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.