List of Radio triggers that work with Sony Alpha

So, let's see... You're firing an HSS enabled flash with a dedicated cable. Its flash burst begins before the shutter starts to open, triggering an optical slave that in turn triggers a radio transmitter that in turn triggers the radio receiver to fire a big studio flash. Assuming that the shutter has not yet opened by this time, the big flash still has to have a long enough duration to last through the whole curtain transit. What is that duration? And is it easy for a typical monolight to fire for that long? What happens in your specific case when you exceed 1/5000 second?



Edited by sybersitizen - 08 February 2011 at 03:15

I stopped at 1/5000 because I had a headache from flashing myself with various finagling. I have a blazzeo trigger I will play with as well to see what kind of speeds I can get. I'm pretty excited about the speeds I can shoot sports as this works better than using an optical slave on my studio lights as it times better for the peak of the light duration.

Edited by Jlav - 08 February 2011 at 03:51

I don't own monolights... nor do I have a camera that exceeds 1/4000 second. But I just conducted some tests with my A55, 5600HS(D), an old Minolta 360PX (GN36 and maximum flash duration of 1/700 second) and an optical trigger. I didn't try including a radio trigger in the mix.

The combination worked, and I was able to sync exposures up to 1/4000 second. But to light a small object two feet away I had to shoot at f/1.7 and ISO 6400. I'm not sure how I would use this technique in a real shooting scenario.

This is useful for several sports and editorial shoots, as well as shooting in bright sunlight. Here's a few examples using this technique:
Both of these are 1/640th, iso 400 I was standing about 40 feet away.




And a shot I wish I had this working for:


The issue this gets around is first, HSS sucks up a lot of power from your flashes, that you regain using a radio trigger. Second, a gn of 36 is pretty weak compared to the lights I'm using, and wouldn't work well in most lighting conditions for shooting proffessional sports either. You'd need the light roughly 4 feet from your subject.

"I'm afraid nothing is regained. This approach sucks even more power than regular HSS because this is a full continuous burst. HSS is a series of brief pulses. In the little test I described above, normal HSS provided way more usable light, even accounting for the different guide numbers."

I think that depends on timing, I haven't tried speedlights with this, so I assume they have much faster spurts of power than the studio lights. The flash is firing just before the shutter, in which case you're catching the light as it's dying.

The only reason I was providing a 1/5000 example is because Fuzzphoto said it was impossible in an earlier post. I like a good challenge.

Where the studio light has an edge here, apart from the power, is the discharge of the light is more like a bell curve, and you have a lot more light duration to capture within. I've noticed my newer alien bees are not as easy to work with since their duration is much shorter.

Fuzzphoto wrote: The laws of physics say the shutter is only partially open at 1/5000s. Only HSS capable flashes, which emit a series of consecutive flashes, can light an entire frame with shutters faster than x-sync.

So you didn't use the word "impossible"...

I've done this now with three different strobes and two different flashes. It works. My experimenting has also led me to believe that not all optical triggers operate at the same speed as well. I just wanted to share a trick that I figured out in the wake of having all sorts of other sports photographers dis my system because it couldn't do it without line of sight.

Edited by Jlav - 08 February 2011 at 23:41

Mud.Starrr wrote: Yongnuo CTR-301p, around $40,- with 2 receivers ($60 with 3). Edit: Oh and no adaptor is needed on the camera side, the trigger has a Sony/minolta Shoe. The flash side is a normal ISO shoe and PC-sync port.

???
I just went looking to buy these... when I scrolled down, however, the CaNikon fans were raving about how pleased they were. I can't seem to find the iISO version!


- Steve S.