Cactus
Anyway, the contents included the following items:
- 4-Channel Wireless Flash Trigger V2, aka Cactus Trigger
- an additional Cactus Receiver
- Wireless Shutter Release for my RebelXT (350D)
Gadgets abound! So I figured I'd take the triggers along with me, as I was invited to dinner at my best friend's residence. After the initial hellos and whatnot, I immediately broke out the flash+wireless trigger and started messing around. Seeing what I could get out of the ambient lighting etc.
I finally came up with this. A 1/8th powered flash with a CTO Tungsten gel bounced off of a relatively white ceiling. The flash ended up being positions approximately one foot above and one foot to the right of the camera body. Nothing too fancy, just having fun with the new toys.
As for the items now. The wireless shutter release seems to work flawlessly. The 16 channel remote/receiver plugs right into the camera's remote shutter control port. I haven't distance tested it yet, but I can't imagine a need (yet) for being more than 10-15 feet from the camera anyway.
The Flash triggers were a little more iffy. Made of fairly durable plastic, they seem rugged enough. It would seem the pivoting shoe mount on the receiver was replaced with a segmented pivot, having discrete locking positions, rather than a free floating set up. The plus is that the piece actually locks in place. The down side, well, fewer positions. Though I suppose all of that can be corrected with the light stand swivel mount anyway.
The other thing I noticed was a tendency for misfires. In channel 0 (switch 1 and 2 in the Off position) everything works fine, with only an occasional misfire (read: once or twice since I got it). In any other channel pairing, they misfire like crazy, ranging from once every couple seconds to 2-3 times per second. I suppose this would only be bothersome in a large group of people using the same triggers, never the less...
In any case, for a total of about $80 on the flash and camera triggers/receivers, I'd say I'm quite happy with the results. In other news! Lighting 102 approaches! Less than one week to go!
2 comments:
Thanks so much for posting this. The power of Google led me straight to you when I was trying to troubleshoot my Cactus triggers misfiring my 430EX like an epileptic monkey. All I had to do was set it in Ch. 0 and I'm in like Flynn. Thanks for the post!
I too solved my Cactus problem by finding your blog.
Setting them to Ch. 0 ( the only channel I hadn't tried)
worked.
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