Of course, you could just buy the unnamed, expensive radio triggers, and they really are worth the $400 or so if you need super reliability and other kinda groovy features, but those kind of folks will not read this anyway! I had given up on my pair of Cactus triggers. I had debated giving them away and just sticking with optical triggering (using the light of a flash to set off another flash wirelessly), but everything changed the past couple days. Here is what happened.

The problem with my Cactus radio triggers (aka “radio slaves”) was pretty simple: I would press the shutter release, and the flash would not fire. I press the test button on the Cactus, and nothing would happen. At first, they were just unreliable, which in time became utterly useless. Just a quick search on Flickr, and you will find loads of folks who love these and hate them (for these same reasons), so I figured I just had a dud pair.

So, I thought it was my battery. I changed that, and they were better for a while, but quickly went downhill again. That was when I discovered how reliable my optical flash triggering was.

I could use the pop-up flash on my camera to trigger my flash just about anywhere (around corners, through bodies, etc), at least, anywhere I had been using my radio wireless triggers. I still did not want the pop-up flash light in my photo, so most often, I deflected almost all the light with folded up paper or maybe just softened it with a coffee filter slid over the flash (high-tech, huh?).

There are two big negatives to this method of wireless flash, though. One, you are usually holding a piece of paper in front of the pop-up flash or holding a coffee filter on. That means you are shooting with one hand and sometimes at awkward angles. I did have the presence of mind to tape the coffee filter on a few times, but even still, it was a common problem.

And two (the really big downside), I am limited by the recycle rate on my pop-up flash. My “big” speedlight/flash can fire very quickly and many times in a row, but that little pop-up hangs after one or two shots and needs to recycle or recharge. And when you are doing a shoot with people (portraits, family, group, etc), and you see that perfect opportunity a half second after you  just fired…well, you miss it if you have to wait on that pop-up flash.

Having an optically triggered flash is still a great idea, but when that is a pop-up doing the triggering, you are greatly limited. If you had two or more speedlights, the “triggerer” either itself radio triggered or mounted on the camera, and the second flash triggered optically, you would be set. And that is where I am headed, but the pop-up flash just about killed my family shoot (see the last entry), and I had to find something different.

Re-enter: the Cactus triggers.

I took the Cactus trigger set and my flash down to buy batteries and test them out to make sure that was the problem. Oh, I have a little confession to make: as I was messing around with the idea of putting them back into action, I noticed the transmitter light was dim…i.e. it had a battery in it too and it was going dead. I should have known it had a battery too, but it just never registered in my head. I had figured it was using the camera’s power. I should have realized it had a battery because you can trigger it even when it is not attached to the camera. Not too quick on that one.

Anyway, turns out my brand new receiver battery was dead, because I had left it to “on” the last time I used it…at least, I assume that is why it is dead with almost no use, even though it was not receiving anything…unless that transmitter button is getting pressed accidentally in the bag…hmm. I digress, but an important digression for your information’s sake, don’t you think?

Lesson 1: turn them off when finished and possibly keep that test button from accidental “testing”.

Anyway, I replaced the dead receiver and the dying transmitter batteries, and the triggers (no-so-miraculously) worked flawlessly. One more thing, though: when I put the dying transmitter battery back in, it would still trigger the flash, but if I pressed it fast, several times in a row, it would miss a few of the clicks. With two fresh batteries, it would trigger the flash as fast as I could click the little test button. BINGO!

Lesson 2: if your Cactus triggers are not firing 100%, try fresh batteries in both transmitter and receiver.

So, once I realized it was just an issue of dead batteries, I bought some spares and put them to a field test. I am referring to the shoot I set up to fix the horrible flop of a shoot a couple days earlier. Flop shoot = pop-up flash triggered. Looking back at the photos from the second shoot, they never missed a beat; there was the flash in every photo, even when firing three or four quick shots when the family was in action.

So, for all those times I have hinted on this blog that my little Cactus radio triggers were less than wonderful, I take it back. That was probably the best $40 I  have ever spent on camera gear. If you are interested, just run over to Midwest Photo Exchange (where the cool, off-camera flash kind of folk go) and search for “cactus”. And do yourself a favor: pay $15 more for a V4 set, instead of the V2s set, which I have. You may not know it, but there are several very practical, little updates that make them much more useful in the field.

Come on, stop dreaming about $1,500 cameras and ungodly-expensive lenses, and drop $50 to make just about any flash (even that stol borrowed one from your dad’s camera bag) transform your photos from plane-jane to rockin’-awesome.

My first pieces of gear will be sunscreen and a hat if I can scrounge one up. I will take my backpack full of all kinds of gear, but will most likely need to leave that behind and carry a small choice of essentials. most likely, if it is like all the other days recently, the day will turn very bright and sunny. So, instead of uselessly cursing the brightness, I will embrace it as my friend and let it add to the feel of the day’s shooting.

So, what gear will I actually take?

It is not like I have a plan in my head for such and such a situation; I am just thinking this through here, in case it is of use to someone else out there. Regardless of lens choice, I will certainly take my lens hoods!

I will probably take my 35mm lens (so shooting close to the standard 50mm on a film camera). Wider would be nice, but that is as wide as my bag gets at the moment. Sad but true. One, I have my cropped sensor working against me. And two, I would have bought I wider lens, but going below 35mm, the f/stops were increasingly …um…un-bright. 35mm was the happy medium. It would be a happier medium if I had a full-frame camera, but this is all another topic. I will move on.

I might take my flash and one of my groovy handmade straw grid snoots. The flash would come in handy simply because it will be a bright day with nasty shadows, and I could fill those in if need be. I will use the snoot if I want to darken everything down a stop or two, then focus the flash on a specific subject, thus using light to draw the attention where I want it.

Oh…how will I trigger the light? I have some radio triggers, but they are el cheapo and too unreliable. If I go with my optical trigger (built into the flash unit), I will have to use my camera’s pop up flash to trigger it. Actually, now that I think of it, usually the pop-up flash affects the photo too much, but on a bright day, I most likely will not have a problem with that. So, I think that is my choice. That is also a great choice because it means minimal gear.

Honestly, what I would really like to take along, but do not yet own, is a Lumiquest SoftBox III. That is a portrait miracle maker. Basically, I could have a handy softbox for individual portraits and softly fill all those nasty shadows. I would not use it for every shot, mind you, but for a nice portrait (which I am sure folks will ask me to take for them), it would be grand to have along.

I have not mentioned much gear, I know, but this is going to be the kind of shoot where I want to blend in and be forgotten (well, ignored will work too). To be honest, that is my primary mode of functioning. And if you think the flash is not so subtle, if it is as bright as I think it will be, I bet even the flash will not be noticed unless they happen to be looking at it when it fires.

I will mainly be shooting that one lens. I will probably keep my Lensbaby handy to add something unique to some of the shots. Most likely, though, I will stick to the 35.

Oh…and the battery in the camera is almost dead. I guess I should go switch the batteries and charge that while I still remember.

The first day, about a week ago, things went ok…not great, but lessons learned. I also wanted to field test a pair of Cactus triggers. “What are those,” you might ask? With those, I can remote trigger my flash via radio (i.e. no cords). Those ended up incredibly frustrating, to be honest. They did not fire very consistently. When you read through discussions about these on Flickr, some folks love them and some hate them. They are consistent for some folks and inconsistent for others. For me, when they are needed, the break. When I am goofing around, they work flawlessly.

Wait, this was about the flash. I will get back to the story.
So, the second day comes along. Seeing as my radio triggers were not reliable, I decided to go optical. Meaning, I could use the pop-up flash from my camera to trigger a little optical sensor attached to the flash. I had heard it might not do well on a sunny day (and sunny it was), but it worked just fine, until…

Pointing down into a fountain (our backdrop), someone said, “Cooper, is that your…” There was no need to complete the sentence, everything went into slow motion and their words would have been incomprehensible, anyway. I calmly walked closer to the long, dark shape at the bottom of the water, then took a glace to where my tripod-flash-umbrella set up had been: nothing. It did not hit me till I saw the white (now folded up) umbrella sticking out from the tripod.

I tried to stay cool so my friends, for whom I was taking the photos, would not feel too bad. I layed down on my stomach and fished it out of the fountain. The flash was…wet. It is an interesting feeling to see water pouring from your equipment. I took the batteries out. That is only sensible, but I figure it will not make much difference with such a low power source and the fact they were already sitting in the water with the flash on anyway.

So, needless to say, I did not get much of a field test out of the optical flash trigger, but I pulled out my handy dandy coffee filter, slipped it over my pop up flash to soften the light, and used that for fill light every now and then.

I honestly thought the flash would be fine in the end. I unscrewed every screw I could find and it ended up looking like C3-PO after coming out of Lando Calrissian’s recycling room (if you are not a Star Wars fan, you can probabaly still figure it out). The trickiest part was getting the head open. The bottom was easy, but I never really did get that head open (I probably should have looked it up online, like I did the spelling of ‘Calrissian’ a few seconds ago). I finally figured the plastic cover where the flash actually comes out would just pop off, and it did, both of them.

I hair dried the whole thing till I was more than satisfied and when I put it all back together (it was not too bad, easier than getting it apart) it worked just fine. As a fun side note, sometime after I put it back together, I was looking for some manual or something for my flash online. I found out the red glass looking thing on the front is a built-in optical slave receiver. In other words, my little optical trigger I mentioned was a silly purchase, because my second hand Nikon SB-26 speedlight already has one built in! Sweet. I feel dumb for not knowing that already (I thought it was just a distance calculating light…which is also in there), but you can bet I will be putting that to work.

So, yes, your flash should be fine if you decided to drop it underwater like I did. Take it apart, hair dry that thing (though without the hair part), and I would guess it will be fine. Oh, I forgot to mention that a bad connection with the Cactus trigger the previous week was loose and I dropped it twice, once concrete, once grass. So, I can confidently say this Nikon SB-26 flash is a tough character.