Okay so I keep hearing these things are cheap and small but Ive never seen them as such and have no clue about what is good and bad for underground use. I just want something small and bright that will trigger when I fire the flash gun. I dont want to take up more space in the pack so is there anything small enough to fit in the space I have spare in my pelican 1020 case? (which is about 1/3 the case, I needed it for the depth, I just have my lumix lx3 in it). I keep hearing "oh yeah I put like 4 in a pelican 1010 case" so I'm assuming there are some made quite small that would fit the bill. I just have not had luck in my searches or know what is good and bright for underground use...and most flash stuff I see starts at around $40 and goes up from there so where are these cheap $10 units I hear about but no one knows the details for? hah.
Slave flashes...
- Thread starter Amy
- Start date
For a flashgun, try ebay - sometimes you'll land lucky and grab a cheap one. I confess to knowing nowt about flashes and just grab whatever I think might do the job! The only thing I do know is you need to buy a non-dedicated flash for use with slaves.
As for the slave to fire the flash - I use Firefly 2 which fires on a single flash, the FF 3 works better with modern digitals that have pre-flashes and the like. Probably other makes available and what you need obviously depends on your camera and whether it has pre-flash and if it can be turned off etc. You can get radio based triggers/slaves, but you need a hot shoe for that.
As for the slave to fire the flash - I use Firefly 2 which fires on a single flash, the FF 3 works better with modern digitals that have pre-flashes and the like. Probably other makes available and what you need obviously depends on your camera and whether it has pre-flash and if it can be turned off etc. You can get radio based triggers/slaves, but you need a hot shoe for that.
simonsays
New member
Glenn
Member
I hear radio controlled flashs or better, as you can keep the flash out of the line of sight of the camera.
This allows you to experiment more with lighting and having your flash at different angles/directions.
You can get some cheap radio controls on ebay. I've no idea about their quality though or cave-proofness.
This allows you to experiment more with lighting and having your flash at different angles/directions.
You can get some cheap radio controls on ebay. I've no idea about their quality though or cave-proofness.
The Old Ruminator
Well-known member
Recently bought the latest Firefly. Works well even out of direct line of sight of the first flash.
Sorry way above my price range...firefly 2 is saying 35-95 GBP which is about $55-$150Glenn said:
Im still learning the terminology: So a flash gun = slave flash, but you need a firefly to turn a flash gun into a slave that is triggered via light rather than by radio or IR? Sorry the terms are all jumbling in my head haha.
What I currently have is simply an old flash gun (it will attach to a hotshoe, but can just press the button to trigger it which is how I use it) and I just want something secondary I can set somewhere for it to trigger. I was recently on a trip where a friend had a firefly unit and slave (but it was big, bulky, and was more than I want) and we got some reallllllly sweet photos combining the two using my flash gun to trigger his firefly slave flash. It triggered fine behind things, my flash is really bright. =) We were not using our camera flashes.
(terms in the above paragraph I dont know if I used them right, haha)
The Amazon link looks promising, will look more when I get home.
My new camera does have a hotshoe (panasonic lumix lx3) but I looked and it sounds like it is supposed to only be used with flashes built for it specifically so I don't kill something electronically? And Im not seeing anything cheap. So seems easiest to just do things with the off camera flashgun I have and that flash triggers the light triggered slave and I was having great luck playing with that last week.
I hope something in this makes sense....hahaha.
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Related but different: glowing formation photography - Anyone ever tried to get photos of it before and any tips? I am thinking my only option is dragging down my dSLR (which I know a cave to do this in easily) borrow a tripod use bulb mode and make some sort of cover for the camera I can put on it without touching the camera itself because the flourescence doesnt last that long, and do a flash - open shutter - cover camera - flash again - uncover - cover - flash - uncover etc etc method? The best I was able to get so far on one flash was this...the glowing just isn't strong enough or long enough to be picked up by the sensor hence the multi-"charging" on one exposure being needed, methinks:
Amy said:
A "slave flash" is a bit of a non-helpful way of getting further confused. I'd think of a "slave flash" as meaning a flashgun used off-camera, probably fired by a slave unit.
You say you have an old flashgun, so what you need is a slave unit to go with it to fire your flashgun in sync with when you use the camera to take the shot.
The Firefly is a particular model of slave unit, just like your Panasonic Lumix is a model of camera. But the Firefly is specifically configured for cave photography, and comes highly recommended by lots of cave photographers. And by me!
You can read a bit more detail about the Firefly (and see somewhere to get one on your side of the pond) at
http://www.pjcaver.com/sidfirefly.htm#fireflyslaves
The Amazon linked flashgun above looks like it has its own integral slave sensor so it shouldn't need a separate slave unit. But if you feel like investing in your kit, here's why begging Santa or just saving a few dollars a month and waiting until you can get yourself a Firefly (or something similar) is worth doing:
This picture is lit by just one flash, the one on the camera. The resulting picture is representative of the place, but the lighting is very flat, not very interesting and just about makes the picture possible but does nothing more than that.
This picture is also lit by just one flash but this one is slaved. The flash is off to the left of the shot, roughly middle height in the picture and is pointing horizontally across it, so it makes a phenomenal difference to the depth of the lighting, to the amount of black space it leaves around the model and also to the picture quality. That's the sort of difference that masking your on-camera flash so it will only serve to trigger a slave flash can make. And that's the sort of improvement you stand to make in your cave photography by investing in a reliable slave unit like the Firefly.
And no, I have no connection with Firefly Electronics beyond happily using their slave units for years!
Modern digital cameras are not designed to handle high voltage on the hot-shoe - some flashguns do have high voltage (there used to be a list somewhere but don't have link anywhere now) and could potentially do some damage. I believe radio triggers are not a problem - but I would double check with someone who knows if you want to go down that road.
A flash is a flash, a slave flash is merely a flash that is separate from your camera but connected to a slave unit (eg Firefly) and remotely triggered by, for instance, your camera flash (be it visible light or flash covered by a filter to let out only IR which also triggers it) or radio.
I use FF2 but recently changed camera which has a pre-flash, didn't want to spend even more money upgrading so sometimes use the method you did - using a hand-held flash to trigger a slave, not ideal but works fine!
Others have replied while I was typing this but it might add something so I'll post anyway.
Try to differentiate between a slave unit and a flash gun. A slave unit is simply a device that will remotely trigger a flash gun at the same time as a primary flash gun is fired. The primary flashgun always has to be manually triggered - for example it might be your handheld flash that you press a button on, or it might be the camera's built in flash which is fired by you pressing the shutter release button or perhaps an off-camera flash attached to the camera's hotshoe via a cable - either way there has to be a manual input to fire the primary flash.
The slave unit then detects that the primary flash gun has been fired and simultaneously fires the secondary flash gun that it is attached to.
Slave units typically work by detecting the sudden change of light that occurs when the primary flash fires. Some work on visible light whereas others are sensitive to infra red light. Infra red is preferable for reasons explained below. You can also get slave units that are based on radio technology. I know very little about these though I would expect they would also need a radio transmitter attached to the primary gun and would almost certainly be more expensive than light based slaves.
You can buy flash guns that have built in slave units. In this case they generally have a sensor on them and you simply switch into slave mode to operate. You can also buy slave units which attach to flash guns using the hotshoe attachment on the flash. The firefly is probably the best example of this. These are generally compatible with any flash gun that has a hotshoe connector.
The firefly is sensitive to infra-red light. This is good for two reasons. Firstly it is more effective when the slave unit is not in direct line of sight to the primary flash (eg hidden around a corner). Secondly it means that you can fire the slave from an on-camera flash that does not emit visible light.
Typically underground lighting does not work well if the flash is attached to the camera. This is firstly because moisture in the cave air is reflected back into the camera making pictures look foggy. Secondly the lighting is flatter and less interesting. What a lot of people do is to use the camera's built in flash to fire the slaves but they mask the built in flash using a piece of processed film (the black bit of film you usually get back from the developers with your negatives). The effect of this is that the visible light does not pass through the film and therefore does not fog the picture, however the infra-red light does pass through and is sufficient to fire the slaves. This means that you can better synchronise the firing of the flashes with the shutter release and avoid camera shake.
There are two versions of the firefly - the firefly 2 and 3. The firefly 2 is the cheaper version and works simply by firing on the first detection of another flash. The firefly 3 is programmable so that it can ignore a sequence of flashes before eventually firing. The reason for this is that a lot of digital cameras fire a series of flashes before the main burst. This is generally to help the camera determine exposure information. If the firefly fired at the detection of the first flash, it would fire before the camera had actually opened the shutter and would therefore not work. The firefly 3 is programmable to ignore the pre-flashes and sync to the main flash. This is only necessary if your camera does pre-flashes and does not have a manual flash mode. My digital SLR has a manual flash mode that will only fire one flash but not all cameras have this.
Regarding choice of flash gun, there are a few things to consider.
First is the power of the flash gun - i.e. the amount of light it puts out. This is expressed in flash statistics as the guide number. Wikipedia will give you a fuller explanation of the guide number than I can but basically the higher the number the more powerful the flash.
Second consideration is the angle of the flash. By narrowing the angle of the flash you can focus the light onto a smaller area and increase the range of the flash. A wider angle will cover a larger area but might need to be placed closer to the subject. Some flashes have a zoom head on them whereby you can vary the angle. What is right for you will depend entirely on the circumstances.
Third consideration is the ability to manually vary the power of the flash. A cheap flash might simply have the option to fire at full power whereas a more expensive flash might be able to fire at half, quarter etc power. Basically, if your flash only fires at full power and is emitting too much light for the exposure you have three options - (1) make the aperture smaller, (2) reduce the ISO on the camera or (3), move the flash further away from the subject. If you have a flash that can manually reduce the power then you have a fourth option which might be useful if the other options are not practical for whatever reason.
Beyond that I would simply buy something as cheap and robust as you can get away with.
I hope this helps.
Try to differentiate between a slave unit and a flash gun. A slave unit is simply a device that will remotely trigger a flash gun at the same time as a primary flash gun is fired. The primary flashgun always has to be manually triggered - for example it might be your handheld flash that you press a button on, or it might be the camera's built in flash which is fired by you pressing the shutter release button or perhaps an off-camera flash attached to the camera's hotshoe via a cable - either way there has to be a manual input to fire the primary flash.
The slave unit then detects that the primary flash gun has been fired and simultaneously fires the secondary flash gun that it is attached to.
Slave units typically work by detecting the sudden change of light that occurs when the primary flash fires. Some work on visible light whereas others are sensitive to infra red light. Infra red is preferable for reasons explained below. You can also get slave units that are based on radio technology. I know very little about these though I would expect they would also need a radio transmitter attached to the primary gun and would almost certainly be more expensive than light based slaves.
You can buy flash guns that have built in slave units. In this case they generally have a sensor on them and you simply switch into slave mode to operate. You can also buy slave units which attach to flash guns using the hotshoe attachment on the flash. The firefly is probably the best example of this. These are generally compatible with any flash gun that has a hotshoe connector.
The firefly is sensitive to infra-red light. This is good for two reasons. Firstly it is more effective when the slave unit is not in direct line of sight to the primary flash (eg hidden around a corner). Secondly it means that you can fire the slave from an on-camera flash that does not emit visible light.
Typically underground lighting does not work well if the flash is attached to the camera. This is firstly because moisture in the cave air is reflected back into the camera making pictures look foggy. Secondly the lighting is flatter and less interesting. What a lot of people do is to use the camera's built in flash to fire the slaves but they mask the built in flash using a piece of processed film (the black bit of film you usually get back from the developers with your negatives). The effect of this is that the visible light does not pass through the film and therefore does not fog the picture, however the infra-red light does pass through and is sufficient to fire the slaves. This means that you can better synchronise the firing of the flashes with the shutter release and avoid camera shake.
There are two versions of the firefly - the firefly 2 and 3. The firefly 2 is the cheaper version and works simply by firing on the first detection of another flash. The firefly 3 is programmable so that it can ignore a sequence of flashes before eventually firing. The reason for this is that a lot of digital cameras fire a series of flashes before the main burst. This is generally to help the camera determine exposure information. If the firefly fired at the detection of the first flash, it would fire before the camera had actually opened the shutter and would therefore not work. The firefly 3 is programmable to ignore the pre-flashes and sync to the main flash. This is only necessary if your camera does pre-flashes and does not have a manual flash mode. My digital SLR has a manual flash mode that will only fire one flash but not all cameras have this.
Regarding choice of flash gun, there are a few things to consider.
First is the power of the flash gun - i.e. the amount of light it puts out. This is expressed in flash statistics as the guide number. Wikipedia will give you a fuller explanation of the guide number than I can but basically the higher the number the more powerful the flash.
Second consideration is the angle of the flash. By narrowing the angle of the flash you can focus the light onto a smaller area and increase the range of the flash. A wider angle will cover a larger area but might need to be placed closer to the subject. Some flashes have a zoom head on them whereby you can vary the angle. What is right for you will depend entirely on the circumstances.
Third consideration is the ability to manually vary the power of the flash. A cheap flash might simply have the option to fire at full power whereas a more expensive flash might be able to fire at half, quarter etc power. Basically, if your flash only fires at full power and is emitting too much light for the exposure you have three options - (1) make the aperture smaller, (2) reduce the ISO on the camera or (3), move the flash further away from the subject. If you have a flash that can manually reduce the power then you have a fourth option which might be useful if the other options are not practical for whatever reason.
Beyond that I would simply buy something as cheap and robust as you can get away with.
I hope this helps.
Thank you! Ok the terminology is a lot more clear now.
To clarify myself: I havn't been using the camera flash for ages....I learned that no-no way back when I first started playing around with photos underground haha. For about 8 months I light painted but in many cases this started to get too annoying to do or not what I wanted to do, which is when I caved (haha) and bought a flash gun. Its an old one I got at a used camera mart for $15 but it is very bright and has 4 settings (according to the scale on top, 10 meters, 20 meters, 30 meters, and then there is a dump every bit of light it can muster settings). And I'd have to say its about right becuase I have lit up the tops of 120ft-ish domes with it. It has a link for a hotshoe but I just use it by handing it to a friend to fire by pressing the little red button. Started joking he's my personal slave unit haha. Nice thing is I can just use vocal commands to move how I want it
So...sounds like I should shoot for getting a firefly and another flash unit for it if I really want to get "the best", but until then maybe play with something cheap like the amazon link and see how it does. Am I synopsing the thread pretty well with this?
To clarify myself: I havn't been using the camera flash for ages....I learned that no-no way back when I first started playing around with photos underground haha. For about 8 months I light painted but in many cases this started to get too annoying to do or not what I wanted to do, which is when I caved (haha) and bought a flash gun. Its an old one I got at a used camera mart for $15 but it is very bright and has 4 settings (according to the scale on top, 10 meters, 20 meters, 30 meters, and then there is a dump every bit of light it can muster settings). And I'd have to say its about right becuase I have lit up the tops of 120ft-ish domes with it. It has a link for a hotshoe but I just use it by handing it to a friend to fire by pressing the little red button. Started joking he's my personal slave unit haha. Nice thing is I can just use vocal commands to move how I want it
So...sounds like I should shoot for getting a firefly and another flash unit for it if I really want to get "the best", but until then maybe play with something cheap like the amazon link and see how it does. Am I synopsing the thread pretty well with this?
So you currently have a camera with a built in flash that you do not use and one flashgun that is manually fired by an assistant. Presumably you set the camera's shutter to be open for a couple of seconds to synchronise the flash with the camera. The downsides of this are (1) you can get a lot of missed shots where the flash is either fired too early, too late or not at all. (2) by leaving the shutter open for a long period the camera also picks up any other light (such as helmet lights - your own or anyone else's which can cause unpleasant blurring or light trails.
So if you want to improve your setup, you have the following options:
(1) Buy a single slave unit (eg firefly) and attach it to your existing off camera flash. Cover your camera's built in flash with a bit of exposed film (supplied with the firefly last time I bought one) and use the built in flash to trigger the off camera flash whilst not revealing any visible light from the built in flash. The improvement is that you are no longer reliant on your human slave to fire the flash and can use more conventional shutter speeds. Light trails are not a problem.
(2) Buy no slave units and instead put your money towards a second flash gun. You will need a second human slave to fire it and the problems of co-ordinating the firing of both flash guns and the camera will be at least as difficult as with one flash gun. Advantages are that you have more light and a lot more options for lighting - eg combining front lighting with backlighting. The slave only serves to assist in synchonisation. You do not need a firefly in order to use multiple flashes.
(3) Buy one slave unit and one flash gun and attach them together. Continue to trigger your existing flash manually. The benefit of this is you can dispense with a second human slave.
(4) Buy two slave units and one flash gun. As per option 1 but now you have two separate off camera flashes and no problems with synchronising them.
If you do end up buying fireflies, don't forget to consider if you need the firefly 3 model or the 2. If your triggering flash has pre-flashes that cannot be turned off then you need a firefly 3. Of course if you have a firefly 3 and don't need the programming function then it has the same functionality as a 2 anyway so your bases are covered.
Ultimately you will get more from having multiple flashes. The fireflies simply eliminate a lot of the hassle. To give a simple example of variations with two flash guns, the following two photos were taken from exactly the same location:
In this photo both flashes are aimed away from the camera with the light angled from the right hand side. The second flash behind the caver lets me illuminate multiple sets of formations.
In the second photo the flash behind the caver has been turned around to point towards the camera. This backlights the steam from the caver's body and helps highlight the straws and the shape of the rock.
So if you want to improve your setup, you have the following options:
(1) Buy a single slave unit (eg firefly) and attach it to your existing off camera flash. Cover your camera's built in flash with a bit of exposed film (supplied with the firefly last time I bought one) and use the built in flash to trigger the off camera flash whilst not revealing any visible light from the built in flash. The improvement is that you are no longer reliant on your human slave to fire the flash and can use more conventional shutter speeds. Light trails are not a problem.
(2) Buy no slave units and instead put your money towards a second flash gun. You will need a second human slave to fire it and the problems of co-ordinating the firing of both flash guns and the camera will be at least as difficult as with one flash gun. Advantages are that you have more light and a lot more options for lighting - eg combining front lighting with backlighting. The slave only serves to assist in synchonisation. You do not need a firefly in order to use multiple flashes.
(3) Buy one slave unit and one flash gun and attach them together. Continue to trigger your existing flash manually. The benefit of this is you can dispense with a second human slave.
(4) Buy two slave units and one flash gun. As per option 1 but now you have two separate off camera flashes and no problems with synchronising them.
If you do end up buying fireflies, don't forget to consider if you need the firefly 3 model or the 2. If your triggering flash has pre-flashes that cannot be turned off then you need a firefly 3. Of course if you have a firefly 3 and don't need the programming function then it has the same functionality as a 2 anyway so your bases are covered.
Ultimately you will get more from having multiple flashes. The fireflies simply eliminate a lot of the hassle. To give a simple example of variations with two flash guns, the following two photos were taken from exactly the same location:
In this photo both flashes are aimed away from the camera with the light angled from the right hand side. The second flash behind the caver lets me illuminate multiple sets of formations.
In the second photo the flash behind the caver has been turned around to point towards the camera. This backlights the steam from the caver's body and helps highlight the straws and the shape of the rock.
Actually my personal slave (haha) is great. I use like 1 sec exposure time and never miss it. Ive never had troubles with light trails either, usually on trips I'm the only one who has any sense of underground photography and everyone is happy to let me get to a pretty place first and take the photos quick because they like seeing them after haha. Its really never been an issue the human to human sync.
So I think def option (3). This is what I was playing with last week, and liked. (I was also playing with forground lightpainting and flash (personal slave style, hah) mixing which was working well too) sorry ive not sorted stuff or done any processing so this is just raw (I have a few varying photos of the same thing usually i end up mixing and matching for best exposed areas =) ) but I liked being able to light up both the room I was in and the room behind having the second flash-triggered slave flash behind in the next room down:
So I think def option (3). This is what I was playing with last week, and liked. (I was also playing with forground lightpainting and flash (personal slave style, hah) mixing which was working well too) sorry ive not sorted stuff or done any processing so this is just raw (I have a few varying photos of the same thing usually i end up mixing and matching for best exposed areas =) ) but I liked being able to light up both the room I was in and the room behind having the second flash-triggered slave flash behind in the next room down:
