Page 75 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 3 #2

❶ Each flash or group of can actually get in the way of and decided to see what would
flashes can be set to a wide the commnication between happen. They executed flaw-
range of power options—from the transmitter and receivers. lessly. So, I added a third. Per-
1/1 to 1/128 flash output. Belmont Estate was built fect. I did everything I could
There are a total of twen- in the early twentieth century to make the units misfire or
ty-three different levels. by the Richardson family, the lose sync. At one point, I was

❶ When using the EOS family of the founder of Vicks. at least one hundred feet away
EX II series flash, you can ad- For reasons that are not appar- and they still fired. Another
just the flash exposure com- ent, it is one of the most diffi- time, I placed the flashes on
pensation from camera. In cult places to use remote devic- the first floor and fired them
fact, it is possible to control es. So, in order to properly test from the second. Perfect.
and configure all flash set- these unts, I booked a model While I didn’t try all of the
tings from the camera. and set a date at Belmont. advanced features, I did try

❶ Support for every shut- At first, I thought I was setting the flashes through
ter speed with a sync speed of going to be in for a long day. the back of the camera. (I use
up to 1/8000 of a second. The screw hole that allows a Canon 1Ds Mark III. Not all
these devices to be mounted cameras support this feature,
Being feature-rich doesn’t on a light stand is under the so check your manual before
translate into real world per- hot shoe. Since I use Chime- trying this.) I was not able to
formance all the time, so, we ra octagonal soft boxes on my set all the flashes. Ironically,
needed to test the units. Gen- flashes, I thought I might have one or the other flash would
erally, I travel with at least to abandon them. The bracket respond but not both. When I
three flashes, often four. We on the soft boxes wasn’t de- was able to program the flash
have two Canon Speedlite 580 signed for this type of mount. through the camera I was able
EX IIs and two 580 EXes. The Eventually, I figured it out to change any and all of the set-
580 EX IIs are much more so- and though it wasn’t optimal, tings in the camera. I will per-
phisticated than the original it worked. form a firmware upgrade and

580 EXes. They also appear I started simply: I assigned see if that fixes this problem. ■
to be “noisier,” and most of- two flashes to the same group
ten, it is this noise that causes
problems.
“Solutions” on the market
include products like noise
suppressors and special fabic
hoods. But using these add-
on items makes things more
complex, plus it takes time to
make everything work. When
working in the field, all these
extras add up—more weight,
more stuff to worry about.
In addition, the noise sup-
pression isn’t always effective.
Too much noise suppression

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