Lighting issues (with studio strobes)

ddeerreekk

TPF Noob!
Joined
Jan 11, 2009
Messages
97
Reaction score
0
Location
Montreal QC / Kingston ON
Can others edit my Photos
Photos OK to edit
I was recently given a cheaper quality set of strobes (a chinese brand) that included softboxes and an umbrella. They were pretty cheap but I had heard a few good things so I decided to go for it (I didn't have the cash for anything else). It came with 3 180 Watt-Sec strobes and a flash duration of 1/2000 -- 1/500. I'm using a Sony A350 camera and relying on the on-camera flash to trigger the strobes.


To my question - Now I've never used off camera strobes before, so I'm probably not doing stuff right, but something seems to be wrong. When I take a picture, the flash on the camera does trigger the other flashes, but in the picture I took it doesn't seem to be recording it. The picture with just the on-camera flash looks identical to the one with on camera flash and the strobe. I'm wondering if the flashes are not going off during the exposure (not timed properly).

Any thoughts?
 
Yes. You CANNOT use TTL to trigger the strobes. You must set the on camera flash to manual where there are no preflashes... then things will work.
 
Jerry is correct. Your camera is probably using a pre-flash for metering (it fires once, reads the light reflecting back, then fires again, this time with the shutter...all very quickly). So your studio lights are being triggered by the first flash, and they can't recycle in time for the 2nd (actual) flash.

If you can set your built-in flash to manual, then it should only fire once.

Alternatively, you could probably connect your camera to one of the studio lights with a cord or wireless radio triggers, which would eliminate the need to trigger them with the flash.
 
Ahh, thank you. I remember reading about that a while back but I didn't even think of it. Thanks so much, I'll go try them out again now and see how things go!
 
Consider what big Mike said about the radio triggers. There are some that wont break the bank that work pretty well.
 

Most reactions

Back
Top