Optical slave trigger for old flashgun?

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My OH is trying to trigger an old flashgun remotely with from the pop-up flash on his Olympus E410.

We have an old Philips P36 flashgun which in its day was quite fancy, with a bounce and swivel head AND fill flash (i.e. two strobes) and inbuilt meter. We also have an old optical slave that attaches with a sucker, but the pop-up does not seem strong enough to trigger it although my SB600 does.

Anyone know if something like this Sonia one will work?

He is happy working in manual so pre-flashes are not a problem. As he rarely wants to use flash he does not want to lay out nearly £200 for the dedicated Oly one, which in any case won't work wirelessly with the E410.

I don't know what the sync voltage of the Philips is but he has a voltmeter so could work it out.
 
I'm pretty sure as long as you can any optical slave that has a hot shoe contact, it should work fine. Thats what happened when I had an old 283, just got a cheap optical slave and worked with no worries
 
radio slaves are more reliable and like 20 quid from FITP

also they don't contribute to the exposure like the pop up does

also not all pop ups can be switched to manual so the preflash might be a problem anyway
 
david1701 said:
radio slaves are more reliable and like 20 quid from FITP

also they don't contribute to the exposure like the pop up does

also not all pop ups can be switched to manual so the preflash might be a problem anyway
Click to expand...

They are more reliable, trouble is if it's one of those old flashes with a 300volt trigger it'll kill the wireless receiver :eek:
 
According to this site the Philips is just under 6v. However he is quite resistant to "new-fangled" technology and a radio trigger at the moment seems a step too far for him! :bang: (When we first used flash it was with those little bulbs that made a lovely sizzle as they went off!)

On the E410 he can use the pop-up manually and turn the power down so the optical slave should be all right in theory. It would be for indoor use only and not over a very long distance.

I'll need to think about this -- thanks for the advice so far.
 
I think even in manual mode SOME pop up flashes can still flash twice so you won't get any other light in the shot ( other than pop up ) perhaps listen to the extra flash or watch the charge light to see if it has been triggered or not.
 
That Sonia jobbie should work. Most dealers sell something similar for a tenner. If it works, it's the cheapest and easiest solution.

When you say it works with your Nikon flash, have you actually tried it on the Olympus camera and successfully taken a picture? I'm not familiar with Olympus but with many cameras you cannot disable the auto-exposure pre-flash, as mentioned above. So the remote gun will fire and everything seems okay, but there's a danger that it is reacting to the camera's pre-flash and so will have gone off too early, missing the main exposure completely.

There are various ways around that, but the easiest is to use a radio trigger.
 
Flash In The Pan said:
They are more reliable, trouble is if it's one of those old flashes with a 300volt trigger it'll kill the wireless receiver :eek:
Click to expand...

test it then check the camera manual, mine is safe for a few hundred V and every old flash I have tried is below 10, everyone at least knows someone with a multimeter lol
 
We have a multimeter so can easily check the flashgun. However I think we'll try one of the optical triggers ones first and see how we get on. The E410 can definitely do manual flash so pre-flashes won't be a problem. It is a surprisingly well-specc'ed camera for an entry level one.

While I agree that radio triggers look a better way to go they are bulkier and need batteries... reasons for my OH to be very resistant to the idea! :D
 
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