420EX preflash and non-preflash trigger

[yayas]

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

[Bob Atkins]

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.

[yayas]

Thanks Bob,
I'll give it a go.

Regards,
Andreas

[Bob Atkins]

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

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. 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.

[yayas]

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