Afew questions about flash units

Danny1107 · Jan 23, 2009

Hi all, wondering if anyone could answer these questions, im new in photography and im currently using a fuji finepix s5800, I'm wanting to upgrade to a DSLR camera shortly but i couldn't justify spending that ammount of money on a camera then realising photography isnt for me.

anyway, I'm wanting to know if any external flash units work with the s5800?

if so which ones do? im looking to buy 2 if they work with my camera as some of the places i take photos in (car shows mainly, alot of which are indoor or have poor light outside)

Thanks for any help, Danny

Big Mike · Jan 23, 2009

Does your camera have a hot shoe? I just found a photo if it, and it looks like it does not have a hotshoe....I'm guessing it doesn't have a PC port either, so the only option for triggering an external flash will be optically. An 'optical slave' is something that triggers a flash when it detects that another flash has been fired. These can be very inexpensive and fairly easy to use. EXAMPLE
The problem with these (and your camera) is that your camera's built-in flash probably uses a pre-flash for metering. So when you try to trigger a remote flash, the pre-flash will set of the optical trigger and the remote flash will not be able to fire again quickly enough for the actual exposure.
For this reason, there are optical triggers that can be set to ignore the pre-flash. EXAMPLE

These optical triggers can fire pretty much any 'hot shoe' type flash unit.

One problem with a set up like this, is that other flashes can also trigger your lights. So at a car show, for example, they might be impractical because a lot of people may be snapping photos.

bigalbest · Jan 23, 2009

I looked at the camera at dpreview, and it looks like you don't have a hot shoe or sync chord hook up but you might be able to fire an external flash with your pop up flash. It's not as reliable as other methods but it can be done. Learn everything about external strobes at strobist.