External Strobes and Rebel T1i

Hi,


Im new to the forum, been looking at this site for quite sometime now, since i'm starting photography, and i've found it very helpful. Recently i've purchased a Rebel T1i, and a friend gave me a good price on a Britek Set of strobes. Now, i have a problem when i went to attach it, i noticed the Cable wasn't plugable anywhere. lol. By now some of you know where im comming from, well, i went crazy for 2 hours trying to figure out what happened. I think it has to do with the PC-Sync connector. So, im wondering. How can i get these strobes to work before thanksgiving?? without spending 2 much $$$? I also have the ex 430 flash, but using that flash didn't trigger the other ones, and i looked into getting a receiver, but that's like buying an entirely new flash!! so.. i'll pass with that option ;)..





Please give me a hand. Thanks

If the Britek strobes have a slave function, you can probably use the T1i's built in flash to trigger the strobes. You'll want to set the flash exposure compensation to underexpose the scene (as well as setting the regular exposure compensation to underexpose the scene) so thatthe flash isonly providing a little bit of fill light while your Britek strobes are creating the mainlight.

If you want to use a sync cord, you can get a hotshoe adapter like this


http://www.mpex.com/browse.cfm/4,12111.html


For more flexibility in the future, you could invest in radio triggers like PocketWizards, Skyports, Cybersyncs, etc.

Hi sean,


Im going to try this today when i get home, man, i hope this works, i was pretty disappointed yesterday when i setup the whole room full of lights and was only able to light them up with a test ;(. lol. If this works, would the ES 430 also be triggered as a slave external flash?



http://hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net/hs078...._5379687_n.jpg
























































this was taken with my iphone,. lol, the camera was kinda busy looking pretty on the tripod. lol. Items in the picture.
Cheap Walmart Tripod. lol
Canon Rebel T1i
Canon 70-200 2.8 zoom lens
Britek 2000 Difuser
Britek 300 Umbrellas
Small Strobe no clue of the brand. ;)

A couple of years ago I was looking into low cost strobes. Iread several reviews for the Britek strobes and there were several comments about them catching on fire. Hopefully you do not run into that.


Mark

From the looks of your setup here, you can set the flash manually on the hotshoe of your camera to fire at a low power. If your strobes have optical slaves, then they should fire as long as the sensor can see the light from the hotshoe flash (in this confined area, the flash bouncing off the walls should work fine for triggering optical slaves).

ok so i tested the strobes, and they work like a charm as long as they see the internal camera's flash, they dont activate with the 430ex light, WEIRD!! aside from that, i couldn't get the 430ex to work the same way with the internal flash, and i wonder if i need to configure the 430ex in some way to work AWAY from the hot-shoe!

The 430EX may be sending out a pre-flash that's triggering the strobes before the shutter releases. Try the 430EX in manual mode (not ETTL). That may work.