Multiflash Manual

[Florian Peitz]

Ido this sort of thing two or three nights a week, only I do it outdoors in the cold in Minnesota on fast moving freight trains. To do it well, you need 5-9 flash with at least the power of the SB-800. If you are photo'ing MoW equipment, you could get by with medium power units like the SB-600 type.

You will need radio triggers. The Elinchrom Skyports are about the best for the money. The eBay triggers are highly unreliable and don't have enough range. The PWs have plenty of range but are very expensive and would be overkill. You need lightstands, or some way to get the flash off the ground. The angle of the flash is about 75% of it. Flash will need to be fired in MANUAL, that is, power set to half power or whatever. Flash must have a sync port either on the body or added to the foot to connect the receivers. The trigger goes in the camera hot shoe. Since the flash don't go on the camera, the voltage doesn't matter, as long as you aren't using a flash with the prefix "HV" (e.g. Vivitar 285HV.)

You could use a flash meter to set exposure for each flash, but I've found this takes too much time and isn't critical. Put the flash about 30 ft. off the rail, flash head zoomed to about 35mm, power set to half power. The camera setting I normally use is ISO 800, f4, 1/200. Camera is set on MANUAL. I'm using the D80 and flash sync is 1/200. If you are using the D40/D40x/D50/D70/D60 camera, you can set your shutter speed up to 1/500.

I have about 10 Nikon SB-28 type flash, all with Skyports. I use Kodak rechargeable batteries I buy from Walmart for $7.44/4, and a MaHa deluxe battery recharger. Each flash/trigger costs $200 all set up. Sometimes this set up won't produce enough light, especially when I want to light up big areas such as a canyon. In winter there is wall to wall snow which really boosts my flash. When the snow is all gone in May, I might not have enough light for some shots. So, I am now looking at buying monoligts and battery packs, such as Alien Bees B1600 which is 640ws.

I have tried to do this kind of thing, and my advice is to avoid using any automatic modes, just set up your flashes for manual. The nikons will work well as a wireless controlled pair, but they will not talk to the canon flashes.

If you want to use all four together set them to manual and use a hand held flash meter to set up your exposure - if you can dial down the power on any of the flashes you will have some control over the lighting of your scene.

I reread your whole post. There are no books for this, there are only a handfull of people (maybe 4) who photo moving trains at night on a regular basis. I'm one of the four. You must be talking about using optical triggers. Indoors, they can be made to work but they are very fiddly. You have to put them on short sync cords so you can aim them. I use them only as a last resort and rarely, but then I photo only outdoors where they are unreliable. Forget about the SB-800. It's extremely expensive and gives you nothing for the extra money. You can't use Nikon CLS very well outdoors anyway and the range is way too limiting. I have one SB-800 but use it for "regular" photography or as a back up flash. Forget about connecting flash to your camera as you can't get very far doing that. The maximum distance I've had sync cords work is about 30 feet. You need Skyports, one for each flash, and you likely need at least x5 flash. The flash can be any brand but should have GN of at least 120, have variable manual power, and have a way to hook a sync cord to (to connect the Skyport.) No radio slaves will transmit through a running locomotive--the static from the big generators wipes out the signal. I use 15 ft. sync cords run under the rails (not over, LOL!) and put the flash on the far side of the engine and the trigger on "my" side, if needed.

I've been flashing trains since last October, usually two or three nights every week. I'm about 20% along to where I want to be, skill wise. The big thing is the angle the flash are set, so you don't just get glare or flash balls. I have about $2,000 in my lighting system and am looking to add about another thousand in coming months.

Hi every one ! I want to reply to all the responses which you were kind enough to make, but having just lost a complete response which was well on the way to covering them all, I am going to reply separately to each on in the same order as they appear. So here is the first -

Jos van Eekelen - Thanks for the info about trigger voltages - good to know - I certainly expect to do a lot of experimenting before I get any pictures that satisfy me - I have done some available light night shots in places like Chur in Switzerland and these can be encouraging. I am thinking that if I take an time exposure of the background with the camera on a tripod of course, then I might be able to combine the background with a separately taken flash shot of a loco or whatever.

In my reply to Jos van Eekelen above, I meant to say that the pictures of locos etc would be taken without moving the camera and combining them in Photoshop, rather like a High Dynamic Range image. I have some nice images of Chur and elsewhere, which would make good backgrounds, but I would not be happy placing an image of say a loco in front of an image of somewhere else entirely since that seems to me to be cheating.

One curiousity - in the UK, the use of flash is forbidden in stations - I did not know this until I got warned over the public address system in the marvellous new St.Pancras International station for Eurotunnel services that if I did not stop, I would be asked to leave ! Fortunately - I had just finnished - In general health & safety goes way over the top in this country - but the climate is quite different in switzerland where they always seems delighted that a foreigner takes such an interest in their railways, of which they are justly proud.

Ellis Vener - I have now obtained a copy of Bob Krist's book which looks to be very helpfull - I look forward to reading/studying it. It sounds as if it would be quite difficult to harm my Nikons by using the Canon flash guns with them - so I feel very re-assured on thet - Thanks again

I would like to use this setup so that two flashes both fire multiple times until the shutter closes. I can get the flashes to do this individually when attached to the camera, and I can get both to fire once, triggered by the YN622-TX transmitter, but cannot find a way to combine these functions. If any member has an answer, I would be very grateful.

Read the manual, it is all there although not super easy to understand. I have YN685 lights, this is how I get them to work in Stoboscopic mode remotely with a YN622C-TX. Put the lights into 622 slave mode. On the 622-TX press and hold the Mode/EM button (note: press AND HOLD not just press). It will display "TTL" in the top middle of the display. Press and hold this button again, it will then display "Multi". When in this Multi mode, short press the GR/* button to scroll through to the flash power, the HZ or the total number of flashes and use the four buttons up/down and left/right to change these settings once selected. Press your camera shutter release to test. Have fun!

The only way I've been able to get 'Multi (Stroboscopic) Flash' to work wirelessly via a YN622-TX is to set the multi settings via the in-camera flash menu of my Canon camera with the YN622C-TX set to 'Manual' for the group(s) I'm using in 'Multi' mode.

As long as I don't change the power level setting via the YN622C-TX, the flash will pulse per my settings each time I take a photo. If the power level (or any other setting) is changed everything will revert from "multi' to 'Manual' (with one pulse per picture). I'll then have to go back into the camera's menu to change it back to 'Multi'.

Since we now know you are using a Nikon camera, you can't use the camera's internal flash menu that Nikons don't offer. But that may actually be a way around why I have to do it that way with my Canon cameras. If the camera has no internal settings to override the settings on the flash, what you set on the flash before you put it in '622 Remote - Slave' mode may be preserved and allow you to set the 'Multi (Scroposcopic) flash' in the flash directly before pressing the mode button for a few seconds to put it into '622 Remote - Slave' mode.

Have you tried setting the 'Multi' mode up on the flash before you put it into '622 Remote - Slave' mode? My Canon version lets me do that, and 'Multi' continues to show on the display, along with '622 Remote -Slave' after I press and hold the mode button. But the internal flash settings in my camera override that when I half press the shutter. Since Nikon bodies do not have internal flash control menus, if it doesn't send anything to override it, that might work with a Nikon camera.

Say, on my X-T10, I use Spot (under Photometry) a lot instead of Multi, and I pair Spot with AF Mode in Single Point. But if I switch Photometry to, say, Multi -- leaving AF Mode in Single Point -- there's obviously no multi focus point system kicking in. So, do the two (Multi and Spot) not really not work together?

I don't care much for using Multi (Photometry) and Zone (AF Mode) because I prefer more precision in my choice of subject focus; however, I am interested to know if the above situation I've posted has any effect behind the scenes (since I see no change).

Additionally (continuing the theme in my post above), switching AF Mode To Multi and setting Photometry to Spot creates multiple AF points; shouldn't Spot overrule, eliminating all but one focus point? Here again, are the two settings incompatible?

Actually, it's good that you asked the question, Starkman, because Doug's answer is an excellent summary - and both question and answer will be useful for others who browse these forums. It's often easy to overlook - or fail to find - these bits of information in the Fuji manuals.

Hi Phil, I was wonder if you can mount an ST-E2 Canon on top of the Strato II Multi sending unit? Or would you suggest getting additional receivers so all flashes are controlled from the Strato II Multi units?

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