Slave Flash?

[Dragoness]

Can someone ell me how slave flash units work? Do I need only specific ones for the K100D? What do I look for?

I have an older pentax external hotshow flash, but I think it could have burned out my l;astcamera so I am not using it. I would like something to use that doesn't need to be attached to my camera while waiting for for new flash in August. Can a slave be used without ever touching my camera?

Thanks!

 

[RVsForFun]

...many slaves have optical triggers that fire when they see the main flash's light. I suggest you get a DigiSlave that can be set to ignore most camera's pre-flash.

 

[Garbz]

There are a few ways this can work. The most common wireless models work by syncing to a main flash as said above. Nikon's Wireless Creative Lighting System works be encoding the preflash with information for the slave flashes so their intensity can be set on the camera rather than the unit itself but the principle is similar.

Then there's also the cabled ones which either run from a wire attached to the hotshoe making it an offcamera primary flash, or a sync cord which simply tells the flash when the trigger is pulled and nothing more. This does not allow TTL flash metring as far as I know.