If I wanted to control my Canon 550EX and an Alien Bee 800 remotely what would be the best way to go? Radio poppers? PWs? I was thinking about the Paul Buff remotes but then it occurred to me I might want to use both and I gather his remotes only work with ABs. If I did not use TTL with the flash would I just need a Jrx transmitter and receivers to control the 2 lights? On the PWs, have they solved the 5D2 issues?
1) Leave the 550ex in the hot shoe in M mode. There is no preflash in M mode. The AB800 will be triggered optically in sync when the 550ex goes off.
2) Leave the 550ex in the hot shoe. Connect the AB800 to the camera via the PC connector, either with cord or radio trigger. Its possible to mix one or more Canon-protocol slaves and manual flashes this way. Here you could use the Canon in M or ETTL. In ETTL it would do its preflash for metering, the it and the AB800 would fire the main flash in sync. Since the AB wouldn't be measured in the ETTL metering using the Canon in M mode would be more practical.
3) FIre 550ex with radio. Mount the 550ex in a hot shoe > 1/8" phone adapter and connect to radio transmitter. Put the 580ex in SLAVE mode and press the mode button for 2 sec until "M" blinks to prevent the flash from going into standby mode. Put transmitter on camera. When 550ex fires via radio it will trigger the AB optically.
4) FIre both with radiio. Mount the 550ex in a hot shoe > 1/8" phone adapter and connect to radio transmitter. Put the 580ex in SLAVE mode and press the mode button for 2 sec until "M" blinks to prevent the flash from going into standby mode. Connect radio receiver to the AB800. Put transmitter on camera. Both will be fired by radio.
When you say remote control, do you mean just the trigger or actual remote control where you can adjust the power? I assume the latter. Only Radio Popper will let you do that for canon hot shoe flash as well as ABs.
