Wireless slave?

[jusejuse]

Hi there,

Yesterday I received my soft box in the mail, and was trying to get a hang of it with my external flash. I have a Canon 60d and 580 ex ii Speedlite. I put my flash into slave mode, but can only trigger it while using my on-camera flash. Is it possible for me to trigger the external flash without the on-camera flash or is the flash what triggers the external flash? Or is this the part where wireless triggers comes in?

I've tried reading the manual EOS Documentation Project - Speedlite 580EX II PDF* , but I feel overwhelmed...

Thanks all.

 

[pgriz]

The slave flash gets its signal from the preflash sent by the master flash (in this case the 60d) and allows the flash to work with the camera in E-TTL mode. The other way is to use a wireless transmitter on the camera, a wireless trigger on the 580, and set the power on the 580 manually. My own experience is that the wireless/manual method is more reliable and reproducible. The other aspect to manual operation of the flash is that you can't use the "high-speed" option of the flash - that will work only if the flash is paired up with the camera in E-TTL mode. For the wireless triggers you can spend little (Yuongo transmitters/triggers for about $30) up to much more ($400+ for transmitter/receiver combo from Pocket wizards, for instance).