I had a problem today with a portable studio setup. I used two strobes (600Ws) for a portrait session on location and in one configuration (I had to use the available environment and furniture), 5% of the pics, I had a nasty shadow on the wall. I just wanted to send more light to the wall by adding an SB to the configuration, but whatever the flash I was using (in remote mode SU-4), the strobes with large softboxes didn't trigger the SB. I solved the problem with a "bad" solution, I had a fixed high power lamp I combined with another softbox to light the wall and I adapted my parameters to remove the shadow. For from ideal but it worked. Now I have several questions:
1) is it normal the SB's were not reacting (they are reacting to another manual flash I fire manually (e.g. sb-600)
2) I didn't have the proper adapter with me but would it be possible to trigger the 800 or 900 with a cable from the camera to the flash, while I am piloting the strobes via a radio controlled remote on my hotshoe (will they be in synch to give the proper result). If it is relevant, I shot everything @1/60 and 1/125 sec
Did you have the SB-800 in "Manual" once you enabled SU-4 mode? If it was still in a quasi-TTL mode, it may have not worked properly.
Once you have enabled "SU-4" from the secondary menu you have to return to the main flash screen and press the mode button. That will switch an icon between "A" and "M". From my understanding you need to have it set to "M".
If that's not it I'm not sure. For some reason your flashes weren't working properly with the SB-800 built in photoeye. Did you have any sort of gels on your studio strobes?
The answer to question number two is, yes that should would work.
Jammy Straub wrote:
Did you have the SB-800 in "Manual" once you enabled SU-4 mode? If it was still in a quasi-TTL mode, it may have not worked properly.
Once you have enabled "SU-4" from the secondary menu you have to return to the main flash screen and press the mode button. That will switch an icon between "A" and "M". From my understanding you need to have it set to "M".
I have set the 800 in manual, but it didn't help. My impression is that because of the softboxes with several diffusion "layers", the 800 didn't see the light coming from the strobes as a "flash" or could it be related to the length of the flash pulse from the strobes ?
