Radio Triggers for Flashes

After all the preceding discussion on what it the best flash to mount on your camera to trigger other flashes using optical slaves (e.g. Firefly slaves), I have found a superior alternative; the radio trigger. It always seemed a waste of space in my bag, and of a good flash to have to mask one of my flashes on the camera so that it did not contribute to the exposure of a photo, just so that the other flashes would trigger. The radio trigger replaces the flash on the camera hot shoe. It is much smaller than a flash, and there are none of the high voltage problems associated with camera mounted flashes. A small receiver unit is attached to one of the flashes used to light the photo, and this flash in turn triggers all the others using the Firefly slaves.

Originally I tried a cheap and cheerful radio slave found on eBay (from China). This works great at home, but for some reason it fails to trigger reliably underground. Then I came across a recommendation on the US cavechat photography forum for a radio slave called Cactus v4 which looked well presented and was not too much more expensive. So I ordered one of these and have found it to be very reliable. I was so impressed that I later purchased a second receiver. So now the radio trigger on my camera hot shoe can trigger two flashes directly. These can still trigger additional flashes using the optical slaves, so the range is not a big problem as I only need one flash relatively close to the camera to be triggered by radio, and this will trigger more distant flashes using Firefly slaves. These radio triggers claim a range of 30 metres but I have not tested this in practice. I nearly always have a flash much closer to the camera than this, and I use the radio trigger on this nearest flash.

The radio trigger gives me two further advantages (on top of being smaller and not using up one of my flashes). Firstly, it will not be triggered by other flashes. This is most useful when other photographers are working nearby in the same cave. Now my radio linked flashes will not be triggered by their flashes. Their optical slaved flashes will still be triggered by mine, but that does not cause me problems! Secondly, I have found that my Firefly slaves sometimes misbehave on my hammerhead flashes, causing them to trigger as soon as they reach full charge. When this happens the flash keeps triggering in an endless cycle each time it recharges. It gets difficult to determine which flash is causing the trouble as all the other flashes trigger at the same time because they are all on Firefly slaves. Plus the chances of this happening increases the more optical slaved flashes I am using at the same time. So by putting a couple of flashes on radio triggers, I reduce the occurrence of this problem, and if it does happen then I know it has to be one of just one or two optical slaved flashes in the set up, and can quickly sort it out (turning off the offending flash for a few seconds and then turning it back on often stops the endless cycle of charge, trigger, charge, trigger).