Thursday, August 12, 2010

Strobist with Sony Nex

I ADMIT it! I actually do miss the joy of wireless flash that all the Alpha DSLR possess with Alpha flashes. When I attended the 1 Light Creative workshop, it came to my mind that I really need to do something with my Nex. Nex bodies cannot trigger Sony flashes(why Sony why?), but it can do so via optical trigger. To test this theory I bought the Sunblitz ADi628. I bought this because it supports slave trigger and it's cheap. Just in case it could not be triggered, I wouldn't lose much.



Settings : Red-eye reduction is diabled at the Settings menu. First try, it fired prematurely. Damn. Although it is almost cannot be seen through the naked eye, the pop-up flash fired two flash before a photo is taken. One is the pre-flash, and the other is the real flash when the shutter is open. Okay, don't panic. I browsed various forums and found another solution. Self timer, 10 seconds 3 shots via the Drive menu on the round dial. Tried and it worked, but only for the second shot and sometimes the third shot. As the first shot triggered the Sunblitz, the light output was reduced significantly for the second and third.


Kame-Hame-Ha!


This is from the second shot. Not much light power emitted.

The other problem is that it's a self timer, and you or your subject have to wait. Another hassle. So I browsed the web and finally found a solution. The Seagull SYK-5 Wireless Slave Flash Trigger with timer. This small thing enables the flash to skip the pre-flash with its flash delay timer.






The optical trigger.






Yeah baby!


Portraits anyone? For this, I apply some tissue paper on the pop-up to prevent it from overexposing the whole photo.

By the way, got some information from Albnok from alphantics.com that the Sunpak PF20XD, Nikon SB-26, Nikon SB-800 and Nikon SB-900 comes with slave-trigger and able to skip the pre-flash. The Sunpak unit is quite cheap, less than RM300. I'm thinking of getting that one soon.

8 comments:

  1. wow.. the pro has spoken.. kipidap pok... bagus2...

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  2. aiya pok. Thanks! I'm no pro lah. Just learning from experiences. Hehe.

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  3. banyak lagi nak kene buat geng. apa2 pun aku tetap puas hati. :D

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  4. Can i use Canon 580 EX II speedlite on the Seagull SYK-F to trigger the flash for my Nex-5?

    How to control the flash through the camera? does it come with a small controller?

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  5. Hi there. Thanks for the visit. I'm not sure if your 580 have optical slave-trigger function, where, it can skip the pre-flash from the Nex's pop up flash and fired when the shutter is open.

    If it doesn't have, then you need the SYK-F. I have no experience with 580, but Nissin Di-622 fired when I paired it with the SYK.

    Bear in mind that this optical works well indoors though. What I did to overcome this was using Phottix Aster radio trigger. Paired the transmitter to SYK, and the receiver to the flash(Nissin). The only problem is to mount the SYK and transmitter combo to the Nex pop-up. I used a small plastic canister actually for this. Hope this helps.

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  6. Hi,thx for this info!! Finally a solution to skip the pre-flash, thank you! If you say the Seagull SYK-5 works for the Nex, I going to by one tomorrow then :)
    Can you pleaseee upload a picture with the SYK mounted on the Nex pop-up??

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  7. HI there. No problem as sharing is caring. But sadly I do not have any photos of the SYK fitted on the pop-up. Oh wait, the SYK actually meant to be mounted with the external flashes not on the pop-up, unless you're using radio triggers but that's another story. :D

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