Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

the speedlight works fine if mounted on the g11 hotshoe but won't fire off camera with cybersyncs. the test button on the hotshoe transmitter will make the flash fire but the shutter button won't. have tried different shoot modes to no avail. if i mount the cybersyncs to my 5d it fires fine...any thoughts anyone?

I have the G10. I had a similar situation using the CST once. It is possible, and I did sort it out (but it was a year ago, so I don't remember clearly).

Make sure you are in Manual mode, I think, and then use the button to toggle flash on and off. I think, but do not recall with certainty, that if you have the flash button one way, it does not send a trigger signal to the shoe. I remember it being counter intuitive, but once I messed with it, I was able to use my G10 with AB800s (kinda cool!)

I'll go give it a try and see if I can duplicate success a year later :-)

Okay, was just able to fire my Einsteins with the G10. It also appears that Manual is not the only setting, as it fired in all modes.

I was incorrect about toggling the flash on/off via the button controls on the back--that effectively only deals with the built-in flash.

So, try this: without the trigger mounted in the hotshoe, turn the camera on and check your LCD for the flash lightning bolt. Whether it is on or off (with the cross bar) doesn't matter. Now, slide the trigger into the hot shoe: the lightning bolt should disappear completely from the screen, as the camera recognizes something is in the shoe.

If it doesn't, try cleaning contacts, wiggling the shoe. It should work just fine. Since the shoe is always exposed, it may have become dirty or filmed over with time, and the contact is not being made. Pencil eraser on all contact surfaces might be the trick.

Let me know if any of this worked.

thanks for the response.
while the transmitter is in the hotshoe, the flash setting via the flash button has no effect and brings up no options. so i took the transmitter off, changed the on/off setting, and tried both options, again to no avail...hmmm.

okay, i got a little of of sync with your responses.
anyway, as per your instructions: took transmitter out. turned camera on. flash icon disappears but no communication. put the flash directly on camera and it works which tells me the contacts are clean. and used transmitter with multiple cybersyncs with my 5d today and all works fine. frustrating....
again, thanks.

With the CST in the hotshoe of the camera, push down on the CST and press the test button to see if it fires.

the test button fires the strobe without pushing down (or with pushing down) on the cst while mounted. it's just won't respond with the shutter button.

okay this is freaky...the cst fires the flash if i put the camera c1 or c2 mode but none of the regular presets...i.e. m/p/auto/av/tv??
sounds like a software glitch unless i have managed to screw up some setting. anyway,

well here's the deal...i used the "reset all settings" option on the camera and voila, it's working again. obviously i had managed to bungle some setting at some point. anyway, many thanks for your help.

See if you have the G11 in multi-shot mode. For some reason, Canon decided that the G11 should not fire the hot shoe in multi-shot mode. This behavior trips up a lot of people.

"Why," you ask, "does it work in C1 or C2 mode?" Because those modes, along with Auto mode, turn off multi-shot mode.