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[OM] [OT] Calling Tim - Cheap radio slaves and the C 540EZ

Subject: [OM] [OT] Calling Tim - Cheap radio slaves and the C 540EZ
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 08 Jan 2007 13:08:50 -0500
I've been using cheap Chinese radio slaves for a couple of years on 
Alien Bees, T-32's and Sunpak 422D's.  None of them comes very close to 
having the range stated in the specs but, within their limited range 
they seem to work well and I've been using them without problems.  I 
recently acquired a Canyon 540EZ because, while it doesn't do auto 
anything on a Canyon digital, it has the most powerful autofocus assist 
light that Canyon had ever produced (15 meter range).

While shooting with the slaves and Alien Bees recently I noticed that I 
wasn't getting the 1/200 sec flash sync speed of the 5D and had to drop 
down to 1/160 to avoid a bit of shutter curtain shadow.  To see if that 
was due to the slaves or the Bees I grabbed the 540EZ and attached one 
of the slaves to it.  I ultimately determined that the sync problem is 
clearly due to a short delay imposed by the slaves but, along the way 
and much to my surprise, I discovered that the slaves (all 5 of them of 
2 different makes) almost don't work at all with the 540EZ.  Whether 
they fire it or not seems to be a random event with perhaps (on average) 
one flash every 15 times the slave is triggered.  In other words, unusable.

I first suspected a bad connection but soon discovered that I could 
remove the radio slave and trigger the same setup manually 100% of the 
time.  Also, if I substitute one of my Sunpak 422D's in the same hot 
shoe setup all 5 different slaves units will fire it 100% of the time.

Is this somehow related to the trigger voltage of the flash unit?  My 
T-32's and Sunpak 422D's are all in the 10-12 volt range.  I don't know 
the exact trigger voltage of the Alien Bees other than the spec says 
"less than 6 volts".  The Canyon 540EZ, on the other hand, is about 3.4 
volts with alkalines and about 3.7 volts on the high voltage battery pack.

It's not a big deal to me since I have plenty of other flash units to 
use should I decide to take the flash off-camera but I am intensely 
curious as to why this flash won't trigger with a slave that fires 
everything else.

Chuck Norcutt

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