This Remote Flash Power Control Hack is Genius
Some ideas are as brilliant as they are obvious—in retrospect.
With some minimal soldering skills, Strobist reader Ilya Terentyev (originally from Moscow but currently in Beijing) is using a cheap, auxiliary remote to control the power levels of a manual flash remotely.
It should be noted that the hack is only possible on flashes with a simple, mechanical switch for increasing and/or decreasing the power level. The discussion thread is here.
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(Thanks to BudroWilson for the tip.)
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Posted at 11:00 PM.
20 Comments:
This is great! Especially since these are the triggers I use. I have four that I have broken due to rough usage so I should attempt this and mod them.
Thanks for sharing!
Justin
Wow, another great video.
Quite ingenious really, would have saved me a bunch of money on my Flex TT5's, AC3 Zone controller and Canon 580EX II speedlites and AC7 hard shields.
definitely a game changer.
Allan (Samdiver74)
Hi guys!
Thx for featuring the idea on the blog.
All modern flashes can modified because they are digital. Mechanical will not work :)
I love that when he pulls out a Canon body to demonstrate, it's got a 300mm attached. YES!
Great hack... and maybe a lead on decent off-brand flashes? I've stuck to old Vivitar 285s since getting burned on some off-brand flashes.
Wow thanks for that!
A perfect break from study. . . and now I am wondering if this would work in cycling a LP160's power. . . . interesting :)
This is awesomely cool! :-)
wow.
Now if the chinese could just do the soldering and fildling for us and provide the flash with the adapter...
Great low cost alternative. Thanks!
I think it would work with the LP160 and since it has 2 ports you could use one for trigger and one for power control.
Very cool mod, however you can trigger the FlexTT5's with just about any camera with the latest firmware. I use the FlexTT5's on my Hasselblad H3DII-31 as well as my Fuji X100. Full manual control with the AC3 controller.
I hope Ilya comes to the US and throws a soldering party. I'll bring the beer!
From the discussion: "I tried some precise soldering and it did work. Even after 5L of beer :D."
Make that, a LOT of beer...
I hope Ilya comes to the US and throws a soldering party. I'll bring the beer!
From the discussion: "I tried some precise soldering and it did work. Even after 5L of beer :D."
Make that, a LOT of beer...
Adam, please clarify how you do this. Because in order to make TT5's work on generic cameras you need to switch to standard channels from ControlTL and with this you loose AC3 controller functionality.
I was thinking about this today and I think it may be possible to do this with LP160's and a single Cactus V5 on each strobe. I need to crack open one of my LP160's and do some testing with the V5's to confirm this.
I'll do the testing when I get home tomorrow.(I'm on the road now)
he lost me at "solder" lol
So, this is possible with an LP160 without modifying the case, so you can connect the Cactus V5(or your trigger of choice if it supports AF over a 3.5mm stereo audio cable) with the standard 3.5mm audio cable. There are a couple catches though.
1) This is possible because the audio jack used in the strobe is a stereo jack. It looks like terminal nearest the edge of the PCB is the one you want to tap into to get the AF trigger from your Cactus.
2) There are 4 terminals on the power level button. Between two of the terminals is an ID stamp for resistor R6, if you jump directly from one of those terminals on the R6 side of the switch to the AF terminal with the Cactus V5 pugged in and on, then you will jump one power level when you make the connection, but thats it. The AF button on your TX Cactus will not trigger any other level changes.
If the Cactus will trigger tiny a solid state relay, or transistor, then you could trigger the relay with the AF output of the Cactus, then have that relay connect the right pair of terminals on the power level switch.
If anyone knows of a good TINY relay, or the proper transistor to use, then point me to it and I'll order it and give this a try. I don't think the relay should be any bigger than say 1/4" on the longest side, there isn't too much extra space in there.
John, that's totally great!
If you could share it in the discussion thread it will be even more awesome. A lot of people interested and you can get help there I think.
@itsskin, done and done!
Could you do this on a Nikon SB-800? Wish somebody could put into a little better English, difficult to understand all of it.
Might have to be an option for all us 5DIII users who can't use FlexTT5s since upgrading :(
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