Triggering my Canon 580ex II with my pop-up flash?

On my Canon D40? Is this possible, or is it a Nikon feature that I don't have?

I'm pretty sure you can only do this with the higher end Nikon bodies, I know my D300 does it.

 

In can it's helpful, here's what looks to be a pretty good guide on Canon flash photography - http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/.

Can't do it with Canon. It's a commonly requested feature though, and I wish we could. Perhaps Canon wants to sell their excess stock of ST-E2 units before they implement this.

Unfortunately Canon does not allow you to trigger an off camera flash with the pop-up flash (Nikon does). So this leaves us with three options.

 

The first is to trigger the remote flash using Canon's proprietary infra red (IR) system which allows for use of E-TTL but requires another Canon 430 EX or 580 EX flash or an ST-E2 transmitter. The IR system has problems in bright sunlight and requires line of sight, (it's like an IR T.V. remote you have to point it at the T.V.) it has a limited range of about 30 feet.

 

The second option is to use a set of radio frequency (RF) flash transmitters/receivers or transceivers like Pocket Wizards. They do not allow for use of E-TTL so you must use manual flash settings. You will need one for the camera (to transmit) and one for each off camera flash (to receive). They cost about $190 ea. and you need at least two. If you don't want to invest that much money you can buy cheaper RF flash triggers. RF triggers do not require line of sight so you can mount a flash behind a wall or something and it will fire. They work like household cordless phones rather than the IR T.V. remote.

 

The third is an older device called an optical slave. Unlike the Canon IR system these can be used in conjunction with RF triggers like Pocket Wizards. Optical slaves will trigger an off camera flash when they sense the light emitted from another flash or strobe (The Canon IR system emits a pre-flash to judge distance this will prematurly fire an optical slave). These are cheap you can get one at www.flashzebra.com for about $12 or $14. They are nice if you only have two Pocket Wizards and you want to trigger more than one off camera flash.

 

You should check out www.strobist.blogspot.com. Read lighting 101, this will help fill you in on all the good stuff that I left out. Also check out www.flickr.com/groups/strobist/discuss/ this is a forum for off camera flash.