Vivitar 285 won't fire with Elinchroms

I've tried to use my Vivitar 285HV with Wein Peanut as a slave to a Vivitar

285HV. The Vivitar will not fire. When I use any of my speedlights as main

ligh the Vivitar works fine. I've tried increasing the Elinchroms power and

tried it with it's slave cell on and off but to no avail. I also tried both

the Elinchrom and Vivitar as slaves to an on-camera speedlight but only the

Elinchrom would fire. What is the problem?

Make sure the peanut can see the triggering flash unit and that it is within a reasonable distance.

It can see it, and they are only two metres apart.

clarify please... you have two Vivitar 285HVs?: "<i>I've tried to use my Vivitar 285HV with Wein Peanut as a slave to a Vivitar 285HV</i>". <p>And the 285 off camera with the Wein will not fire? But the one in the hot shoe is good?<p>The Elinchrom is also on a optical slave? Or is it hard wired?...t

Sorry. One's an Elinchrom 400BX the others a Vivitar 285HV (with Wein peanut). The 285 is meant to be the slave but will not work at all with the Ellinchrom. The Elinchrom fires but the Vivitar will not. The Vivitar is easily triggered by any of my canon 550 or 580 speedlights but is unresponsive to the Elinchrom.

is the ambient light in the room very bright? If your modeling lights are on, try turning them down, so the pop of the Elinchrom is a more significant boost to the light levels. I don't know what to suggest, other than that, and be sure the slave is currently responding to a different flash source than the Elinchroms... that is hasn't gone bad since the last time you tested it... sorry... t

Is the Vivitar mounted in a metal stand adaptor that touchs both the side contacts in the hot shoe foot and the contact on the bottom of the hot shoe foot? If so it could be shorting out the flash and keeping the peanut from working. But if so it should happen all the time, not just with the Elinchrom. Is the Elinchrom on a very low power setting where it would have an extremely short flash duration/ (Doesn't sound like it since you said you turned its power up.) Is the Elinchrome in a snoot or with a grid or inside a soft box, somethign where its light isn't hitting the peanut at all?

Quite bizarre is this: I attached a 580ex to my 40D to optically trigger the Elinchrom and the Vivitar. Only the Elinchrom will fire and the Vivitar will fire only when the Elinchrom's power is swithed off.

What kind of peanut slave is it? aren't there digital models that can deal with a TTL-Preflash?

 

I mean that if the elinchrom fires, the peanut takes it as the preflash and waits for the 2nd flash, which of course never happens with the elinchroms... or am I completely out of my mind?

I think Claude has the answer - you are using a "digital" peanut that ignores the first flash it sees and only fires with a second flash soon after the first. You can use a regular peanut. Simply make sure your 580EX is in manual mode (only a low power flash is required to trigger the others).

Are you sure the Vivitar isn't firing? If your 580ex is triggering the Vivitar, it doesn't matter if other lights are going off at the same time or not - the slave on the Elinchrom is not sucking all the light out of the 580ex! It sounds to me more like the Vivitar is putting out so much less light than the other two sources that you just aren't noticing it. Put your ear up to the Vivitar and take a shot, you'll hear it recharge if it goes off.

 

Van

I am using the non-digital peanut and the Vivitar is definately not firing at all.

Have you tried plugging them into a Pc cord that is attached to the 285?

I have a similar problem. Using two Vivitar 285HV off camera flashes, one synched to the camera with a ssynch cord. But the flash with the Wein peanut doesn't flash.

 

The Vivitar 285HV will flash using the Wein Peanut (I have the digital) if I allow my Canon 30D popup flash to fire.

 

I have read that the Wein requires 5V whereas the 285HV supplies only 4.5V.

Coming in much later to this thread, I have a similar set up to Wayne. It's brand new and I'm just setting it up and decided to do a search on my setup to see if there are any issues. I don't see anything resolved and wondered if there was one. I plan on using my pop-up flash to trigger two 285HVs and two digital peanuts.