story on that subject is a Lencarta customer, a very famous and no doubt brilliant Cavendish Professor of Theoretical Physics...
He complained that the slave on his ElitePro flash head wasn't working, and after going through all the usual questions it turned out that he thought that the slave sensor was there to hang the head cap from:)
When I pointed out, with my usual charm and tact, that the laws of physics require that the flash energy needs to actually reach the sensor, he very gently pointed out that he was a theoretical physicist:)

It doesn't necessarily follow that the radio receiver needs to be plugged into the flash head that's on the highest power setting, but it does make sense to do it that way. What is far more important is that the receiver is plugged into a head that has a broad light modifier, such as a softbox, so that the light from it will reach the other slave sensors. Never plug the only receiver into a head that's fitted with a tight modifier such as a honeycomb, or the light will probably not set off the slaves.

Or just fit a receiver to each flash head, and then have absolutely nothing to worry about.
 
Haha Garry that's a funny story, Well I don't claim to be a theoretical physicist. But I am learning something right now. This makes sense to why it might not have worked now.
I did have one overhead light that had the pocket wizard attached to it with a soft-box that was shining down over the models head. So this might explain why the light source from that head might not have gotten to the other slave sensors.

So what you are saying is to have a pocket wizard on each head and set them to local transmit mode and I wont run into this problem, because they wont need to rely on sensor anymore.

Can you mix different pocket wizards. For example I have the plus 2 but if I want to purchase 2 more can I buy the new cheaper pocket wizard X and have them work with the plus 2's or they all have to be the same ?

Thanks for all that.
 
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treeman said:
Yes the PW Plus x is backwards comparable with all PW units, so you can easily mix and match.
Click to expand...

True. PW are I think, the only manufacturers to stay with exactly the same frequency from the start. Only caveat is there are three different frequencies used for different countries and they are not cross compatible. Best to check that, but if you bought in the UK you should be on 433MHz. I think it's written on them.

Edit: link http://www.pocketwizard.com/inspirations/technology/frequency/
 
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Thanks to all for their help. I got the plus X's and they work great with my older Plus 2 ones. Thanks thanks thanks for all the help and advice.
 
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