Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I set up a little shoot in my backyard tonight with 2 WL XL800's hooked up to my new VGII. I fired one WL with a Pocket Wizard and the other strobe was fired with the optical slave. The flash that was fired by the optical slave gave a long beep after firing each time for @ 10-15 seconds and wouldn't fire until the tone ended. I even switched the PW to the other strobe and fired the other with the optical slave and the same thing occured. Finally I turned off the optically slaved unit the the other one with the PW did A-okay. Wondering what may have caused this to occur. I had the WL's set at very low settings and the modeling lamps were off. The VGII was set at its highest output level and was charged one month ago. This is only the second time I have used the VGII having purchased it @ 2 mos. ago. Any ideas?

Thanks for any assistance.

Are you sure the tone came from the lights and not the VII or PW? Also, please clarify, when you swapped heads (moved the PW from one head to the other), did the same light emit the beep, or did the beep move to the other light?

I am almost 100% certain the beep (tone) came from the WL head. I will set up and check later on today and get back to you, probably after hours tonight. And, when I changed the PW to the other light, to the one that was "toning", it quit "toning" and the other light "toned" - the different head. Again, the toning head wouldn't fire until the tone stopped. Also, after all of this, I turned off the head that was toning (using the optical slave) and just fired the one head using the PW and it did great. I have used this two light setup many times before using 1 PW to fire both heads on AC power, with no toning.

Were you using model lamps? If so, what output? Try without the model lamps on. You stated it was at night, was it evening with bright sun, or night time, as in dark? if it was still daylight, try the same set up in the dark or inside (still using the VII).

Also, make sure the flashtubes are fully seated and not loose.