SB-26 off-shoe optical providing minimym light (ok if on-shoe)

[realsky]

hi all, recently, i've started my first tests with strobist lighting. i have a

d100 connected to sb-50dx on sc-17 as primary lighting, no ttl used, full

manual. i'm sticking to the necessary shutter synch time also.

 

so i added two SB-26's with the aim of activating them by the SB-50dx with the

built-in optical slave. here problems started. whichever SB-26 i use (set in

manual, tested buth with D-delay function and without - no difference), i get

very little light, just a bit, i cannot even fill or rim, to see some light i

have to move SB-26 2 inches to the object (at maximum power set on it! :)

 

i tested both SB-26 finding the same effect. adjustment of power gives some

difference, but hard to see. only increasing the shutter speed on camera to

some 800ISO gives more light from SB26 but that's not a solution at all. in

therory i should be able to get 100% power from each SB26 as optical slave, on

ISO 200 and 1/60 shutter, right? which is not the case.

 

now..i know SB26 won't work with nikon d100 in ttl on its shoe, but i was

wondering about how it will behave in manual on-shoe. i tried connection of SB-

26 both on camera shoe and remote cable SC-17 shoe and found that this time SB

was nicely operable, with the whole range of high power, including full blast

to overexpose the room into all white shot. this was impossible on optimcal

remote, the light is scarce and is not able to lit anything.

 

any ideas what i should do? i know one solution is to buy radio triggers, but

isn't that strange, as i suppose i should be able to get SB26 full power even

when i use no shoe and lay it simply on the floor, right? i'm confused now what

can be the reason...

 

thanks for any ideas,

paul

[davidlong]

It sounds like a syncing problem. If you're seeing (in the picture) only a little light from the flash when it's very close and at full power, it's probably fired too early (and you're seeing just the afterglow). I'd first verify that the SB-26 is indeed going off (just look at the flash instead of through the viewfinder). If you use a full power blast, you should also be able to hear the whine as it recharges and see the ready light go out and then come back on. Then double check the camera and SB-50DX setup to make sure everything is on manual and you're using first curtain sync. As another test, you might put electrical tape over all the pins but the center one on the SB-50DX so that it looks purely like a dumb flash to the camera.

[Mark Salo]

Sounds to me like pre-flashes are triggering the SB-26.

 

Be sure that the D100 and SB-50dx are both in manual mode. And try the electrial tape suggested above.

[Mark Salo]

I no longer have an SB-50DX - can this be triggered optically?

 

Try the built-in flash to trigger both the SB-50DX and the SB-26.