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More than one Speedlight on one Pocket Wizard
Anybody here fire more than one flash off a Pocket Wizard receiver? I am thinking of using a mono 3.5mm (1/8th") splitter... mono 3.5mm to household plug... female household to female household extension cord... household plug to PC... SB-26's and SB-800's. Has anybody used this type of setup? Any other suggestions? Tips? Jan 19 08 10:49 pm Link Combining works fine as long as you don't exceed sync voltage limit on the PW. Jan 19 08 10:51 pm Link BlindMike wrote: How would I know this? Is there a calculation? Is there is a rule of thumb regarding the number of flashes/length of extension cords? Jan 19 08 11:00 pm Link Nikon flashes are 6 volt trigger. If Pocket wizards can not handle up to 250 volts I would be surprised (call them). Nikon has set 250 volts as the limit for their hot shoes. Most studio units are 6 or 12 volt synch while some of the older Normans are 80 volts. Pocket Wizards have to be able to handle at least the 80 volts of the Norman 200 b's and the Nikon flashes would take 10 or more to equal that 80 volts. Jan 19 08 11:29 pm Link Ian Brooks Photography wrote: PW Plus II will handle 100V on the camera/flash port and 200V on the flash port. Multimax will do 250V. As far as what voltage your flash units put out, you'll have to look it up. Jan 19 08 11:29 pm Link never heard of this keep us informed on how it goes Jan 19 08 11:31 pm Link Great info... Thanks guys! I can't imagine stringing together more than 4 Nikon flashes per PW for my application, so I should be fine. FYI. I am experimenting with using flashes for hockey pictures. I need to be able to overpower the arena lights by at least 4 stops to avoid ghosting. To do it properly costs many thousands, it's just not in the business model quite yet. Cheers, Ian Jan 19 08 11:37 pm Link A few days ago I test fired two Sunpak 383's with one PW with no problems. This is best done with identical flashes, as differing brands and models may have different sync voltages and/or polarities. Jan 19 08 11:38 pm Link JamieCharles wrote: Check out www.strobist.com It's a great read. Do-it-yourself everything. Jan 19 08 11:40 pm Link rp_photo wrote: How did you wire them together? Jan 19 08 11:42 pm Link Ian Brooks Photography wrote: A simple "Y" connection, i.e., both flashes in parallel across the PW output. Jan 19 08 11:43 pm Link rp_photo wrote: Sure. I want to do the same thing, except I would like to be able to separate them by 20' or 30'. Jan 19 08 11:45 pm Link Ian Brooks Photography wrote: You might be able to connect one to the PW and use optical slaves with the others. Jan 19 08 11:57 pm Link rp_photo wrote: Nope. I tried that on Wednesday night. Unfortunately, it didn't work. I had to put all three flashes side-by-side. It left a pretty harsh shadow behind the players. Jan 20 08 12:05 am Link Ian Brooks Photography wrote: You may have to run cords between them, but at least your camera would be unteathered. Jan 20 08 12:54 am Link Can't you just wire one PW up to one strobe set to Master and set all your other strobes up as slaves? I don't see why this wouldn't work? Jan 20 08 12:59 am Link Yes, you can tether between multiple monolights with Y's and lengths of mini headphone extention cords (20 footers or so) readily available from Radioshack. I haven't found any voltage issues. I use one receiver with as many as four "wired monolights on a location setup. It works just fine. A side note. I have found the pocket wizards, quantums, (yeah, I've had them all) vastly overpriced. There are very inexpensive units available on Ebay that are very dependable. Just get the receivers that are AC inline powered. Thousands of triggers without error. Jan 20 08 01:03 am Link . If you are using a parallel splitter, then you should be considering amperage -- not voltage. If the different strobe designs require different triggering voltages, then a voltage splitting circuit would be required with, possibly, current limiting resistors. The main reason in using PocketWizards is to avoid using strobe synch wiring. Though expensive, it seems much better to use individual PW recievers, which would be safer for all the electronics networked as well. As already mentioned, a telephone call to PW tech support would likely gain your best answer. However, they *may* not give you an answer as they probably do not support such configurations. Ask them about reconditioned PWs, which are a lot less expensive. What is always available is the "smoke test" -- plug everything in and test, looking for smoke (which is one indication of a failed circuit design). . Jan 20 08 01:06 am Link You are typically OK when wiring battery powered strobe units together this way. I strongly advise against wiring a mismatch of AC powered flash packs or mono blocks together. You will smoke something when connecting "reference grounds" together that are not at the same potential. Newer units seem to be OK but I've seen fireworks with older units. YMMV, Rudi A. Jan 20 08 05:16 am Link I've fired 2 Alien bees from one pocket wizard and 2 canon EX flashes. didn't have any problem.. you don't need a splitter.. there's two 3.5mm mono plugs on the top. plug one strobe/flash in each. the wire can be as long as you want it. Jan 20 08 06:45 am Link Ian Brooks Photography wrote: get 2 AB800 Alien Bees and bounce them off the ceiling.. you might not even need to wire the second one since it has a slave in it. Jan 20 08 06:52 am Link Photo Matt wrote: Echoing previous sentiment from other posters, you have to be careful when mixing units. With recent units it's less of an issue, but start mixing units with huge differentials and not only will you fry your PW, you'll probably damage some of your flash units too. Jan 20 08 07:21 am Link Photo Matt wrote: Thank you for stating the obvious, because truthfully, I would have tried to work everything off the one dedicated as flash only. I was thinking about having a PW at the end of a sting of flashes anyway. So, the first one can be local and then split to another two and I should be okay. Jan 20 08 08:25 am Link William Jay wrote: I was at Radio Shack. They had a mono 3.5mm splitter, so I bought one. All they had was stereo headphone extension cords. Can I mix stereo plugs with mono? I see no reason why not, but I thought that I would come here and learn from others mistakes before I run out and perform a "smoke test". Jan 20 08 08:31 am Link Why not just trigger the slaves optically? Jan 20 08 09:50 am Link Jared H Photography wrote: I am shooting a bit of ice hockey right now. The flash-to-subject distance is about 60' to 90'. I tried one PW fired flash and the other two set as optical slaves... nothing. I had to mount them all off the same column with the optical slaves out front a bit to get them to fire. I got the power I wanted, but I get a real harsh shadow behind the players. If I could spread the flashes about 25' apart, I would have 3 separate shadows that are not as dark. Some backlighting would be even better as I could bring up the brightness on the ice, without over exposing my subjects. Jan 20 08 05:48 pm Link Jared H Photography wrote: More freedom with placement, no worries about flashes being accidently triggered, generally better reliability, etc. Jan 20 08 07:05 pm Link |
