Cls with monolight use

[chawn_crawley]

Should I be able to expect, when using a series of S-800's in CLS configuration, to be able to incorporate one my Elinchrom strobes to fire

as an optical slave in time to contribute to the exposure?

 

The other evening, I set up a d-lite to fire down at the floor as a skip-lite. I couldn't see that the light added anything & am not sure if it was

firing on time. I only had a couple minutes of time left with the person I was working with, so I was not able to investigate too far. It could

have been that the arrangement/ratio of the light was not enough to have an affect, or that the light was delayed in firing.

 

Any thoughts?

 

Chawn

[Two23]

If the optical sensor can "see" the other flash, then yes.

 

 

Kent in SD

[chawn_crawley]

Thanks. I'm not sure what triggers the optical sensor: the signaling flash from the Su-800, or the response from the

remotes. Both are in line of sight, but I'm not clever enough to understand if the timing difference between su-800 & sb-800

response changes the result (assuming the information pre-flash does, indeed trigger the mono light).

 

Granted, there is decent amount of experimenting that I can do on my own with regard to that. Need more hours in the day

:)

[pete_s.]

"Should I be able to expect, when using a series of S-800's in CLS configuration, to be able to incorporate one my Elinchrom strobes to fire as an optical slave in time to contribute to the exposure?"

 

No. The pre-flashes will trigger the optical slave in the Elinchrom.

 

But you can trigger the Elinchromes from the pc-sync on your camera / on-camera SB-800 either with a cable or radio sync.

[hans_janssen]

When you use CLS with an external flash(the Elinchrome) and are capable the trigger it at the right time, the picture will be over exposed, because the Elinchrome didn't contribute any light in the pre-flash part of the cyclus. All the CLS flashes are pre-flashing too for the metering.

[Matt Laur]

As soon as you introduce a non-CLS strobe into the mix, you've got to go manual. Trigger one of the lights by PC cable or radio trigger, and let the rest optically slave. For the SB-800's, you need to put them into SU-4 slave mode, and adjust their power manually.