I'm shooting some HS seniors this w/e. I have 1 580ex II, but have a friend hwo is lending me 2 others for a master/slave setup. These shots are for a another friend and I'm doing them for free, so I'll have leway to experiment a bit.
The 580ex II guide states the range from 8m (26.2 ft.) to 10m (32.8ft.) depending on the actual setup. For most shots I plan using a 70-200 2.8 lens on my 40D 1.6 crop body, so I'm wondering if I'll be too far away from the slave for the full body shots. I do have a 50mm 1.8 and a Tamron17-50 2.8, but the L glass is my preference.
Can anyone tell me what kind of real life range they are getting out of the master/slave triggering for these strobes?
It depends if you plan to use a light modifier or not. I found indoors with light modifiers the range was less than 30 feet. At the very least you'll probably need to position the body of the 580 so the receiver is pointing toward where you are with the master on-camera flash.
timbop wrote:
It depends if you plan to use a light modifier or not. I found indoors with light modifiers the range was less than 30 feet. At the very least you'll probably need to position the body of the 580 so the receiver is pointing toward where you are with the master on-camera flash.
Yeah, the slave recieving end will point toward the master... that's a given. I would probably slap a fong on the slave, but that should only make a difference in the power level setting for the flash, right?
I'm mainly curious about how far away I can be from the slave and still get it to fire outdoors with nothing to bouce the triggering beam off of. In other words... Is the guide acurate, underestimating, or overestimating the distance to get the slave to respond from the master. Wish i had radio triggers.
After too many "did it fire?" sessions with E-TTL, I ended up always packing pocket wizards in the bag for backup. It's so much more relaxing when you don't have to worry about whether your flashes are firing or not. May be worth renting, just in case (and of course experimenting beforehand).
Reliable Canon wireless outside? Forget about it, it just isn't there. That is why there is so much interest in the Radio Poppers(I have these), and the Pocket Wizard version. If it is a static situation, I'd even use a sync cord before I'd try Canon wireless.
Wait...Why would you use a 5" light modifier outside? You would be converting a point source to a 2.5 stop less powerful point source. I'm thinking you should just keep is simple and try the best on camera fill flash you can get.
I have had erratic performance with inconsistent triggering from distances as short as 5 feet in full sunlight. There is a reason people pay for Pocket Wizards and similar RF devices to trigger their flash. My Quantum FreeXwire for example will provide wireless TTL at distances up to 600 feet with 100% reliability.
