Alter lighting with 550s

[scoobie77]

I like to shoot the bridal party on the alter after the ceremony with a 550 fill on camera and another as main light off camera. The alter area behind the bridal party often comes out too dark, so I want to put a third 550 behind them to light just the alter. However, the weakness of the infrared system comes into play here and the alter flash usually fails to fire. Does anyone have any solution to this, short of bringing studio strobes? :confused:

[Todd Jacobsen]

I like to shoot the bridal party on the alter after the ceremony with a 550 fill on camera and another as main light off camera. The alter area behind the bridal party often comes out too dark, so I want to put a third 550 behind them to light just the alter. However, the weakness of the infrared system comes into play here and the alter flash usually fails to fire. Does anyone have any solution to this, short of bringing studio strobes? :confused:


A PocketWizard setup would work in this instance, and is the reason I purchased them (for IR weakness).

Typically, if you set one flash to manual, it's best all are set to manual settings (vs an E-TTL + manual configuration)

But, you 'can' do the combo:

1) Place one PW on the 'camera' in transcieve mode, (requires PW MultiMax) PW can fire either (or both) the on-camera flash and camera
(if you use PW to fire flash, you need to set flash to manual)

2) On-camera flash can be set to master so it will fire the flash groups within range. Establish ratios accordingly.

3) Place one PW remote flash (flash set to manual) - PW can be recieve only or Multimax.

4) Optional: Have a third device to fire the attached PWs (can be a Sekonics lightmeter w/transmitter or another PW) . This would allow both PW's attached to camera/flashes to be receive only.


For PW to work on remote flash, I believe you need a flash that can be set to Manual.

[scoobie77]

This must be a stupid question, but I don't see where to attach a PW to the 550. There's no sync hole.