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Photography Forums => The Canon EOS Forum => Topic started by: yayas on March 12, 2009, 11:15:04 AM



Title: 420EX preflash and non-preflash trigger
Post by: yayas on March 12, 2009, 11:15:04 AM
I have an 420EX and I can say I'm quite happy with it.
But I have another flash, an old (but very good condition) Yashica AF flash which I can use it on my camera with full manual setting, minus AF assist beam. It's about 3 volt so it's safe.

I want to use it as a 'slave' triggered by 420ex (only for fun, to learn manual lighting setup), but it always uses preflash since it's a fulltime E-TTL, without manual setting.
With optical trigger, the second flash would be fooled by preflash and not recharged in split second at the real shot.

I have tried to tape the hotshoe's left-front connector, it disables E-TTL but the flash fires at full power and everything is washed out.
So the non e-TTL is not an option since there's no manual power setting like in 430EX.

I searched around and found a trigger that won't fire at preflash.
Does anyone know it's reliable enough?

If there's no workaround for this,maybe I have to dump this flash and use single 420EX anyway :)

Thanks.

Regards,
Andreas



Title: Re: 420EX preflash and non-preflash trigger
Post by: Bob Atkins on March 12, 2009, 03:50:55 PM
I once bought an optical slave trigger from eBay that seemed to work quite well. It could be set to ignore one or two pre-flashes. There are a number of such optical triggers around and as far as I know they work as advertised.


Title: Re: 420EX preflash and non-preflash trigger
Post by: yayas on March 12, 2009, 10:59:17 PM
Thanks Bob,
I'll give it a go.

Regards,
Andreas


Title: Re: 420EX preflash and non-preflash trigger
Post by: Bob Atkins on March 13, 2009, 10:26:02 AM
The one I have is some sort of Generic brand from China. However it looks a lot like this one which is sold though ADORAMA: Sunpak Digital Slave Unit  (http://www.adorama.com/Refby.tpl?refby=rflAID012417&sku=SUDSUWP)

I suspect it's probably the same device. You can also look at something like this Flash bracket with built in digital optical trigger: Sunpack flash Adapter (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0002A0C92/bobatkinsphotogr). It's meant to be used attached to the camera, but as far as I can see there's no reason you can't just attach a second flash to it and use if off camera.



Title: Re: 420EX preflash and non-preflash trigger
Post by: yayas on March 13, 2009, 04:51:33 PM
Thanks Bob,
Indeed that's useful info.
It's a shame adorama doesn't ship to my country. If so the shipping alone would cost around $70, which makes sense if I bought in the price range of cameras or lenses. Anyway I'll try to search similar devices here.
There are Sunpak products here, but I haven't seen that device yet.

Do you have recomendation-links to european stores, e.g. France's Amazon?
In the next few months, I'll be staying in europe for a few years.
I only see you're linked to American stores only.

Regards,
Andreas