Elinchrom Skyport

Has anyone used these radio slaves with the Canon Speedlights? I am wanting

to get a pair for the 580 EX and 430 EX, but wanted get some user feedback

before I jumped in. Thanks for your time.

Try the flickr strobist group.

Aaron,

They do work, and work well, as far as triggering one device goes. But if you want to trigger the 580 as a master, and the 430 as a slave, fired as a result of the optical signal from the master and not itself on a dedicated receiver, then you will come up against the same problem as me.

 

Don't worry though, it's quite easy to overcome, but involves a litle bit of soldering.

 

If you are using the 580EX2 as master, then it will only fire if the length of the trigger pulse from the Skyport is lengthened slightly. This is really a Canon bug, as the 580 will fire in ANY mode using PocketWizards, so the "required" pulse length is slightly greater in Manual Master mode than it is in all other modes.

 

The PocketWizards already ahve a slightly longer trigger pulse, so the 580 fires okay with them in any mode, but with the Skyport, the trigger pulse is only one-millisecond long. This works in any mode except Manual-Master mode (obviously ETTL mode won't work as you don't have a data connection to the body).

 

The way around this is to stretch the trigger pulse from the Skyport by adding a capacitor across the terminals - I did this in a hotshoe adapter, but I guess it could be done on a PC-Sync cable - By the way, the PC sync socket is disabled on the 580 when in Master mode, so you have to use a hotshoe adapter.

 

The value of capacitor I used was 22nF (readily available).

 

So bottom line is, if you want to use the 580 in Master mode you need to trigger it via the hotshoe, If you are able to put a capacitor across the cable terminals then you can use the Skyport, if not then you need to use PocketWizards.

 

Note - I haven't tried the cheap EBAY slaves. They are rumoured to not be particularly reliable, whether this is down to the trigger pulse width, or the radio communications I am not sure.

 

Hope this helps.

Guy Carnegie

I use a set of MicroSync radio slaves with great results. The only thing I see that can be an issue is that when the batteries get weak the flash does not want to fire with the MicroSync. Even when the red light come back on the flash takes a few moments to be able to fire. I shorted out the center and side post and the flash would fire but the slave would not fire it.

 

I tried this with my 540EZ and with some really, really weak batteries it would not fire at all no matter how long I waited. Yet it would fire by shorting the terminals. But they were so weak you never actually try to shoot with it that way. I was just testing out a few things. But it made me think somthing was wrong with my slave. Freash batteries fixed the problem. The weaker they get the more the delay.

 

The 580EX and 430EX works a bit better. Infact I like the set up rather well.

 

Do get the Wein HSH (Hot Shoe to Household) to connect. The house hold connection is much better than the PC and you can find stuff to extend it at Lowes or Home Depote.

 

And check out the Stobist web site

 

http://strobist.blogspot.com/

 

Jason

Guy thank you for your extensive information. Your response helped me greatly. I know now I am going to buy receivers as I don't trust myself to not mess something up when it comes to soldering.

 

Jason thank you for your response. I had looked at the Microsync system a long time ago, I didn't think I could use them with the speedlights. I am going to research them again before I buy anything.

 

Thanks to the three of you for taking time out of your life to help me out.

If I had it to do over again, I think I would lean toward the Skyport system myself. Should have said that earlier. :o)

 

Jason

<p>i would like to ask, do the film flashes 540ez and 430ez work with wireless triggers such as the skyport, or pocket wizards? </p>