Firing multiple flashes in succession

[Village Idiot]

I had an idea and was wondering how you would do this. If you're shooting with several speed lights and Pocket Wizards, is there some type of resistor you could put in line of the connection between the PW and the flash so when you press the button, it fires later than it should?

I'm thinking of a two or three second exposure with the flashes about 1/2 second apart.

 

[Big Mike]

I'm no electronics expert...but I think you can create a delay will some simple doodads and whachamacallits.

I remember reading an article about capturing water drops. The photographer had created a switch that was tripped when the drop fell past an eye (maybe a laser) and the flash was fired a short time later. He didn't want the flash to fire right when it was tripped, so there was a delay circuit. He could adjust the delay to fine tune the operation.

You could also look into the electronics of a 'strobe light'...like the type you would find in a dance club.

 

[Garbz]

The simplest circuit I can think of is the RC time delay swich. You'd need a resistor, a capacitor, and a MOSFET to act as a switch. Problem is the pulse of trigger is inverted. I.e. goes to zero when turned on and spits out the flash trigger voltage when it's off.

So you'd need an inverting stage and a latch (since the trigger is only low for a split second).

It wouldn't be hard at all for me to design if you're interested, BUT, it definitely won't be 1 component.