malcs
12th of February 2003 (Wed), 00:12
If you have the s40, and you are looking for enhance the flash, here is the solution::
1) Scrounge through your draw and find an old slr flash. If you don't have one, ask around.
2) on ebay, purchase an optex slave trigger module for about $15. This will trigger the external flash when the built in flash fires.
3) use the camera in its manual mode, and looking at the histogram, find the aperature that works best for that flash. The histogram should be nice and wide, with no peaks that go off the chart.
Note: you must use manual mode, since all other modes emit a preflash that fires 100ms before the real flash. The preflash will end up triggering the slave, and you will get no benefit from the external flash.
The camera works perfectly with this setup, at any shutter speed, including 1/1500 sec. There is no need to spend alot of money on special digital flashes.
The flash that I used was a vivitar 2500, which goes on ebay for around $10. I have just purchased a vivitar 285 (typically used at weddings) from ebay for $35 and that is a real killer. This can be used at basketball games, etc.
This works 10000 times better than purchasing one of those $29 sunpak slave flashes for digital cameras. Those things stink since they do not always trigger, and have a flash that is only slightly better than the built it.
1) Scrounge through your draw and find an old slr flash. If you don't have one, ask around.
2) on ebay, purchase an optex slave trigger module for about $15. This will trigger the external flash when the built in flash fires.
3) use the camera in its manual mode, and looking at the histogram, find the aperature that works best for that flash. The histogram should be nice and wide, with no peaks that go off the chart.
Note: you must use manual mode, since all other modes emit a preflash that fires 100ms before the real flash. The preflash will end up triggering the slave, and you will get no benefit from the external flash.
The camera works perfectly with this setup, at any shutter speed, including 1/1500 sec. There is no need to spend alot of money on special digital flashes.
The flash that I used was a vivitar 2500, which goes on ebay for around $10. I have just purchased a vivitar 285 (typically used at weddings) from ebay for $35 and that is a real killer. This can be used at basketball games, etc.
This works 10000 times better than purchasing one of those $29 sunpak slave flashes for digital cameras. Those things stink since they do not always trigger, and have a flash that is only slightly better than the built it.