Photography question of the day...
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- OSFA0
What would be a good off-camera flash that works with a Canon 20D? Many people recommend Vivitar. I am reading at strobist that I can use a Nikon on a Canon as long as I have an adapter? Or I'm too tired to read/understand at this point...
- bigtrick0
any hot shoe flash will work off-camera. either you can get a flash cord for short distances and you hold any* hotshoe flash where you want it:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/pr…
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/…or you get one of these optical slaves:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/pr…and you fit any hotshoe flash you want into it, and it will fire when it sees another flash (e.g. the popup flash on your 20d, or any* hotshoe flash on your 20d).
Any* hotshoe flash will work in your hotshoe, no adapter needed. A Canon-branded flash (or a flash specifically designed to work with Canons) will give you goodies like e-ttl metering, and automatic zooming, and such, but off-brand flashes will certainly fire just fine, although you'll have to things like metering and zooming manually.
*if you are hooking up a hotshoe flash to your camera directly or via a cord, beware that some flashes can overload the hotshoe mount because of a too-high trigger voltage. The interwebs say that this voltage is 250V for your 20d. Here is a list of flashes and their trigger voltages:
http://www.botzilla.com/photo/st…
- bigtrick0
Here's a good, reliable place to find cheapass Viv 283/285s:
http://www.keh.com/OnLineStore/P…
- OSFA0
So, the 285s seems to be the preferred by most people
- vaxorcist0
283's require a separate, discontinued VP-1 module in order to do manual output control. It's very nice, like a smooth volume knob, but hard to find. 285's have a zoom head, a filter slot and they can do manual control, but only in full,half,quarter,sixteenth power, etc.. not the in-between you sometimes want.....
The trigger voltage thing doesn't matter if you use radio triggers, like cybersyncs, radiopoppers, skyports or pocket wizards....
Adapter cables are easily found at www.flashzebra.com
- vaxorcist0
Sunpak 333,383,433,422,etc usually are $30-40 or so on Ebay... most of them have manual control, bounce/tilt heads and with a flash-zebra hotshoe to pocket wizard cord, you can have a radio control manual flash pretty cheap.... The 333 has a nice filter drawer and a zoom head.
- OSFA0
Ok, found some reasonable 285s. Now that I am ready to buy them, I see this...
Important: Avoid the used 285HV's unless you know for sure how to decipher which ones have digital-camera-safe voltage synch levels.How do I know what to buy? Anyone has any experience with this? What would be my next step if I cant find a Vivitar 285HV?
- bigtrick0
from the site i linked above:
The 285HV has a voltage of 12V. The 285 has a voltage of 350V.so if you are going to stick it on your camera, get an HV model. if you are going to trigger it using one of those optical slaves, it doesn't matter which type you get.
it doesn't really matter that much which old flash you get - just get any cheap one with a decent guide number, look up the trigger voltage on that site (i will relink it below) and if it's below 250V then you don't need to worry about it.
- sequoia0
+1 for vaxorcist's comment
forget about optical slaves and synch cords.
they're junk and a waste of money.
invest in a wireless triggering system
http://www.flashzebra.com/hotsho…
for under $300 I can trigger my 285's
- bigtrick0
i respectfully disagree with sequoia.
while i have radio triggers, i still pack an off-camera cord whenever i am on a job that i'm only bringing my hotshoe for. and when i started out, $30 optical slaves did the job freaking great - no need to buy radio slaves (it's $130 for the cheapest radio transmit-receive set- paul c buff cybersyncs. radiopoppers are even more) right away. yeah, sure, optical isn't as great as radio, but it's a hell of a lot cheaper.
i'm a big believer in buying only what you need.
- OSFA0
So, if I get some pocket wizards, it doesn't really matter what brand I use? I want to experiemnt a lot, so I'll probably use the flashes as external units most of the time and trigger them via PWs.
- sequoia0
missing "the shot" is not worth saving a couple hundred dollars
- bigtrick0
OSFA, i have paul c buff cybersyncs. they work fine. i've also rented pocket wizards, which are awesome and somewhat of an industry standard, but if you don't need the range and features of pocket wizards, cybersyncs will do great.
http://www.alienbees.com/remotes…
http://www.pocketwizard.com/
- bigtrick0
a word - there are two kinds of advice you'll get on gear to buy. one kind comes from the person who likes to buy gear. another kind comes from the person who speaks from experience and knows that $100 saved by buying optical slaves instead of remotes is $100 more you can spend on a new lens or an extra flash (:
- tuan, who makes money as a professional photographer, and spent his thousands of dollars on pragmatic solutions instead of the best gear, and has never regretted it.
- sequoia0
bigtrick is right. if you can achieve the results you're looking for without spending a ton of dough do it.
for me I want to have the most versatile equipment possible. so spending a little extra is fine by me.
sorry if i sounded like a dick. i get carried away sometimes
- CGN0
What's the must have two lenses for a canon slr?
- It's good to have at least one F1.8 prime lens, liek a 50mm 1.8 or 85mm 1.8 for bokeh effects,etcvaxorcist
- < i agree with vax - 50mm f1.8 is a great onebigtrick
- Hear hear!!!OSFA
- 24-70L 2.8 is an amazing lens for most situationslinearch
- nice but pricey... also inhales dust sometimes, and 24 prime 2.8 has less barrel distortionvaxorcist
- TY!CGN
- vaxorcist0
If you're worried about budget of $80/flash cybersyncs, you can spend about $20 per flash for wires and splitters from flash zebra.... yes, a hassle, but a nice plan B if your batteries die in your radio triggers and wires can go behind things, whereas optical slaves often don't work behind things, so you have to sometimes move your flashes to where they can see the trigger flash, but at that position they may not have the visual effect you want.. (i.e. backlight,etc) You can also try some aluminum foil cupped around your optical slave so it *might* see the main flash, but it's often a hit-or-miss thing, okay for a still life, but not a shot with a client or subject....
- linearch0
depends on which PW you get.......the new TT1 and TT5 are brand specific, because they use TTL info from nikon and canon.....the older PW (plus IIs and multimax) are universal.....