Help Elinchrom D-lite 4 and Canon 350D woes

P

photonumpty

Suspended / Banned
Messages
193
Name
Mat
Edit My Images
Yes
If there are any wise type folks out there that could spare five minutes on this I would greatly appreciate it.

Please bare in mind that I have the photographic knowledge of a small rock!

I just bought a D-lite 4 to go set of lights, nifty background supports, some backdrops and a reflector. Put the elinchrom tutorial DVD in the player and sat back to be instructed....

The tutorial gives a layout for a portrait shoot, tells you where to place your lights, what settings to have on your camera and what power settings to use. All of this I copied exactly...

Hair light 1.4m away from model
Main light 1m away from model
Reflector on opposite side to hair light
ISO 100
F8
Camera Mode Manual

And yet only maybe one in five of my shots actually produced an image the rest were just so dark as to be practically black with a vague trace of a figure visible.
Do you think this is a flash sync problem or maybe because I do not have a trigger on the strobes?

I should say that I do not have a triggering device, so I set both of the D-lites to slave and was using the on camera flash with some card over it to trigger the elinchroms. This seems to work, in that both of the D-lites do fire and every now and again I do get an image captured.

The canon 350D only seems to have two custom flash sync modes.. Auto and 1/200 (fixed) in AV mode...

I tried both of these settings with pretty much the same result and when I changed the Camera mode to AV instead of Manual... I ended up with a 30 second exposure.. which at least was lit.. in an acid trip swirly kind of way.

I am well aware that the problem lays with me, for I am without doubt a Photonumpty...

Can someone lend a hand to a poor idiot?

Ps. The camera just came back from a service with Canon a few days ago so I'm fairly certain that it is working as should be.
 
First up check that the flashes are actually firing. Compose a shot where both lamps are in the shot and check your image. Slave triggers are very cheap and more reliable than using flash output from a camera which might not always trigger a more powerful studio flash.

You should have your camera in manual mode as the shutter speed is secondary to the aperture (as the flash duration is so short) which controls how much light passes through to your sensor.
 
I don't use Canon, but this problem is usually caused by the built-in flash emitting a pre-flash that fires the studio flash heads before the camera shutter opens.

RTFM and turn off the pre-flash
 
And yes, it's safe to set the shutter speed to 1/125th. It isn't safe to assume that the 'max synch speed' quoted by the camera manufacturer will work with studio flash.
 
Just a quick thank you for all of the advice so far.

I was so fixated on following the 'how to' guide on the DVD that I didn't even consider manually setting the shutter speed to 1/125 or knocking off the pre-flash... doh! I will try and give this a go tonight.

I also didn't realize that you could get a hot shoe adapter so cheaply... I had only seen the elinchrom sky port jobs at a hundred quid a pop so thanks for that as well.

Your all stars! I will let you know how I get on... fingers crossed.
 
Hurrah!
Success is Mine!

I manually set the shutter speed to 1/200 and all is well with the world.
I didn't have time to convince my wife to adopt a pose AGAIN but ran a quick test with a clothes horse... who would have guessed that with the right lighting a clothes horse could be alluring.. no alright I'm lying but it is lit and it was lit every time I hit the shutter.

So thank you all for your help with this and you never know in a few weeks I might produce something worth posting on the forum.

Cheers,

PN
 
When I got my studio flashes, the pre-flash on the onboard flash triggered the flash heads early. Replaced with a hotshoe adaptor and then a wireless trigger and the world was restored to order
 
photonumpty said:
Just a quick thank you for all of the advice so far.

I was so fixated on following the 'how to' guide on the DVD that I didn't even consider manually setting the shutter speed to 1/125 or knocking off the pre-flash... doh! I will try and give this a go tonight.

I also didn't realize that you could get a hot shoe adapter so cheaply... I had only seen the elinchrom sky port jobs at a hundred quid a pop so thanks for that as well.

Your all stars! I will let you know how I get on... fingers crossed.
Click to expand...


Although they are not the cheapest wireless triggers they are fantastic, I brought them when I got my d-lites and have to say it was well worth the money along with the flash meter, Flash meter takes all the guess work out and the Sky ports mean that there are far fewer wires to fall over.
 
:thumbsdown:A bit of confusion here...

Hotshoe adapters are gadgets that plug into the camera hotshoe and which have one or more (there's no point in more than one) PC sockets. PC sockets are the electrical connections that used to be used to connect camera to studio flash, before the days of radio triggers and infra red triggers.

The Skyport is an expensive radio trigger, not a hotshoe adapter. There are a couple of other brands that cost rather more, and plenty that cost a lot less. Even the very cheapest are far better than using a PC connection.

BTW, I'm not critical of Elinchrom because I haven't seen their DVD, but if it really does say
Hair light 1.4m away from model
Main light 1m away from model
Reflector on opposite side to hair light
ISO 100
F8
Camera Mode Manual
but doesn't mention shutter speed and doesn't mention the need to turn the camera pre-flash off if using it to trigger studio lights then maybe it needs yet another re-make:thumbsdown:
 
It Does, The Bloke Basically Shows You Positioning, Not In Camera Usage. So Its How To Sit The Client As Opposed To How To Make The Things Work Right
 
I'm a total Studio Photography Novice & have been having the same problem!
But cant solve it!!! Help someone Please.
I can't get the Flash to sink with the exposure even at very low shutter speeds.
I tested by shooting the light face on but only the modeling light appears in the shot. Though the flash fires ok.
I'm using the on camera flash & slaving the elinacrom to it. ( I dont have any other method to trigger the Flash)
I disabled redeye but can't find how to disable Pre-Flash. Could this be the cause? Is TTL metering activating the flash before the exposure? PLEAE HELP - Gratefully groveling...
 
Yes TTL metering is what sends out the pre-flashes to find the correct exposure. disable TTL and you should be fine
 
Problem is you can't disable the pre-flash with the on-board unit. At least with most Canons you can't. Basically, you cannot use the on-board flash to trigger studio strobes as they react to the pre-flash and fire before the shutter opens. This happens so fast it appears as if things are working correctly, but they're not. You need to set the flash to full manual, and you can only normally do that with a separate flash gun.

Solution 1) Plug the sync lead supplied into the camera's pc socket and connect to one of the strobes. This will fire in sync with the camera and any other stobes will pick up on that and fire off their optical slaves.
If your camera doesn't have a pc sync socket, but a £10 hot-shoe adapter and plug the lead into that.

Soluition 2) Buy an optical/IR flash trigger. Various makes around like this Elinchrom jobbie for £55 http://www.warehouseexpress.com/buy-elinchrom-prolinca-i-r-transmitter/p1004773 It will fire any number of strobes with optical/IR slaves within range. I use one :thumbs:

Solution 3) Buy a set of Yongnuo RF-602 radio triggers, like those here post #2 http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=157807 £28 per set plus £17.50 for additional receivers needed for each strobe head. With most radio triggers like these ones, they introduce a slight delay so you need to knock your x-sync speed back a bit - 1/125sec should be absolutely safe with any/all trigger/flash combinations.
 
Yes setting the flash to manual should help (sync is not spelt sink by the way) :)

When shooting in the studio, you generally want to remove all traces of ambient light so shutter speed need only be fast enough to remove all traces/ ISO100, f8 and 1/125th is generally fine. Shutter won't affect subject exposure in any way but will affect how much (if any) ambient light you have in your scene.
 
HoppyUK said:
Problem is you can't disable the pre-flash with the on-board unit. At least with most Canons you can't. Basically, you cannot use the on-board flash to trigger studio strobes as they react to the pre-flash and fire before the shutter opens. This happens so fast it appears as if things are working correctly, but they're not. You need to set the flash to full manual, and you can only normally do that with a separate flash gun.

Solution 1) Plug the sync lead supplied into the camera's pc socket and connect to one of the strobes. This will fire in sync with the camera and any other stobes will pick up on that and fire off their optical slaves.
If your camera doesn't have a pc sync socket, but a £10 hot-shoe adapter and plug the lead into that.

Soluition 2) Buy an optical/IR flash trigger. Various makes around like this Elinchrom jobbie for £55 http://www.warehouseexpress.com/buy-elinchrom-prolinca-i-r-transmitter/p1004773 It will fire any number of strobes with optical/IR slaves within range. I use one :thumbs:

Solution 3) Buy a set of Yongnuo RF-602 radio triggers, like those here post #2 http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=157807 £28 per set plus £17.50 for additional receivers needed for each strobe head. With most radio triggers like these ones, they introduce a slight delay so you need to knock your x-sync speed back a bit - 1/125sec should be absolutely safe with any/all trigger/flash combinations.
Click to expand...

Hoppy I thought manual flash didn't preflash?
 
EOS_JD said:
Hoppy I thought manual flash didn't preflash?
Click to expand...

No it doesn't. Which is what I said above. Problem is the on-board flash on most Canons cannot be set to manual, so you cannot disable the pre-flash.

If you want 'manual control' with the on-board flash you have to use the +/- compensation function, but that is still based around an E-TTL meter reading so you still get a pre-flash.
 
HoppyUK said:
No it doesn't. Which is what I said above. Problem is the on-board flash on most Canons cannot be set to manual, so you cannot disable the pre-flash.

If you want 'manual control' with the on-board flash you have to use the +/- compensation function, but that is still based around an E-TTL meter reading so you still get a pre-flash.
Click to expand...

Yes sorry I see what you are saying now :)
 
HoppyUK said:
No it doesn't. Which is what I said above. Problem is the on-board flash on most Canons cannot be set to manual, so you cannot disable the pre-flash.

If you want 'manual control' with the on-board flash you have to use the +/- compensation function, but that is still based around an E-TTL meter reading so you still get a pre-flash.
Click to expand...

That's something I didn't know either :'(
CTR301, PT04, Cactus4 etc etc to the rescue...
 
Thank you Hoppy.
You know your stuff!
Question: Will the Hot-shoe adapter (£10) prevent the TTL pre-flash from kicking in? Will It disable or override this feature on the EOS 350D. - Thanks again.
 
Cottier said:
Thank you Hoppy.
You know your stuff!
Question: Will the Hot-shoe adapter (£10) prevent the TTL pre-flash from kicking in? Will It disable or override this feature on the EOS 350D. - Thanks again.
Click to expand...

Yes, hot-shoe adapter only contacts the central firing pin, and so acts just like the pc sync socket. So all you get is the main flash trigger signal, fired to sync with the first curtain. Which means you cannot use second-curtain sync as the firing signal for that goes through the other E-TTL contacts.

This stuff is flippin complicated! Things don't always work the way you think they should, and Nikon are slightly different to Canon in this respect.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top