Topic: Flash triggers

Considering my flash needs for the next few months.

I'd like to be able to use a flash or two off-camera. I'm considering the Sunpak PZ42x (and maybe something else as well, later).

Bearing in mind I have fairly old nikon D100, what flash triggers would be recommended?
I've been looking at these on ebay 140404592775 are they any good?

If not, any suggestions?

Alex, I think Shane posted something in one of the threads re remote triggers from an ebay seller he used. 

Alex, I think Shane posted something in one of the threads re remote triggers from an ebay seller he used. 

Ta, I'll have a look. I also remember Rich buying some at around the turn of the year. 

I did indeed Dave 

Here you go Alex Cotswold

Got mine from this chap . Next day delivery and had no problems at all with them  .
I had a set of 1 X TX  ,2 X RX  .
They were Yongnuo RF-602  .
The beauty of these is that they can also be used as a remote release so you can stand away from the camera and also take a shot . Useful for some wildlife shots .

Shane

ps contact him , he is really approachable 

Excellent thanks mate.

Is that what you used for your badgers? How can yo uuse it to trigger the shutter as well?

I did indeed Dave 

Here you go Alex Cotswold

Got mine from this chap . Next day delivery and had no problems at all with them  .
I had a set of 1 X TX  ,2 X RX  .
They were Yongnuo RF-602  .
The beauty of these is that they can also be used as a remote release so you can stand away from the camera and also take a shot . Useful for some wildlife shots .

Shane

ps contact him , he is really approachable 

No the badgers were all handheld no remotes involved .
I did post some squirrel shots a while back and they were remote triggered .

To use it to trigger the shutter you plug a RX into the side of the camera (or wherever the port is on yours) and activate the shutter with the button on the TX .

To activate seperate flash units , the TX sits on the hot shoe and when you fire the shutter a 2.4Mhz signal is sent to the Rx units firing the flashes .
Obviously you cannot do both at the same time .

Ahh found my squirell !

Details

Mine are yongnuo CRT 301p. Never had a single missfire, light AND wireless modes so you can use onboard flash as commander. Excellent. I would say get a wireless trigger seperstely... I always prefer dedicated stuff but that's just me

To be honest Rich I was sceptical about buying the Yongnuo ones as I had never heard of them .
But , like yourself, I have never had a misfire with them and they just keep on working as they should 

OK they are a tad more ££ than Alexs' link but they do NOW come reccomended 

To be honest Rich I was sceptical about buying the Yongnuo ones as I had never heard of them .
But , like yourself, I have never had a misfire with them and they just keep on working as they should 

OK they are a tad more ££ than Alexs' link but they do NOW come reccomended 

 I had some previous triggers which were cr@p, misfires, half black screens etc so I did a bit of research and found a couple good reviews on the crt's on flickr etc. Took a punt and was impressed. I have used them on a few shoots for papers and corporate promotional stuff with good reliable results on every shot. Being able to use them wireless and light mode is great, I can fire flashes Los without a trigger sender.

They look good Rich. Found an ebay listing for about 27 quid for a set of two. That'll do me to begin with. 

I don't really need a remote shutter control anyway and the optical triggering will be useful.

The 602's are the latest generation, 2.4ghz and much improved range apparently. I'm looking at replacing my old, cheap and not terribly reliable ones with a set at the moment.

The 602's are the latest generation, 2.4ghz and much improved range apparently. I'm looking at replacing my old, cheap and not terribly reliable ones with a set at the moment.

Oh decisions decisions. I quite like the idea of the optical and radio triggering. I doubt the range will be an issue for me on 433 Meg, and yet...

I still like the idea of the 2.4 Gig ones. Oh well, I won't be buying until the end of the month anyway, so plenty of time to decide.

Rather a mundane post considering it's #5000. 

The 602's are the latest generation, 2.4ghz and much improved range apparently. I'm looking at replacing my old, cheap and not terribly reliable ones with a set at the moment.

I'm looking at some too, been getting into people photography quite alot of late (much to my surprise) and I fancy trying some off camera flash. Only problem is that my Sigma falsh won't work with them, so a new flash it'll be as well!!

Are you sure it won't? Doesn't have a centre contact on the flash?? For off camera any old manual flash will do. Preferably with at least 1/1, 1/2, 1/4 and 1/16th power settings that's bare minimum really... Along with a centre pin contact!! Get some cheapoebay jobs s/h old manual non ttl jobbies for peanuts... But a nice consistant flash output is quite important for portraits, three flashes giving variable outputs on each release will drive you mad! and some are sh@t.

What's a good recommended cheapo flash Rich? I'm gonna get one Sunpak PZ42x so I've got one TTL but I want another one or two - what to go for?

I have a couple of Nissin 360TW's and they were cheap off camera options, they only have 1/1 1/2 & 1/4 options though and I use an B26 and SB28 if I need more control on output but they a noticeably more expensive options..

Just look for the manual control options. If you want real flexibility go for something that has a zoom head as well as manual output settings, but as Barry said they tend to cost more.

if the flash doesn't have a moveable ( swivel and tilt) head it's ok so long as your flash stand bracket does... Although moving flash head up and down puts less stress on the foot of the flash than angling the flash bracket.

Vivitar, sunpak, nissin, Metz... There are quite a few 3rd party makers that have been around long enogh to have older versions on ebay

Thanks guys. The application I have in mind might need fairly fine control. I was thinking of cobbling together a home-made bracket to use two off-camera flashes for macro lighting. I guess that would need control of the order of 1/32, 1/64 etc.

When looking up the yongnuo triggers, I noticed these YN465s at $65
and the YN-560 at £59 delivered [ebay]160463936811[/ebay] goes down to 1/128.

Are they any good though? Would two of those make a good macro lighting rig?

Alex, I have read no reviews on yongnuo flashes so can't comment... Get googling and fish through as many reviews and forum mentions as you can. Like I said some cheaper flashes don't put out a consistant flash output... This will drive you nuts and ruin shots. Especially if you are railing for a ten focus stack and getting ten shots of varying exposures, leading to a VERY hard stacking of the shots 

for that kind of rig, you are going to want consistent light output from BOTH flashes or you could get a nightmare of varying exposures each with totally different shadows due to both flashes firing at different powers each shot... Imagine tring to stack ten shots like that

Rich , the Yongnuo was the flash trigger not the flash unit  

When looking up the yongnuo triggers, I noticed these YN465s at $65
and the YN-560 at £59 delivered [ebay]160463936811[/ebay] goes down to 1/128.

Alex did mention YN flashes too Shane...

Found a review of the YN560

http://speedlights.net/2010/07/14/yongnuo-yn-560-speedlite-review/

Looks pretty impressive for such a low cost.

Well the review is pretty good, and thorough. For off camera it seems ideal. There's no ttl it's manual only. I'll read the review properly tonight when I get home.

How much is it on the bay?

I do think yongnuo is rapidly emerging as a serious contender for best alternative to oem. Keep your eyes on them.

Well the review is pretty good, and thorough. For off camera it seems ideal. There's no ttl it's manual only. I'll read the review properly tonight when I get home.

How much is it on the bay?

£59 delivered from HK. That's why I was sceptical whether it could be good enough. Half the price of a PZ42x but as you say, no TTL. I do want one TTL capable flash, but for off-camera use this one looks hot. 

Are you sure it won't? Doesn't have a centre contact on the flash?? For off camera any old manual flash will do. Preferably with at least 1/1, 1/2, 1/4 and 1/16th power settings that's bare minimum really... Along with a centre pin contact!! Get some cheapoebay jobs s/h old manual non ttl jobbies for peanuts... But a nice consistant flash output is quite important for portraits, three flashes giving variable outputs on each release will drive you mad! and some are sh@t.

I have been told not by a couple of people. It only has E-TTL II and two manual settings which are high and low anyway. So wouldn't be much good.

Will the old any canon flashes work off camera then as long as they have manual settings.

Andy, pretty much any old canon flashes will work off camera as long as they have manual settings and can be fired from a centre contact on the hotshoe. In fact the older Canon and Nikon pre TTL flashes are VERY sought after by strobists for off camera work and some older flashes are worth more s/h now than they were worth new in thier day

Ordered a couple of CTR-301P triggers last night. Will be interesting to see how good they are. Also ordered a Sunpak PZ42X, which offers both D-TTL & i-TTL. D100 needs D-TTL and the current crop of Nikon bodies use i-TTL so slightly future-proof.

Good stuff Alex, I've just upgraded my triggers to the Yongyingooojamygizmo RF602's 2.4ghz jobbies and I'm very impressed with those thus far. As Rich mentioned I also have a PZ42X which performs pretty well. With the 5DII it invariably needs a couple of stops of overexposure on the flash compensation and I can't figure out why but once setup it works pretty well.

I've just increased the flash fleet to try and standardise a bit. 3 x SB-26's, an SB-28DX, the PZ42X, PZ4000, 2 x Nissin 360TW's and a sigma something or other. I'll be using only the Nikons for off camera as they are superb for it and the PZ42X for TTL work.

Got my flash. Not very impressed with D-TTL I have to say.  That's probably why they changed it to i-TTL. 
Works beautifully in manual mode though.

D-TTL worked beautifully on my D2x with the SB-28 so I doubt it's that. Is it constantly underexposing per chance? If so dial in some flash compensation on the back of the flash it'll give up to 1.5 stops in either direction.

Maybe I was doing something wrong or stupid. I'll have to do some proper controlled testing. I suspect there might be something up with my hotshoe or flash control circuitry   Or maybe a problem with the floor-camera interface. 

What were the symptoms Alex?

I was shooting at a piece of printed paper on the wall about 5 ft away, using my 105 on aperture priority set at f/8. With the flash facing the subject, it was massively over-exposed. With 45 degree bounce, it was well under. It may well have been a poor test.

Since we last spoke, I've done some tests with another subject and lens, with much more encouraging results. I think it may well have been a poor choice of test subject, even though I wasn't straight on to the paper, it is rather reflecty stuff. 

Alex, if you used the camera in A mode then the exposure will be set for the ambient not flash exposure, any flash lighting would take it over the top. Use it in manual and choose a decent shutter speed and aperture that would underexpose the ambient light and the TTL should do the rest.

LOL. I thought it might be the interface between camera and floor. 

Im not sure i got that Barry...are you saying that the TTL flash functions dont work in Aperture mode? On the D700 TTL works in P A S and even manual modes. The TTL metering still gives information to the flash, which powers itself accordingly depending on what the cameras metering system tells it, and what the SS and Aperture settings are in relation to the metering. Does it not work in those modes on yours?

Alex, if you bounce a flash off of a surface, you somtimes have to compensate...If you fire a naked flash at a surface, you tend to get a harsh light...

There is also a high probability that you overexposed a white peice of paper because you were on Multi matrix metering. The camera would meter the entire frame and set everything accordingly, which would in turn blow out the nice white peice of paper right in the middle of all of that darker stuff in the frame (Im assuming the wall wasnt white, but darker!!). If you are focusing on a small area in frame, with darker stuff around it ( Portraits this happens a lot, people against dark backgrounds )

try using the centre weighted spot metering and see if it happens again.

Oh, and if you dont have any form of diffuser, just hang a bit of tissue in front of the flash (Not touching it as the head can generate an astonishing level of heat) to diffuse the flash light a little...

With my D2x on D-TTL not I-TTL like you are using (not sure if that makes much difference in the real world), if I used P A or S then the shot was metered for ambient and the flash fired for fill lighting thus in a white paper situation it is likely that it would over expose due to the likelyhood of the ambient exposure already overexposing a piece of white in a sea of dark. In manual as long as you underexposed the ambient it became the main light and TTL took care of business pretty well. I seem to get pretty much the same thing on the 5D but it's rare for me to use TTL these days.

Gotcha

I see what you mean now

Yeah, I think that's what was happening Barry. On aperture priority, I set f/8 and the camera chose 1/60, which is a bit slow. With the pop-up flash, it goes to 1/160 automatically. I guess I was expecting it to so that here as well. Works much better with the camera in M mode. I expect I'll use the flash mostly in M mode as well though to be honest.  

And yes Rich. I was using matrix metering.     

Thanks for the helpful comments guys.  

I never used TTL, ever, as you know. But i noticed a while ago that while on M mode, the flash was very, very accurate on TTL mode...so accurate in fact that it gave me creative control over the type of shot i was doing, allowing me to change settings on the fly to create effects....concentrating on that rather than getting the flash power etc right was great for that nightclub shoot!!

I was able to set up for rear curtain sync giving me creative blurring and light trails, slow sync for real motion in the dancing, instantly switching to normal fill for a group club shot and finally at a press of a button, overpower the background and get a close up portrait with a dark background....all without touching the flash at all!! It certainly helped me get a lot of the shots simply due to the speed with which i was able to choose and change. In a club, the shot you want doesnt hang around waiting for you to change everything and set up, its bang, bang bang...did that work

Alex, when using flash (And for that matter without flash in high contrast situations) be carefull to select the appropriate metering for the situation. 99% of people will never touch the metering. and to be fair 80% of the time it works....but you get more control knowing when to switch, using your AE lock and an 18% grey card when needed. 

Well, it seems that my hotshoe is fine. The problems I had with macro flashes must have been...

1) bad luck for the first SB21 which died on me last december
2) electrostatic discharge for the Sunpak 8R (realised today - see other thread on corrupted files)

...because these wireless triggers are great. I even managed to get my old Cobra AF700 into action. Although it doesn't have any manual settings you can vary the zoom and the head angle and tilt - so not completely useless, merely almost useless.   (filters and/or diffusers too).

I'm going to have lots of fun with these. Optical slaving works great too. Only took 10 days from Hong Kong too.  

Wouldn't be without mine now Alex . First thing in the bag after the camera , everytime