Slave flash question

[AdrenoJunkie]

I'm planning on doing an outdoor film noir shoot and will need to have light in several different places. I don't want to use flashlights for this. I have a 580EXII and was wanting to buy a couple of really cheap slave flashes. My intention is to have all of the flashes off camera. I have a wireless trigger for my Speedlite but only one receiver. I plan on buying them from Amazon, they have some $8 ones that got decent reviews. Is there anything in particular I should look for in them to suit my purpose? Or do you guys have any recommendations on what i should get? I'm on a pretty much nonexistant budget.

[i speak in math]

Do the $8 receivers work with your current transmitter? Probably not.

Instead of buying receivers, many flashes have slave modes. Check out the Yongnuo flashes for cheap good power ones. You can set all the flashes to slave mode so that they go off when they detect another flash nearby. The problem is, the slave detector has to be facing the other flash when it goes off, and the flash that first goes off should be facing the others. If the flash can't "see" the other go off, it won't go off itself.

[inkista]

The other problem being that dumb optical slaves can be tripped by anybody nearby with a P&S camera who's got their flash on.

[AdrenoJunkie]

Originally Posted by i speak in math

Do the $8 receivers work with your current transmitter? Probably not.

Instead of buying receivers, many flashes have slave modes. Check out the Yongnuo flashes for cheap good power ones. You can set all the flashes to slave mode so that they go off when they detect another flash nearby. The problem is, the slave detector has to be facing the other flash when it goes off, and the flash that first goes off should be facing the others. If the flash can't "see" the other go off, it won't go off itself.

I think you misunderstood, I am wanting to buy slave flashes not receivers. So do the sensors have to be facing the master directly or just not blocked by anything? Can they be angled away at all?

Originally Posted by inkista

The other problem being that dumb optical slaves can be tripped by anybody nearby with a P&S camera who's got their flash on.

Shouldn't be an issue since it's in a small sleepy town down an alley at night.

[i speak in math]

$8 speedlights??? Probably not worth the frustration you will have with them. The slave sensor can be angled away slightly but it needs to be able to see a flash from another. You can set it up so the first flash has the receiver and the others are slaves. Then slave 1 is pointing to master flash, slave 2 is pointing to slave 1, slave 3 is pointing to slave 2, slave 4 is pointing to slave 3... Or all can be pointing to master flash. Having a swivel head on your speedlights will help a lot if you are using the slave mode.

[AdrenoJunkie]

Now I'm not expecting high quality perfection out of this. As long as it works more than it doesn't. And if I can have each one pointing at a different one that could work for me, since because of how i wanna light the scenes they may not all be in line of sight of the master. These are the flashes I'm talking about. Amazon.com: Digital Slave Flash + Bracket Set for Digital SLR DSLR Cameras or any Digital Camara! "Fires Without Wires - No Camera Connection Required!" Automatically Synchronizes and Fires with Your Built-In Flash: Camera & Photo: Reviews, Prices &

[inkista]

I think I'm with everyone else. Up your budget, and don't go for these $8 cheapies. They're worse than useless for Strobist work--barely any power, no way to manually control the power output or direction/slave facing. I'd say go a little more expensive and head for yong-nuo YN-460 IIs. They've got built in optical slaves as well, and are actual decent speedlights with a good amount of power and full manual control. They're about $60 a piece. I know, that's a lot more expensive than $8, but they're a lot more useful.

[oldwolf]

I'm with everyone else. Forget the $8 flash. You're going to have more headaches just from trying to get it to work.

If anything, put your camera on a tripod. Set up two flashes and take multiple exposures. So set up your flashes to light up one part, take a picture. Set it up to light another part, take a picture. Then when you get all the parts that you need lit up, put your subject where you need them, light them up and take a picture.

Combine all your shots in post and you'll get the feel you need with only 2 flashes. You could even set up your background lighting shots before hand as long as you know where exactly you put your tripod when you have your subject in the final shot.

[AdrenoJunkie]

Well seeing as neither one of you have ever steered me wrong I'm gonna take your advice on this one too. I'm gonna fight my impatience to do this shoot soon and wait until I can save up for one of those. Although I may still get one of the cheapies just for poo poos and chuckles since I don't think I need alot of power for my intentions. Then again I'm new to all this strobist stuff. I think it's funny that just a few months ago you were giving me advice on buying my first speedlight Inkista and I said I had no intention of getting into multi-strobe stuff and yet here we are. Thank you for that advice by the way. It was definitely the best choice.

[AdrenoJunkie]

Originally Posted by oldwolf

I'm with everyone else. Forget the $8 flash. You're going to have more headaches just from trying to get it to work.

If anything, put your camera on a tripod. Set up two flashes and take multiple exposures. So set up your flashes to light up one part, take a picture. Set it up to light another part, take a picture. Then when you get all the parts that you need lit up, put your subject where you need them, light them up and take a picture.

Combine all your shots in post and you'll get the feel you need with only 2 flashes. You could even set up your background lighting shots before hand as long as you know where exactly you put your tripod when you have your subject in the final shot.

I may try that just to see what happens when I go out to do a practice shoot to get the feel of the scene, but I'm not sure my skill level is up to that. With the shooting of it or post processing it. Although I'm not so sure it would work with some of the shots I have in mind. It will be alot of silhouetting, and lighting certain parts of subjects.