11-13-2014 09:37 PM
Hi everyone, just hoping to get some direction re triggering studio lighting with my Canon 70D that's just arrived.
A long time photographer I am however just venturing into the world of studio lighting and have this month just set up a small home studio. With no formal training I'm learning as I go (thank goodness for youtube!) and tomorrow will be my third studio shoot so definitely lots to learn.
For my first couple of shoots I used my Canon 40D with a sync cable but my 40D died last week and I have just received the 70D which I have just found out does not have a plug for a sync cable.
I believe that I should be able to use my speed light to trigger my strobes but am a complete novice when it comes to such things and must say that I don't find the settings on the speedlights to be very intuitive.
I've read that another option is a hotshoe adapter that will allow me to plug my cable in to it. Perhaps there are even more options? If I can avoid having a speedlight attached I guess that would make my life easier, easier to move around, less weight etc.
My ultimate goal is to have only the strobes fire and not the speed light itself.
My lighting equipment is as follows:
1 Digiliter YJB-G300 (which can be used as a slave)
1 Bowens Prolite 41A (which I've only used as the master connected to my camera with a sync cable)
1 430EX Canon Speed light
1 550EX Canon Speed light
All suggestions gratefully accepted.
11-13-2014 11:44 PM
The good news is that you have lots of options, but that's probably the bad news too 🙂
The easiest answer is that yes, you can get an adapter that slides into the hotshoe and has a PC port if you want to go old school and use cables. It's simple enough and cheap enough, but there are much better options.
One option is to use a flash as a master flash to signal the others. The 550 can be used as a master, but your 70D's built in flash should be able to do the same. But you'll only be able to use the Canon speedlights using this function (unless your monos have an optical sensor, but you can buy these). You can also set it so that the flash fires to trigger the other flashes, but doesn't affect the exposure.
The option above is dependent on line of sight, which can become a nuissance if using modifiers. Using radio frequency triggers gets past this limitation, and is the standard method these days. If you're ok using manual only (the monos are only manual anyways) you can get really cheap triggers. Pocket Wizards are the gold standard, but expensive. Yongnuo is the 'gold standard' of generic options. I highly recommend the RF-603 II. They're about $30 for a pair, you'll need 5 total (one goes in the hot shoe as a trigger, the other 4 will trigger your 4 flashes).
There's a lot of good information out there, as you've found on YouTube. I highly, highly recommend going through the Strobist blog. It's geared towards using speedlights, but there's some discussion of studio lights, and much of the information is universal anyway:
http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html
11-14-2014 01:12 AM - edited 11-14-2014 01:12 AM
Thank you very much, I might just grab a cheapie adaptor so that I can use a sync chord for now as I'm really throwing myself in the deep end and have to start somewhere but thank you for the info re the Yongnuo's I'll definitely check them out and that seems like the way to go - onward and upward - thanks so much for sharing your knowledge. 🙂
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