using Speedlites at night w/ Pocketwizards & slave.... will they fire?

  • Thread starter Thread starter englandshottest2
  • Start date Start date
E

englandshottest2

Guest
I've heard a few reports that when using Canon Speedlites at night, they don't tend to fire....
My wireless of camera setup would be a 580EXII w/ Pocketwizard unit inserted into the PC sync terminal, and a 430EX on slave, with the other Pocketwizard on my 5D's hotshoe acting as the transmitter.

Has anybody ever encountered a problem of such at night with a similar setup? As I have a shoot this weekend at night and don't wan't to encounter a problem :-P! The speedlites won't be more than about 15' away from one another and the transmitter...

Any past experience details appreciated!
 
I've heard that PWs are the best and most reliable transmitters out there. Also, I forget his name, but there is a guy on here that does a lot of scateboard photography, I've seen some of his shots from night times. I reckon you'll be fine. But since I've never used anything like those I'm probably not the most trustworthy on this subject.
 
Pocket wizards are radio transmitters, you lose ettl. Thus your 580 will work if in manual mode and you'll need to adjust its settings manually. The 430EX as slave? If its not connected to a pocketwizard it will just sit there looking pretty and do nothing.

Use the 580 as master on the hotshoe and set the 430 to slave and using the inbuilt canon light triggering system will work, if they have line of sight to each other over 20-30ft. (need to be set on same channel.)

Speedlites are apparantly unreliable if you use a flash slave remote, thats one where the hotshoe sits on a little device and external flash triggers the device to trigger the flash attached to it, if that makes sense. The Canon flash will usually work 1st time in this setup but needs to be switched off and back on to work again.

Or get another pocketwizard if you want to trigger both off camera... Strobist has details also the Canon flash bible http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/#fp
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top