Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

For some reason lately, when I've taken my AB1600 & AB800 on a location shoot I can't get the slave unit (AB800) to fire. I have my pocket wizard attached to the 1600 and it fires just fine but the 800 won't. I generally don't have them more that 12-15 feet apart (on either side of me). Is the 800 sensor not seeing the 1600 flash? Is there a way to hard wire the 2 together so I don't have to worry about it when I get on location? Thanks.

VPsteve

Fire one light with PW, fire the other with your optical.


Kent in SD

Optical triggers can be difficult outdoors in the high ambient light.

OK, I ask again...can they be hard wired to each other?

VPsteve

Kent, can you be more spacific? I don't understand.

VPsteve

You might could use a stereo splitter at the source, one from radioshck. I haven't tried this because no need to, I own CSRB+s for all my lights. ;) RMS

Steve--

On the back of the monolight there is a built in optical trigger. When it sees a flash go off, it will fire the monolight it is built in to. You said "location shoot" and didn't specify if it was indoor or outdoor, daytime or night. If you are indoors, the optical trigger should easily fire the monolight. You hook up your trigger to one monolight as usual, and don't hook anything up to the second. The flash from the first will instantly trigger the second one.

I often use my WL X3200 monolights outdoors at night, and find I often can rely on the built in optical trigger. However, there's a catch. Where I live there's usually snow on the ground for 6 months of the year, and the snow easily reflects the flash well enough for my optical triggers to work. I haven't tried them in daytime. I'm strictly a night shooter.


Kent in SD

You can use headphone splitters (mono), email us and we can send you a diagram. Additionally, we have a 3-way splitter and a hotshoe adapter that has two PC sockets.

TS