Fire 380ex/550ex pair.

What are my options for getting a 380ex and 550ex to work together?

What camera body are you using?

XTi, I have one of these http://alzodigital.com …ra_flip_flash_b​racket.htm bracket, and an off-camera shoe cord 2. I was wondering if something super cheap like http://cgi.ebay.com …30084QQrdZ1QQcm​dZViewItem would fire the 2nd flash, when the first one went off. I'm not a pro by any means, and don't want to spend big bucks on lighting, I'd just like to play around with multiple flashes to see what kind of results I can get. If it looks like something I'd use, I'll look at picking up a 380 or another 550 but I'd like to play around a little before plunking down $300.

The reason I asked about your camera - If you had one with a separate PC socket you could get a PC cord - hotshoe adapter to fire one of the flashes while the other is on the hotshoe or connected with the Off Camera Shoe Cord. But it wouldn't be a very practical setup.

With the RebelXT you don't have many options, especially since the Canon EX flashes don't play nice with optical slave attachments. Canon makes it difficult to use their flash units off-camera, and the 380EX won't even work as a slave with Canon's wireless flash system.

You're not going to like this answer, but if you want a multiple flash setup, your best bet is to sell the 380EX and pickup a used 420EX or 430EX which will slave to the 550EX. Even a Sunpak 383 with an optical slave would be better than what you have now.

I was afraid of that, really seems silly that $200-$300 flashes don't have built in ability to be just set to fire when they see a flash, like everyone else's $30 flashes do. It's also amazing that in 10 years or whatever nobody has made a optical slave unit for canon flashes. There seem to be tons of devices that claim to be able to flash them.

For playing around would just selling the 380ex and buying some $60 light triggered flash be good enough? I mainly just want a 2nd flash to blow out light colored backgrounds, and to be able to mount above my fish tank to blast down get better shots of fish/corals.

It seems someone has figured out a way to make it work, but they don't seem to have very much documentation on how to do it. http://www.graphic-fusion.com/equipment.h​tm#slaves

sWampy wrote in post #2420230
would just selling the 380ex and buying some $60 light triggered flash be good enough?

If you're shopping for used flash units, I think the main thing you want to look for is variable manual power. Automatic mode is also good for some situations but won't work for everything.

sWampy wrote in post #2420299
It seems someone has figured out a way to make it work, but they don't seem to have very much documentation on how to do it. http://www.graphic-fusion.com/equipment.h​tm#slaves

It's cheap enough to find flash units that will work with slaves, I doubt that attempting to modify them to make them work with EX flash units is worth the effort.