Remote triggers for canon 430EX

gus

I have been looking about & found these two units on ebay

Elcheapo looking thingy (ROXSEN) $30 odd

Dearer looking thingy (ST-E2) $150-$200

Anyone had any experience with the cheap one ?

hgernhardtjr

The Canon ST-E2 is an ETTL transmitter, exactly like the 580ex flash, but without the light ... it remotely/intelligently controls/sets other flashes in the series (580ex, 430ex, etc.) and is worth the money if you do not want a flash on the camera. When I borrowed one to try, it seemd to me to tend to have a tad more range than the 580ex, but that may be my mispreception. I normally use a 580EX on-camera which communicates with and controls other Canon ETTL II (as well as some from Sigma) flashes.

The "ElCheapo Thingy" looks to be nothing more than a remote trigger.

mr peas

I have the elcheapo ones :P

I use it with my 420EZ flash. It doesnt work very well with Canon flashes, when the flashgun goes idle (light on flash turns red instead of yellow/green as it goes into idle), the flash wont fire. but when its green during charge up it fires. Its weird.

It works perfectly with other flash units though, just not Canon ones. So if you have a Nikon or other aftermarket units, it should work with no problem.

Also, you have to set the flash on manual when using the ebay transmitters.

gus

Ok..thaks guys. I will try the elcheapo. Its description is just want i need.

gus

mr peas wrote:

I have the elcheapo ones :P

I use it with my 420EZ flash. It doesnt work very well with Canon flashes, when the flashgun goes idle (light on flash turns red instead of yellow/green as it goes into idle), the flash wont fire. but when its green during charge up it fires. Its weird.

It works perfectly with other flash units though, just not Canon ones. So if you have a Nikon or other aftermarket units, it should work with no problem.

Also, you have to set the flash on manual when using the ebay transmitters.

Ok...been doing some searching. Excuse the copy & paste.



AFAICT the problem is that the 430EX are more sensitive on their sync pin than any other flash. This may be exacerbated by the low sync voltage of the flash, which I measured at around 4.2V. With the receiver connected, a small amount of noise (from the receiver RF oscillator) is coupled onto the sync pin, enough to randomly fire the flash.

tpuerzer found that a long (20 foot?!!) length of cord between receiver and flash fixed this, which seems to confirm the theory. The long cord would be acting as an inductor and capacitor filter to remove out the noise.

A preliminary solution, which is appearing to work for me, is to put a very small value capacitor (0.2uF) across the sync terminals. I tested this by attaching the PC sync cord and just holding the capacitor across the connectors on the mini jack. This appears to filter out the noise. A better solution is probably to replace the lead from the PCB to the hotshoe sync pin inside the receiver with a small inductor. Or perhaps solutions combined (an LC filter) might be required.

I will report back when I have soldered the capacitor in, probably tomorrow but it may not be before Monday. Fingers crossed, but I am 90% sure this will work

**Another idea**

I have simply connected the flash to the radio trigger via a "long" (between 10' and 20' - I've not measured it) PC extension cable. The cable is simply what I was using for off-camera flash prior to getting the radio trigger (e.g. a cord with a male PC connector on one end and a female connector on the other).

Now, since the 430EX lacks a PC socket, you need to get a hotshoe-to-pc connector. Again, this is exactly what you would have to do if you were using the traditional "wired" solution rather than wireless.

The good news is that you can simply roll up the PC extension cable into a fist-sized ball and just hang it next to the radio trigger. Also, because the hotshoe-to-PC adapter has a hotshoe base, you can simply "stack" the connector (in exactly the way you have done with your solution).

Now, I'm not sure if you really need 10+ feet of cable to make this hack work - that's just what I had laying around. I do know that simply connecting the six-inch cable from the hotshoe-to-PC adapter will NOT work. That seems to be too short.