Information only: E-TTL and optical slaves

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There were some recent discussions on photo.net about optical slaves, and also about putting the 380EX into TTL mode instead of E-TTL. The threads were not related, but Bob mentioned that the only way to put the 380EX into TTL mode on a type A camera was to use a TTL hot shoe adapter between the camera and flash. He said this was the only way to turn off the E-TTL preflash so you could use optical slaves with this flash. I have not found a new way to turn off the preflash, but have found a new way to use slaves. I have yet to test it with film, but I don't see any reason to doubt that it will work.

If you set the self timer mode for mirror prefire, the preflash goes off when the mirror is fired. This allowed me to do two things. It allowed me to confirm what Bob and the manual said about E-TTL working in maual mode. It also allowed me to stumble onto the fact that you can use FEL to trigger the preflash, and still have time for your slave flash to recharge before you trip the shutter. If you have someone to help you, or have the slave and camera set up at a fairly small distance, you don't even have to set off the slave and worry about it affecting metering. You can turn the slave off, set FEL, and then you or your assistant can turn the slave on and make the exposure. Simple.

-- Brad (reloader@webtv.net), January 08, 1999

Answers

Brad or anyone: have you tried to use the Ikelite Lite-Link with FEL? I have discussed this at length with an engineer at Ikelite and he was convinced it would work. I haven't bought a Lite-Link or another flash 540EZ to try this out on. Instead I've directly my cash towards a flashmeter and 60CT1 which fits my needs better.

I have done numerous tests with the 380EX, check out:

http://photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=000BGX

-- Carlos Co (co@che.udel.edu), March 26, 1999.


There is another way to set the 380EX in TTL-Mode. Just insulate the lower contact on the left side of the hot-shoe with some tape. The Flash uses now TTL only, but lacks also some other features like Motor-Zoom and Flash-Exposure-Correction...

-- Bernhard Reppelmund (breppelmund@dorf.rwth-aachen.de), August 13, 2000.

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