M9 and Off Camera Flash

[Guest WPalank]

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Dear Members,

 

Well I'm off this week and will be spending some time in the field to put somewhat of a ghetto lighting kit together to lighten the load and test things out. I'm fairly adept at using studio lighting and even a lighting kit with pack out in the field, but this is the first time using Speedliights and putting them behind a soft box and pretending they are a Studio light (I know they are not!) I'm just after a little fill during the magic hours or in some shadowy areas.

 

Anyway, the kit:

Jim Dorn Magic Slipper which allows me to bolt:

- Cold shoe to hold my Canon 580 EX II (set to Master).

- Pocket Wizard Plus II connected to 580 EX II via pc sync chord.

- Quantum Turbo Battery Pack with velcro straps hoisted to the bottom of the magic slipper

- Y adapter out of Quantum pack with corresponding chords then engaging the two 580 EX flashes.

-Generic Speedring with Asymmetrical Strip bank attached.

-Canon 580 flash attached via ball bungee (set to slave).

 

 

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So the main component is predicated on coming up with manual exposure pre-flash and then dialing in the flash manually. M9 triggers Pocket wizard which triggers other PW which triggers Master.

Problem:

Master does not fire when set to Manual. Only when set to ETTL. Obviously ETTL is not truly working here and I can set the power manually but it only works in negative increments. I would rather work like in a studio , chimp and "uhmmmm up 1/4 stop".

 

Good news is the Slave works so I can really dial down the Master then increase the slave as needed.

 

So my question to the off camera flash people out there is why won't the Master fire in Manual mode?

[Guest WPalank]

Never mind, I figured it out while lying in bed. The trick is not to have a master but to set both as slaves on the same channel.

[Jamie Roberts]

Um.... hmmm.

 

William (or do you prefer Bill? I never know!) a couple of things...

 

First, why are you using the line of sight master / slave thing when you have Pocket Wizards?

 

What you want to do, if you want to fire 2 speedlights, is:

 

1. set them both to manual and turn off all that master slave junk--that's only for TTL control of groups and, as I said before, is line of sight!!
   
2. use a hot shoe connector like a Paramount hot-shoe to mini cable for both flashes OR
   
3. alternatively, you can use a cold shoe / bungee setup and PC synch to mini cables... IMO these are troublesome; the Paramounts are not.
   
4. plug both mini ends into the PW receiver / plus thing (there should be two plugs, if not, just split them with an adapter)
   

Voila! PW triggers and fires both flashes at whatever power you set them.

 

BTW--that's a Bruce Dorn magic slipper thingy (not Jim Dorn) I've been lucky to spend some time with Bruce and his lovely wife, Maura, at WPPI and other places. His stuff is great... I love his asymmetrical softbox, actually

[menos I M6]

If you want to trigger several flashes and save on PW's, you can use SU-4 mode on one of the flashes.

I don't know Canon flashes, as I use Nikon, but the newer higher end flash guns do have SU-4 mode (manual slave mode, triggered by another flash optically).

 

I use the flash, that does not have SU-4 capability and trigger it by a PW.

The flashes with SU-4 capability are set to "slave SU-4" and are triggered by the flash of the PW triggered flashgun.

 

I actually used this because I wanted to save money on buying more PWs.