Hayaalp
 

Hi All not been on for a while 18 month old bubba and all takes up all my time..

I have a problem and the reason I can't sort it is probably my lack of time to shoot so my mind has gone blank..

We have a Set of Bowens Gemini lights which I use as my main lighting for some High Key stuff, I did have a little set of Proline Apollo 300W lights which I used to blast out my background, sadly these have both passed their sell by date and no longer work.

I have access to a couple of Canon Speedlights but cannot seem to get them to sync with the Bowens, they do flash but Im getting a dark picture ???? Hayaalp... :confused:

Hiya - good to see you back :-)

I'm guessing that you're using the speedlight hot shoe - I suspect that it's in ettl mode & the pre flash is triggering your stobes before the shutter opens ?

If so putting the speedlight into manual mode should stop that

Canon speedlites are a pain to use with anything but other Canon speedlites... how are you triggering the lights? If you are trying to slave them off the Bowens they will almost certainlty not work (some oddity of the way that Canon slave system works), they also don't work with standard IR triggers. If you are usinging radio triggers on all of the flashes then they should work. If you are firing a single flash using a PC sync lead (or a wireless trigger) then it might work if you fire the Canon and slave the others off it. Also make sure that you have them set to high speed flash sync or that could also cause problems.

Excellent that answers my question and will stop me sodding about with them any more. Ever had experience of continuos lighting set ups? wonder if a pair of those would blow out the background enough..

Clive sorry missed your comment, have also tried manual mode I was thinking that the speedlight and Gemini's fire at different speeds but could not seem to match them....

I've successfully used my speedlite with my Elinchrom stobes.

How are you triggering the various flashes?

There are two methods I've use, both of which work

First put the speedlite in manual and set the required power, then either

1) Put the speedlite on the hot shoe, or on a hot shoe extension cable of using it off camera. Set the stobes to fire from the slave cell & the flash from the speedlite with trigger the strobes... or

2) Fit a radio trigger to the pc sync socket of the speedlite & then you can trigger all the flashes remotely.

If you've been trying to trigger the speedlite with an optical slave, the majority of them dont work with Canon speedlite - you need specially adapted ones http://pixsylated.com/blog/canon-spe...ptical-slaves/

Hope that helps

Hi Clive,

Thanks for that, Bought a new background as I needed more width, less ripples in that and looks 100% better, also picked up a 7' Parabolic Brolly. Will bear this in mind though next time we get the smaller Lastolite out.... Tar