Can I trigger a speedlight with a Rolleiflash?

My mother just sent me my fathers old Rolleiflex T and I would like to play with it in the studio to do portraits. I have a Rolleiflash for it and plan on purchasing a new battery and flash bulbs for it. If I can find an extension cable I can use it by itself with my flash modifiers but I'm entertaining the idea of using it to trigger my speedlights so I can do multiple flash setups. Will this work and do I need do do anything other than setting my speedlights as slaves? If it will work what do you think about using it as an additional flash as well.

Even if you can find flashbulbs, the cost of bulbs would soon eat up the cost of a less expensive electronic flash...

I can find the bulbs and don't care about cost.

If cost isn't an issue, You looking for a son/brother/etc?? LOL Like you said the the flash should trigger the slaves. If you do get it working, please post a few examples.

Steve Ruddy wrote in post #13621834
My mother just sent me my fathers old Rolleiflex T and I would like to play with it in the studio to do portraits. I have a Rolleiflash for it and plan on purchasing a new battery and flash bulbs for it. If I can find an extension cable I can use it by itself with my flash modifiers but I'm entertaining the idea of using it to trigger my speedlights so I can do multiple flash setups. Will this work and do I need do do anything other than setting my speedlights as slaves? If it will work what do you think about using it as an additional flash as well

I just took a look at the Rolleiflex TLR camera which I also inherited from my father and saw that it has a PC sync port you can plug a flash or a remote transmitter into. If your camera has a PC sync mode switch like mine does, you just need to set it to "X" for x-sync (electronic flash).

To answer specifically the question in the thread title:

You can plug an optical slave into the PC socket of your 580EX II. I use one like this:
http://flashzebra.com/​opticalslaves/0100.sht​ml
Put the 580EX II in manual mode, not slave mode.

With other models of Canon EX flash units, it gets more complicated.