NETWORKING CAMERA AND FLASH(ES)

[spectrumphoto]

I hope you don't mind my confessing that I'm a Nikon user, which has something called the Creative Lighting System. This allows the pop-up flash to trigger hot shoe flashes. On behalf of a friend who is a Canon user, does Canon have a similar system?

[Ray-uk]

---

@kvbarkley wrote:

This is a US based board. In fact, the Rebel section of the board is called "EOS Rebel".

---

I appreciate that but it is also used by non-USA residents worldwide who both participate in the forum and use it as a useful source of information. I was not criticising your original post I was trying to add to it.

[spectrumphoto]

Tim, would the EOS 50 D have that capability?

[TCampbell]

---

@spectrumphoto wrote:

Tim, would the EOS 50 D have that capability?

---

From what I can tell, the first of the mid-range bodies (10D, 20D, 30D, 40D, 50D, 60D, 70D, & 80D) to be able to trigger an external Canon flash with E-TTL using only the on-camera pop-up flash was the 60D.  It doesn’t appear the 50D had that feature.  

You would have either attached another Canon flash that supports wireless flash in the “master” mode ... or use a speedlite transmitter such as the ST-E2 (which works _only_ with flashes that are optically triggered) or the ST-E3-RT (which works _only_ with flashes that can be triggered via radio).

There are 3rd party solutions as well.

[spectrumphoto]

Hello, Tim

I just discovered that the flashes my friend has are from Sigma. Does that rule out the possibility of having the Canon body trigger the flashes wirelessly?

[kvbarkley]

They might be able to trigger, but you wont get auto exposure, that requires an wireless master.

[TCampbell]

There are numerous companies that produce speedlight flashes... 

Some are simple manual flashes with no specific integration into automatic flash control features.

Some are designed to be compatible with flash features of particular manufacturer's cameras (e.g. they may produce a flash in a Canon-compatible version as well as that same flash in Nikon compatible, etc. etc.)  

Your friend's speedlights are like either (a) completely manual (not using the Nikon CLS system) -or- may be a version that does support the Nikon CLS system.  But such a flash would not be compatible with the Canon E-TTL system.  But anyone who makes a version of any particular brand camera... probably makes them for other brands.

There are quite a number of 3rd party flashes that are compatible with the Canon E-TTL system.  They're typically fairly cheap flashes.  I don't own any.  Comments are usually that the build quality isn't as good (so they wont quite take the beating that a Canon flash might take), and sometimes they don't implement 100% of the E-TTL features (but they do tend to implement the features peopel use most often.)

[spectrumphoto]

Thanks, Tim.

It looks like she'll have to go with a transmitter/receiver set, or borrow my strobes and trigger those by firing her flash (pointed away to not influence the scene). 

Thank you for all the help.

[kvbarkley]

We are users, not Canon product experts. Your best bet is to look at the specs online, or download a manual:

https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/support/user-manual-library

That being said, the 50D does not have wireless master capability. It is a little too old.