comments about wein products

[matan_levinson1]

hello,

 

I recently bought two studio flashes (from an israeli brand

called "vilensky") to be used in events photography.

in israel, it is costumed to use a shoe mounted flash to light the

foreground and large studio flashes to light the background.

I am planning to work with those flashes mainly in halls, but also in

open gardens from time to time. my distance from the flashes will

never be more than 25 meters.

 

since I can't afford radio slaves, (and it is ilegal to use radio

slaves in israel because it interferes with cellular communication) I

need some other sort of triggering system.

 

there are two problems that the slave system that I'm looking for

should overcome:

 

1. I use a canon EOS3 camera with a 550EXflash that uses a preflash

to determine the correct flash exposure. that preflash will pre-

trigger any normal slave, but I understand that some of wein's

products can deal with that problem.

2. I should look for a slave system that will know to ignore the dj's

flickering lights. is this possible at all?

 

I contacted wein, and they recommanded either the Digital smart slave

or the Pro-Sync infrared systems.

 

if you have any experience with these products, I'd love to hear

about it.

 

thanks,

 

matan

[hal_bissinger]

Your major problem is going to be the 550EX. Even if you can overcome the pre-flash problem it is TTL controlled. The slave strobes are not and will probably cause exposure problems because they will not figure into the TTL metering that the camera and flash does. Also, how will you determine the studio strobes contribution to the exposure? <p>

The solution would be to shoot in manual (if you can) and adjust the 550EX and strobes manually with a flash meter. If you can't put the 550EX in full manual, then it would be best to do away with the on camera flash altogether. <p>

Since you can't use an RF slave system, either of the Wein IR systems should do the job.

[matan_levinson1]

hal, thank you for your response.

 

a photographer I know uses two studio flashes to light up the background and an on camera flash (f100 and sb28) for the foreground.

after he sets up the studio flashes he uses a flash meter to determine the right exposure for the background. he will power the strobes up or down untill he reaches 1/60 at f5.6 with a 200ISO film. he sets the camera to the same readings and lets the sb28 add it's own light to light up the foreground. I've seen the results and they're great.

 

this is also what I plan to do, but first I need to find the right slave system.

did you use the digital smart slave or the pro-sync? if so, can you tell me about your experience with them?

[tom_menegatos]

Digital cameras fire a preflash to determine white balance. Canon EX flashes fire a preflash to determine exposure. That is why they recommended the digital smart slave. It's designed to work correctly with a preflash. I haven'ed used one but supposedly they work well. I've had luck with the regular wein optical slave though. They don't trigger off of most stage lights, except for strobes.

 

It may be more expensive but you may want to look into getting multiple 550Ex speedlights and using the wireless features of the EOS3 with them. They work based on preflash signlas not radio waves. I don't know if it will work with those distances and if there are people dancing in the way but you might want to rent some and try it out.

[matan_levinson1]

tom, the 550EX are far from being powerfull enough for my needs, but thanks though.

a wein representetive explained to me that the digital slave can be switched to trigger at the first, second, third or fourth flash. that means that with the 550EX I'll have to switch it to trigger at the second flash. I'm worried that it might consider a flash from someone's camera or from the dj as the first flash, and than trigger at my 550EX preflash! I must be certein that this won't happen...

[tom_menegatos]

It will trigger from someone else's flash, it might trigger if the dj has strobe lights. I don't know much about the infrared system but that might work, as well as a radio slave system.