Help please...

[Chris Perry]

Hi people, I need some help with a strobe set up, I’m using a set of lights that aren’t all that up to date, they fire with a lead and when another flash fires, but the problem I have is I have a Nikon D90 and they don’t have a sink lead port and I don’t have a wireless trigger, the D90 has a command function but I think it only works when you have lights that support groups. Is there any way I can use the flash on the camera to trigger the strobes but not let it interfere with the shot?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Chris

 

[lawrie29]

You can buy adapters that turn the camera hotshoe into a cable connectiopn (pc sync I have seen). that would work

 

[Garry Edwards]

Yes, you can get a hotshoe whatsit that terminates in a pc socket - but for not much more money you could get a cheap radio trigger, and there's no comparision between the reliability and convenience of a radio trigger and a physical wire running to a flash head.

And to get back to your question, in theory if you set your hotshoe flash to a very low setting then the flash should set off the studio flash - but older studio flash heads don't always have sensitive slave sensors and may not work with a very low hotshoe flash setting, and probably won't work at all if there is a fairly high level of ambient light.
Turning up the flash power to compensate will definately affect the shot.

A possible answer would be to plug in an external flash sensor, but the cost of that is around the same as a cheap flash trigger...

 

[Chris Perry]

Hey cheers, good ideas, a trip to the shop tomorrow i think!
thanks again.

 

[HoppyUK]

Yes, you can get a hotshoe whatsit that terminates in a pc socket - but for not much more money you could get a cheap radio trigger, and there's no comparision between the reliability and convenience of a radio trigger and a physical wire running to a flash head.

And to get back to your question, in theory if you set your hotshoe flash to a very low setting then the flash should set off the studio flash - but older studio flash heads don't always have sensitive slave sensors and may not work with a very low hotshoe flash setting, and probably won't work at all if there is a fairly high level of ambient light.
Turning up the flash power to compensate will definately affect the shot.

A possible answer would be to plug in an external flash sensor, but the cost of that is around the same as a cheap flash trigger...

Garry, most camera's on-board flash is TTL-auto only. There is no manual control (other than auto-exposure +/- compensation) and you cannot disable the pre-flash.

So, if you do as you suggest, the studio slave will trigger off the pre-flash. The studio head then appears to fire normally, but in fact it's miles out of sync and there is no flash exposure.

The only way you can make that work is with an optical slave with additional circuitry which ignores the pre-flash. A longer shutter speed obviously has no effect. Radio trigger is the cost-effective solution.

 

[Garry Edwards]

Garry, most camera's on-board flash is TTL-auto only. There is no manual control (other than auto-exposure +/- compensation) and you cannot disable the pre-flash.

Some certainly but most?
I thought that particular design fault was limited to some Canon models but would like to know if I'm wrong about that.

Certainly a radio trigger is the best option, I said that.

 

[HoppyUK]

Some certainly but most?
I thought that particular design fault was limited to some Canon models but would like to know if I'm wrong about that.

Certainly a radio trigger is the best option, I said that.

Certainly most cameras, as there are more Canons about But I'm not sure about all.

I thought maybe Nikons could do it, but some recent posts have made me think perhaps not and that they're actually like Canons, despite their master controller function. I'd like some clarity on the new Canon 7D here, too.

You need to be able to switch the on-board flash to full manual control, which then means there must be some means of moderating the power output (presumably). This is a feature that would only be of use to a very small number of users who want to go off-camera but without auto-TTL, and given that radio triggering is now such an easy alternative I can see why manufacturers wouldn't bother. That's just a guess though.

The main problem in these situations seems to be that many people don't know that there is a pre-flash happening at all. Everything appears to work normally, but images are blank. They post the problem on there and people say it's x-sync speed. Then we go round in circles LOL