Speedlight & Studio lights ?

I have two studio lights, Lencarta 300w/s with brolly and beauty dish. I would like to set up a speedlight Canon 430 II or 580 II behind the subject with blue filter to change the white background. The studio lights are triggered, but how do I link the speedlight? Another trigger is available, but it does not go off. Possibly some change needed on the speedlight or camera 7D ? Any suggestions please.
Malcolm

How are you triggering them? I don't think I can answer your question yet, because I don't know the facts. One thing I've done though.....use the trigger on the speedlight, and set the studio lights to slave. That way, you can potentially trigger all 3 with one trigger, providing the slaves are able to "sense" the speedlight. I wonder if that helps...?

Thanks for that. My old brain didn't see that way and it's obvious.

Have a great Christmas

Malcolm

I am also confused. How are you triggering you studio strobes?

Do you have a sync cable or radio trigger on one of the strobes and are triggering the other as an optical slave?

Neither the 430EX II or 580EX II will do optical triggering like studio strobes. Both the 430EX II and 580EX II can be triggered through Canon's wireless optical/IR system. You would have to use the 7d popup flash or Canon ST-E2. This might make your other triggers difficult to use.

The 580EX II has a PC-sync port you could used with a sync cable or radio trigger. The 430EX II does not have a PC-sync port, so you would need to buy an external adapter for the flash shoe. You can also get a optical slave trigger that connects to the PC-sync and turns these flashes into optical slaves.

Hi Mike,

all working now off the 430 and radio trigger to the camera, which is triggering the studio lights as slaves. Problem is that I simply do not use my home studio lights and speedlights often enough and the brain goes rusty. Most of my shoots are at other studios, with lights triggered from the camera and sync cable to one with others as slaves.

I really could do with a strobist speedlight course in the New year to refresh the old grey cells.

Cheers for now

Malcolm

One trick, maybe from the old film days is to trigger you're slowest-recycling flash. That way you KNOW you didn't get a particular shot, instead of wondering if they all fired.

The idea of using the slowest flash is a good one but although the three lights were all working well, I have made changes and the 70cm beauty dish works exceptionally well on it's own, so for now, the other lights are just standing by.

I tried to use the 430 behind the subject with blue filter, but it was hardly showing colour, so gave up on that. May have another play in the next few days as I have cleared the office/studio and will be doing more with the lights now.

Thanks for the advice.

Malcolm

I think the strength of the flash has something to do with the about of gel that shows. Once I used the wrapper from a bottled-water Container...but I needed two to get the proper amount of color.
It's fun experimenting.

Connect one of these to your 580EX II:
http://flashzebra.com/​opticalslaves/0100.sht​ml

Keep things simple.

Here's a thread on using gels to color the background. Having dark enough background paper is the key.
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=415671

"[I]tried to use the 430 behind the subject with blue filter, but it was hardly showing colour, so gave up on that. May have another play in the next few days as I have cleared the office/studio and will be doing more with the lights now"

I sometimes use a slaved 430 speedlite as a background light for a pool of light behind single person portraits, it works well. Use a dark blue piece of gel, on dark grey background paper (not white),set the speedlite on a low manual setting with the head zoomed to the widest setting (24mm), move the speedlite away from the backround (about 5 or 6 feet) to increase the diameter of the light pool.