Digi Slave Flash Problem

[hanyo66]

I had recently bought a Sunpak digital slave for my FZ8 because I don't have a shoe on it. The flash works good, but the only problem is in very low light, the flash goes off too soon. MY FZ8 fires a "pre flash" very quickly before the real flash, and the Sunpak is picking that up before the flash that I need.

Can anyone give me any suggestions to correct this?

Thanks.

 

[hanyo66]

Hello!

 

[bemmermazda]

by preflash do you mean a AF assist lamp? In your menu, i think you can turn that off. I always turn it off on my D70 Never heard of a pre flash.

 

[Garbz]

by preflash do you mean a AF assist lamp? In your menu, i think you can turn that off. I always turn it off on my D70 Never heard of a pre flash.

No pre-flash is what the flash sends out to metre the light in the scene. All TTL flashes do this. And if you're quick enough you can see it. It's also what causes my cats to blink when I photograph them.

Sorry I don't know the solution to the problem though, beyond setting the camera flash to a manual exposure if you can since it won't pre-flash.

 

[hanyo66]

Anyone, please, I need to know!

 

[nicfargo]

You can turn off the setting in your camera. Otherwise, do like Garbz said and shoot in manual mode. You other option is to get a better remote trigger that doesn't use optics to pick up when the shutter is pressed. If you camera has an external plug for flashes then the remote trigger would be better then an optical slave trigger like you have now. But you should be able to turn off the assist light pre-flash in your menu settings. On a canon camera it is a custom setting...may be the same on yours too.

 

[Big Mike]

Your slave is an optical trigger slave...it's triggered by another flash. The more expensive optical slave triggers can be set to ignore a preflash...does yours have this feature?
THIS ONE, for example, has pre-flash cancellation.

If yours does not have that feature...can you set your camera's flash to not fire the preflash? Some cameras can do this...but it means that you won't have flash metering...so the flash will fire will need to be set manually (or it will just fire at full power).

 

[hanyo66]

Thanks guys, I'll check all that stuff out.

That Sunpak slave unit that Mike posted was pretty cool, it's a hot shoe digi slave unit, which is pretty cool. I might pick one up.