How to Trigger Wireless System with Flash Meter

[douglascott]

I have three (3) monolight strobes. Because I use softboxes on all three most

of the time, I've recently purchased an inexpensive wireless radio trigger

system to fire them. The transmitter attaches to camera hotshoe and fires to

receiveers on all three monolights.

 

My problem now is how to incorporate my flash meter (Sekonic L-358) into the

mix. Attaching sync cord to flash meter and key light works fine, but how can I

get all three flashes to fire when I want to get an overall reading for all

monolights? Essentially, I need the flash meter to serve as transmitter.

 

I don't even know what keywords to search for to do previous search for this

question.

 

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

DDS

[ellis_vener_photography]

Sekonic makes a Pocketwizard transmitter module for your meter:

 

http://www.sekonic.com/products/products.asp?ID=4

 

Now all you need is a Pocketwizard transceiver (MultiMAX or Plus II) or any Pocketwizard receiver for either just one or all of your monolights. You'll need either a receiver or an optical slave for each additional light if your monolights don't have a slave eyes built in.

 

What monolights (brand and model) do you have?

[douglascott]

Ellis - always a pleasure to read your answers. I have 3 Alien Bees 800s. It's my understanding that they have slave eyes, but that was my original problem - that the slave eye must be facing the key light to react. This works well if using umbrellas. But if I'm using softboxes and the backs of the heads are not facing one another, the slave eye becomes useless. That's why I originally bought the wireless transmitter.

 

So your saying that I'll need flash receivers on each head? I'm starting to see the beauty of a pack and head system.

[ellis_vener_photography]

Thank you. If you are working in a studio or in a reasonably sized room with light colored walls or ceiling. You should try the built in slave eyes first. A lower tech solution to also try with the built in (or even an external) optical slave is aluminum foil shaped to bounce the light from the main light into the slave eye. A more reliable method is If that doesn't work, external slave eye (Wein makes good ones in my experience) attached to a sync cord. This will let you point the slave right at the main light.

[ilkka]

A few things come to mind.

 

Does your hot shoe mounted trigger have a cord as well? Some units do. You could remove the trigger from the hot shoe and attach it with the cord to the flash meter.

 

Does your flash trigger have a test button? You could set the meter to read cordless and fire the flashes with the test button in the wireless trigger while holding the meter in the correct place.

 

Do you have an assistant who could manually trigger the camera while you are taking a reading? Do you have a remote release that achieves the same? Self timer? Can you put the meter next to the subject and trigger the flashes yourself?

 

Most flash units have quite sensitive slave receivers. Any old flash unit fitted to the meter with cord and fired towards the flash units, even at low power, could very well light all flashes. Worth a try.

 

I hope at least one of the above quick thoughts is workable.

[Ed_Ingold]

Get an inexpensive hot shoe adapter with a PC jack on the side. Connect that to the meter with a PC cable and fire away.

[cd]

Buy another trigger... you said they were inexpensive.