Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

do you keep the same recieves with the same flashes at all times, or do you connect them randomly (i.e. the first flash you pick up oges with the first reciever you pick up?

Do you always use the group that does sync along with the group that does not, or do you sometimes use one group or the other only?

What kind of results are you getting? Double images? Ghosting?

Are any of your recievers in repeater mode? This is indicated by the green LED blinking three times rapidly every few seconds rather than once every few seconds.

Are you using one reciever with each flash, or do you have a splitter so that multiple flashes share a reciever? One CSRB per flash.

Are all of the speedlites the same type, or are the ones that work well the same type, and the others are different, or they all different? Obviously, the MFP is different.

By "pick up" TS is referring to the physical act of picking-up or grabbing a flash. TS is asking if you consistently pair the same receiver and flash together or are they randomly paired. If you have your receivers numbered/labeled then you might be consistently pairing a certain receiver with the MFP.

I do not know what you mean by "pick up".

By "pick up" TS is referring to the physical act of picking-up or grabbing a flash. TS is asking if you consistently pair the same receiver and flash together or are they randomly paired. If you have your receivers numbered/labeled then you might be consistently pairing a certain receiver with the MFP.

I wonder why it would make a difference what carb was connected to which flash.

By "the first reciever you pick up" I mean the reciever that is selected based on convenience rather than one selected by a methododical proceedure. An example of a methodical proceedure would be each light is numbered and each reciever is numbered, and the same reciever goes with the light each time, or each reciever is stored with a specific flash. An example of one picked randomly would be you have a bag of recievers, and whichever one is on top goes with the first flash you randomly decide to connect.

From your description of the problem and considering the flash units involved, I would expect this to be an issue of the design differences between the two types of lights that introduce different latencies rather than a triggering method. The MFP is a light designed for a specific purpose (at least for a limited scope of purposes). The brief look I had at the website, it is marketed at stop action photography. This involves more than just flash duration, but also timing of the trigger signal. I would presume the faster the better, considering the triggering offered methods offered by the company.

The Canons, on the other hand, are probably designed.....to meet a lower standard. I do not mean that in a bad way, rather that the increased standard would only drive up cost without an increase in performance (at least in the way they were expected to be used). Alternatively, they may be designed intentionally different for a specific reason as speedlites typically fill a different need.

Ultimately, I think it is the difference in design which introduces different reaction speeds from trigger input to actual flash. If one flash catches a wing at one point, and the others catch the wing at a different point, then a blur or two distinct images can result (if two distinct images are very close, it could conciveably appear as a ghosting if there is not any significant seperation).

If the problem is "slight" at the fastet part of a humming bird's wing beat, it does not take much in the way of tolerance/design differences for this to occur.

If the problem was in the Canon flashes, it would appear even when only the Canons were used. If it were in the triggers, it would also likely appear when only the Canons were used (as long as the remotes were randomly assigned to the lights).