Canon EOS 550D, Neewer 180 studio flash lights with RT-04 studio flash trigger

[HEDS]

Hello,

I'm new to flash photography so please bear with me.

I'm trying to trigger my flash lights with the following equipment Canon EOS 550D, Neewer 180 studio flash lights with RT-04 studio flash trigger. When I bought the trigger I was told it was compatible with my equipment but I cannot seem to trigger the lights at all. I want to trigger my lights using the transmitter in the hot shoe onto of my camera.

Can anybody please advise if this equipment is compatible or at all possible?

Many thanks in advance.

Stephen

[Manfred M]

Welcome to CiC, Stephen. If you wouldn't mind hitting the My Profile button at the top of this page and filling in at least your first name and where you are from, that would be appreciated. We tend to be a fairly informal group here at CiC and go about on a first name basis. I know you have posted your name with the post, but that will get lost as this posting ages.

If I were to guess at the problem, I would think that you also need a receiver on the flash itself. Other than some of the high end pro units, where the receiver is built in, most other units need an external receiver to trigger the flash. This is how all of my flashes work; they require a transmitter or transceiver on the camera as well as a receiver or transceiver on the flash head.

Just to complicate matters a bit, both the transmitter and receiver have to be compatible with each other. I have PocketWizard transceivers as well as a transmitter / receiver pair from Godox. I can't use them to communicate with each other.

There may be units that let you adjust your flash output from the transmitter on the camera (so long as the flash receiver as well as the flash itself can do so too). If this is available, it makes shooting a lot easier.

[HEDS]

Thanks for the reply Manfred, I have a transmitter and receiver but it doesn't seem to work I wondered if there were compatibility issues. I'm going to send this version back and try cactus which seems to have great compatibility.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Stephen,

Having a vague interest, I googled these three - the Godox RT-04 seems to be a paired kit of transmitter and Receiver.

Forgive me asking silly questions, but sometimes these aspects can be overlooked;
I assume you have fitted a pair of good AAA batteries to the Receiver? (it's not supplied with them)
and
Connected the (supplied) battery inside the Transmitter? (e.g. may require a strip of paper to be removed which was there to prevent discharge during shipping)

Other than that, I've no idea, but good luck.

Welcome to the CiC forums,
Dave

[HEDS]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your reply, I fitted a brand new pair of duracell AAA batteries inside the receiver.

The problem seems to be that there is no power from the transmitter, but I can't see where you would place a battery?

Thanks,
Stephen

[Manfred M]

How have you connected the receiver to the flash head? Bad cables are often part of the issue. As Dave has already mentioned, dead batteries can be a problem too.


If you send the triggers back, I would be tempted to send the lights back too. 180-W-s lights does not produce a particularly useful amount light if you are looking at studio lighting. That's roughly the same amount of light as two Speedlights will produce. These lights don't look like they do much in the way of light modifiers other than an umbrella (which is fine, but limiting).

I have four 640 W-s lights and one 360 W-s light.

[Dave Humphries]

The problem seems to be that there is no power from the transmitter, but I can't see where you would place a battery?

Hi Stephen,

It (a web site) says the Transmitter does contain a 12v "23A" battery, as I recall, this is a little thing like half AAA size, but 12 volts. It will almost certainly have a bit of paper/plastic between the 'dimple' on the end and the Flash Transmitter battery holder contact. That said, having looked at photos of the Transmitter (top and bottom), it is not obvious how you access it to fit/replace the battery - were there any instructions with it that might shed any light on the matter? (groan)

Cheers, Dave

[Manfred M]

Hi Stephen,

It (a web site) says the Transmitter does contain a 12v "23A" battery, as I recall, this is a little thing like half AAA size, but 12 volts. It will almost certainly have a bit of paper/plastic between the 'dimple' on the end and the Flash Transmitter battery holder contact. That said, having looked at photos of the Transmitter (top and bottom), it is not obvious how you access it to fit/replace the battery - were there any instructions with it that might shed any light on the matter? (groan)

Cheers, Dave

Dave- the internet is a wonderful place. Check out the following video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pPQno-Qisg

[HEDS]

Hi Dave,
I feel a bit foolish, there was indeed a battery contained within the transmitter. I replaced it and it works! I assumed the transmitter was powered buy the hot shoe (I'm new to this)..

Manfred - well spotted on the video, I had searched and found lots of unhelpful stuff! The 180w lights are actually very bright, the first shot I took came out completely white, completely over exposed. I will need to make some adjustments to the strength of the flash! It will be a lot of trail and error.

Really appreciate your help with this guys the supplier has been completely useless.

Thanks Stephen

[Manfred M]

The 180w lights are actually very bright, the first shot I took came out completely white, completely over exposed. I will need to make some adjustments to the strength of the flash! It will be a lot of trail and error.

That depends on what and how you are shooting. If you are using a bare bulb and shooting at something that is quite close, then you will have plenty of power. Bare bulb is usually very poor light quality (very harsh / hard light) and something that is generally avoided by knowledgeable flash shooters.

If you are shooting portraits with a light modifier, at base ISO and shooting at f/11, you might find you are lacking power.

[rpcrowe]

I am simply old school. I shoot with my camera in manual and adjust my lights individually at each light itself. I do realize that being able to adjust the lights from the camera, using lighting ratios, might be less labor intensive but, I usually read the intensity of my lights from the subject's location using a flash meter anyway, rather than trying to rely on controlling my flash using ratios.

To give an analogy, the way I work is like driving a car with a manual transmission, vs. driving one with an automatic transmission. The final result is getting from point A to point B, it doesn't matter how you shift gears doing so. In photography, the final result is your image, if it is a good image, it doesn't matter how you arrived at that image.

Every studio flash I have ever used has a built-in optical slave module. I trip my lights using an IR trigger which fits on the camera hotshoe.



Granted, this trigger will not allow you to control the intensity of the light from the camera but, OTOH, as long as one of the slave sensors of your lighting setup is in line of sight from the IR trigger, this method of triggering is pretty foolproof. It can suffer if other photographers are using flash but, I shoot alone. I have used my trigger for thousands upon thousands of exposures over many years and there have been no failures. In fact I purchased a second, $20 U.S. Dollar, trigger as a spare but, have never needed it.

Reading the specs on your lights, it seems like the could be triggered from the camera's flash. Since I now shoot with a Canon 5D2, which doesn't have a built-in flash, the latter is not an option for me...

Manfred mentioned that using an umbrella to modify the light doesn't provide a great amount of control. I certainly agree with that. However using a shoot through umbrella with a black insert will prevent the dispersal of light in every direction and offer a modicum of more control.



Here is another version of an reflected light umbrella which also allows better control.



Umbrellas are often less expensive than other modifiers and are very quick and easy to to set up. I have a Chimera softbox that is almost four feet (48 inches or around 1.2 meters) on the long side. It provides beautiful light over a vast area but needs a very powerful strobe and is a terror to set up and take down. Additionally, the unit with strobe needs a very solid (expensive and large) light stand. Fine if you have a permanent shooting area but a pain for setting up and tearing down before and after each shoot. It also takes up quite a bit of storage space,

Here is a bare-bones softbox-type modifier which will be compatible with your lights.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEEWER-60x90...8AAOSwpRRWnaqw

I don't know about this "softbox" since most better grade softboxes that are shoot through, include a interior baffle to further soften the light. OTOH, I would expect that these studio strobes, despite being inexpensive, would give a softer light than a hotshoe flash since the reflector area, although small in comparison to other studio strobes, is large in comparison to a hotshoe flash reflector...

I also agree with Manfred that these lights are low powered, however they will allow you to do many things except light a large area or group. IMO, they are a far better choice for many lighting needs than trying to modify a hotshoe flash for studio work or using a continuous light source for human or animal portraiture. The only instance that hotshoe flash will outshine (pun intended) most studio flash is when you are shooting outdoors or in other areas in which there is no a/c power (there are battery operated studio flashes but, these are a bit on the costly side). If you find a need for higher powered lights in the future, these studio strobes can always be used as background or hair lights.

Always remember that the closer your modifier (umbrella, softbox, etc,) is to your subject, the softer will be the light. This allows the use of lower powered lights in head and shoulders portrait and small product photography. OTOH for large subjects such as groups or even full length portraits, a more powerful set of lights and larger modifiers would be in order...

[HEDS]

This was my first exposure..with all 3 lamps firing.

[HEDS]

Then I turned the flash power down and turned 1 off, now I get a high ISO and lots of grain. Is it best to keep the continuous lighting on then work out an exposure from there?

[ionian]

Welcome to CiC Stephen! I have been looking at the neewer studio strobes for a future purchase, so will be interested in how you get on. I'd like the 500w versions as my speedlights are OK for smaller scale stuff, this would be for group portraits.

Anyhow, whilst you should stay here and post up loads of images for helpful comments, I strongly urge you to go read Strobist.com if you are new to flash. Lighting 101 & 102 are invaluable resources. Go slowly, practice lots. I end up taking self portraits as everyone has got bored of sitting for me!

[Manfred M]

Lesson #1 - doing what you are doing is not the correct way to light a scene.

There is only one main light (usually referred to as the "key" light" and it provides the main illumination. If you don't, you will get strange shadows and your images will look "wrong". Humans are used to lights coming from a single light source (sun) which is up in the sky and that gives a single shadow.

It's good to see that you have some softboxes.

The other lights are used as fill lights, accent lights, background lights, etc. I would strongly suggest you learn to use one light at a time. Once you have mastered one light, add the second, master that, then add the third, etc. I do a lot of work with a single light (and a reflector).

I use a flash meter to set up my lights and set up my lighting ratios. You don't necessarily need them, but that makes your job of setting up the lights that much harder.

[rpcrowe]

I am definitely in favor of using one light to start off with and to learn how to place and adjust that light before adding others. Use this as the main light. One thing to avoid in shooting with several lights is multiple shadows.

Piggy backing Manfred's comment above... A flash meter makes working with strobes easier. However, if you don't have a flash meter, shooting tethered to a laptop computer can make viewing your images easier, it is very simple to tether a Canon camera by just using the supplied CD and connecting the camera to the computer by using a long USB cable. That is one of the advantages of shooting Canon...

http://www.jibble.org/canon-tethered-shooting/

BTW: I was shooting with studio flash long before I ever owned a flash meter. Given a decently accurate modeling light, I can eyeball the ratio of lighting pretty accurately. Will I know the exact ratio? Nope! Will I be able to get a good image? Yep!

Then shooting a series at various apertures, I can arrive at the final exposure...

[Manfred M]

Piggy backing Manfred's comment above... A flash meter makes working with strobes easier. However, if you don't have a flash meter, shooting tethered to a laptop computer can make viewing your images easier, it is very simple to tether a Canon camera by just using the supplied CD and connecting the camera to the computer by using a long USB cable. That is one of the advantages of shooting Canon...

http://www.jibble.org/canon-tethered-shooting/

BTW: I was shooting with studio flash long before I ever owned a flash meter. Given a decently accurate modeling light, I can eyeball the ratio of lighting pretty accurately. Then shooting a series at various apertures, arrive at the final exposure...

A tiny bit unfair Richard. How long did you serve as a military photographer? Experience certainly helps, but if someone is just starting off, I find a flash meter makes things a lot simpler and faster for them.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Stephen,

I'm not sure what you strobes and triggers are capable of, but I suspect the triggers are little more than just triggers and there's no communication from the camera to the flash - why does that matter?

Well think about it; at best your camera is determining exposure based on what little ambient light there is, plus any modelling lights that might be on, but when you expose, the strobes throw tons of extra light at the scene!
Result - your first shot.
How do I know?
Because I did the exact same thing myself last week! (when I first connected a manual external flash to my camera)

Then I twigged and switched the camera to Manual, ignored the camera's meter and set exposure by trial and error reviewing the LCD histograms, I got in to the correct area and got some shots. Problem was, I had the flash on the camera and even though bouncing off the ceiling, when I changed my shooting distance* (quite close as baby shots) and scene content, the exposure needed adjusting to compensate - so I am currently spending some significant time researching what to buy.

If you have a more technically complex set up (iTTL), as is common with battery strobes, the camera pre-meters the exposure and (with a suitably compatible trigger transmitter/receiver pair AND flash gun, the camera tells the flash when to stop so as not to over expose the scene. You can see the attraction

I'm not sure the connection between your strobes and Receiver will support such communication though - but I may be wrong.

So, I'm no doubt going to learn from your thread, so do keep it going (please).

Cheers, Dave

PS
One last thing is that you have uploaded your images as .png and although that's OK for seeing them, in my experience, it doesn't allow us to view any meaningful EXIF data. If you can Save As jpg, with EXIF data and upload those, it will help - or you could manually add the shooting data as text with each image, as I do.

[Manfred M]

Dave - I can certainly answer one of your questions.

Studio flash are "dumb" lights and have no iTTL or thyristor cutoff like small flash have, so these units are shot 100% manually. Studio flash typically has a slower pulse than small flash and one has to shoot with a shutter speed that is slower than synch speed. With the D800, sych speed is 1/250th, but if I shoot my studio lights that way, I will get a partial exposure, so I have to cut back the shutter speed to 1/200th. This is still fast enough to get a good flash exposure with minimal impact from ambient light.

When it comes to triggering monolights, you can use "dumb" radio triggers that signal them to fire or in some cases smart radio triggers that allow you to change the light output remotely. Profoto has their Air Remote system, Elinchrom has their Skyport triggers use the built-in receivers in the monolights to do this. My Paul C Buff Einstein 640 lights can use PocketWizard MC2 receivers in conjunction with the PocketWizard MiniTT1 or FlexTT5 transceivers and the AC3 Zone Colntroller let me do the same thing. I can also use the same transceivers with my Nikon Speedlights and control them the same way (which is why I went that route instead of the Paul C Buff Cybersynch system as I would have required a different and incompatible set of triggers for my Speedlights.

In theory, the PocketWizards also support High Speed Sych with both the Speedlights and the Einstein 640 lights, but while I can get the Speedlights working, I have not managed with the studio lights, even though this should work.

My Sekonic L-358 flash meter has a radio trigger that is compatible with the PocketWizard receivers, so I can trigger my monolights from the meter, which is great when setting up the lights (three zones only, though).

[inkista]

Then I turned the flash power down and turned 1 off, now I get a high ISO and lots of grain. Is it best to keep the continuous lighting on then work out an exposure from there?

The modeling light is only to help you judge where the shadows fall and how you'll want to position the light--it's to judge the look of the light, not to meter off.

A handheld light meter could help you figure settings more quickly, but trial and error can also teach you. With speedlights, I tend to start at "happy medium" settings: f/4, iso 400, and my sync speed, and then adjust from there, depending on what it is i want to do.

You need to understand that ambient light and flash illumination are two separate sources of light that can be controlled independently of each other, but which combine together to make the image and that's how you get whatever look you're going for.

Ambient light is controlled by iso, aperture, and shutter speed. This you should already know and have mastered. If not, get used to shooting in M mode without the flash for a while until it's second nature.

Flash illumination is controlled by iso, aperture, flash power, and flash-to-subject distance. Shutter speed doesn't affect the amount of light from the flash, because at or below your sync speed, flash bursts are always faster than your shutter speed.

If you want to increase the overall exposure, use iso or aperture. If you want to increase the ambient, but not the flash, use a slower shutter speed. If you want to increase the flash illumination, but not the ambient, you can move the light closer, increase the power setting, or increase iso/aperture, and then compensate for that increase with a faster shutter speed (assuming you can stay under sync speed).

See also: the Strobist on balancing flash and ambient, and Neil van Niekerk on dragging the shutter.
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