Dear Sean and any other Flash gurus...

I'm looking to purchase a budget lighting setup to learn some portrait and product photography...motivation (or excuse for more hobby purchasing) is that my wife is newly pregnant and I want baby belly pics. [:D] I have a Speedlite 430 ex II that I use on camera now but that's the extent of my flash knowledge. Any resources or helpful information would be much obliged.

Check out this thread if you haven

Since you already have a 430EXII I

Thanks Daniel. Very helpful.

I agree with you Keith - The ST-E2 is frequently put down due to the fact that it uses IR instead of radio frequencies to trigger wireless flashes. However, I have begun to use 2 580 EX II

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Originally Posted by alexniedra

I agree with you Keith - The ST-E2 is frequently put down due to the fact that it uses IR instead of radio frequencies to trigger wireless flashes. However, I have begun to use 2 580 EX II's in a master (sometimes off)-slave setup with great results. I'm not sure if there is a difference in the IR technology between the ST-E2 and the 580 EX II, but I was able to trigger my slave 580 EX II outdoors (at night) under city lights at 30 feet, and I am pretty sure I could have gone farther. I have yet to try the setup in broad daylight, but I still find the performance of the IR trigger system satisfactory for my needs, I'm sure Calulot will as well.


Just my $0.02.

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I THINK the range is about the same. The ST-E2 is only 2 channels where the 580EXII is 3. The only time I've had issues outdoors is when the batteries in the flash get low, they seem to be less responsive to the IR signal.


I have triggered mine from from about 20-25 feet in the sun. The only time I had problems was when the sun hit directly on the flash.

I'm going on vacation tomorrow to Washington DC, but I'll try to chime in on this thread this evening when I get back from tennis.

I'm not a flash guru at all, but if you're on a real tight budget and you don't mind to set your flashes power manually...the Cactus V4 wireless flash kit works great as well. You do want to make sure that the auto power-off mode ofyour flash is disbled. The wireless cactus doesn't trigger when the flash is on standby. But perhaps this is also with the ST-E2?





Edit: I mean the C.Fn-01: Auto Power Off Activation (On/Off), should be off in that case. At least that works for me. See the manual of your flash on how to do that.

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Originally Posted by calulot

I'm looking to purchase a budget lighting setup to learn some portrait and product photography...motivation (or excuse for more hobby purchasing) is that my wife is newly pregnant and I want baby belly pics. [img]/emoticons/emotion-2.gif[/img] I have a Speedlite 430 ex II that I use on camera now but that's the extent of my flash knowledge. Any resources or helpful information would be much obliged.
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If you're a beginner with off-camera flash, then read through David Hobby's (the Strobist's) Lighting 101. Then, take a gander at my own strobist write-up here. Then, after you're done the reading, take a look at your bank account balance--and decide on a budget number. Your budget will help me (and others) to make appropriate recommendations.

Keith