I normally don't shoot my flashes while on camera, but I'm shooting an event tomorrow and am planning on having a SB-900 on-camera and then triggering two SB-900s off-camera.
The idea is to have the on-camera SB-900 on TTL and then have the additional (2) off-camera SB-900 cameras on Manual for the remainder of the night. I was hoping to be able to use my AC3 on camera but forgot the TT1 has to have a flash on top of the hotshoe to connect, so that's no longer an option.
My setup is a TT1 and (2) TT5 setup and 3x SB-900
So as it's setup right now: Camera / TT1 / SB-900
And then for the SB-900s Off-Camera: Lightstand / TT5 / SB-900
The problem I'm running into is the SB-900 on-camera will fire just fine, but the SB-900s off-camera aren't firing (they're all on the same channels (A & 1) and I'm stumped.
Hoping someone can help shed some light (no pun intended) for me.
I'm no expert, but since no one else has answered....
I'll start with the obvious. Is the on camera unit set to master and the off camera units set to remote? I'm not sure what the TT1 and 5 units do to the equation. I'm also not sure you can mix TTL and manual like that. You may need to set the on camera unit to group 1 and the off camera units to group 2, all on same channel though. Good luck and I hope someone better qualified answers soon. OH, you might try posting in the lighting forum.
Thanks for the suggestions guys...just tried that and none of the flashes fire in that mode.
With the TT1/TT5 Setup (they're just Pocketwizards, but have full TTL Control and Hyper-Sync essentially), the SB-900 has to be just on the "On" position, and not in Remote or Master otherwise it won't fire.
Any other ideas. I swear it shouldn't be this hard...there's got to be something simple I'm doing wrong.
Thank god, I solved the problem. SB-900 on-cam has to be in Master mode and my stupid SU-4 setting was turned on, which threw a wrench into the mix. Turned it off, remote SB-900s on TT5s are just set as normal and it all works great! Whew, so relieved!
Dave_EP wrote:
But why do you need the SB-900 on the camera? I use the AC3 without the SB900 on the camera, otherwise the AC3 would be totally pointless......
Not sure if serious.
I need the SB-900 on camera to light my moving subjects from the front. The two remote flahses will be on manual, so I don't need the control of the AC3 and worst case can use my on-cam SB-900 for that duty as well (just not as handy as the AC3).
I need the SB-900 on camera to light my moving subjects from the front. The two remote flahses will be on manual, so I don't need the control of the AC3 and worst case can use my on-cam SB-900 for that duty as well (just not as handy as the AC3).
Yes, I was being serious, and it was in response to your comment thus:
I was hoping to be able to use my AC3 on camera but forgot the TT1 has to have a flash on top of the hotshoe to connect, so that's no longer an option.
Since the AC3 supports both Manual and Auto (TTL) I'm still not sure why you think the TT1 needs the SB900 instead of the AC3.
Obviously if you 'want' an on-camera flash then fair enough, but the AC3 is supposed to replace the on camera flash if you don't actually 'want' light from your camera.
