Slave trigger?

skatephoto · Mar 21, 2004

Hey,
i was wondering if anyone has used these hot shoe slave triggers for a flash before. I see them on ebay for like ten bucks and was thinking about buying one. Has anyone used them before? how do they work? and can You use any flash with these? thanks

doxx · Mar 21, 2004

I'm using an infrared flash trigger sometimes. pro: wireless -
con: it needs to face the strobe/flash to trigger it, meaning it
doesn't work in any given situation.

markc · Mar 21, 2004

skatephoto said:
Hey,
i was wondering if anyone has used these hot shoe slave triggers for a flash before. I see them on ebay for like ten bucks and was thinking about buying one. Has anyone used them before? how do they work? and can You use any flash with these? thanks

I haven't used one, but it works by putting out a flash of light. A sensor on the strobe sees the flash and then triggers it's own output of light. It's the same as triggering with your own flash, except the output of the trigger isn't enough to help light the image; it's just supposed to be enough to get the other strobes to trigger. I have no idea how well they work myself. Infrared sounds like a neat idea.

skatephoto · Mar 21, 2004

are some better than others?

ksmattfish · Mar 22, 2004

I've used a few different models that are triggered by IR or visible light, mostly cheaper ones. Outside of carefully controlled studio lighting they seemed to get pretty quirky. Especially when I tried to use them outside, the sun (and other bright lights) would set them off. Some have an adjustment to control the amount of light that will set them off.

Big Mike · Mar 22, 2004

I bought one of those $10 optical strobe triggers off of E-bay. It works well so far.

You just slide a flash unit onto it and mount it onto a tripod or where ever. When you fire another flash...it triggers the flash that is mounted to it.

I don't use it much because I don't have a flash meter yet but I can see it being useful one day.

For $10...you can't really lose.

markc · Mar 22, 2004

Hrm. It seems like we are talking about two different devices.

There's the unit you put on your hot-shoe or plug your flash cable into which creates a flash of light to trigger the slaves. This is handy if you don't want to use your flash in the exposure.

Then there's the unit you plug into a flash that's mounted on a stand to turn in into a slaved strobe. Many strobe units already have a sensor to allow it to act as a slave triggered by a flash of light, so you only need it if the unit you are using doesn't have the slave circuitry.