Hi guys, I've recently bought a bunch of gear to set up a mobile photo studio. I've bought a cheap JJC transmitter and receiver off Amazon (which is said to be compatible with both my camera body and Speedlite) for my Canon 250d and 420EX Speedlite. The trigger sets off the shutter and the flash at the same time however, when I look at my images, they're completely underexposed with no evidence of the flash having gone off at all. I'm using a shutter speed of 1/60 and an aperture of f/2.8. I have also tried using a Neewer Speedlite and it has the exact same problem. Both flashes work perfectly fine on-body. If I set my shutter speed to way slower (for example, 1/10) nothing changes, which leads me to believe that the flash is firing before the shutter. I've been reading on some forums and I've seen that the camera body may not recognise the transmitter on the hot shoe as a flash. Could this be true? The 250d has no central pin on the hot shoe so this could also be affecting the transmission. Thanks in advance for the advice, I know this is a long post so thanks for reading! Regards, Tom
Yea you may have multiple compatibility issues here, Id have to do a bit more digging to be sure . This flash was made 90s film cameras (what they called type A) it uses different ETTL tech than our modern Dslrs, also not sure how friendly the base level DSRLs like the 250d are with triggers, they may not have included the pin on the hotshoe just the keep you from doing any fancy off camera flash. That said this 420 has decent power and should work great as a slave flash triggered by another one.
You cannot use a simple trigger on any camera that doesn't have the centre pin, it just won't work. Likewise you cannot use an optically triggered external flash to fire from your built in flash because the ETTL system puts out a pre-flash to calculate exposure and an external optical sensor will trigger on the pre-flash and cause the external flash to fire too early. For what you are trying to do you really need a different camera with a centre pin giving you full external flash compatibility.
@johnsey The 420EX works with Type B cameras but only in basic TTL mode not E-TTL (Evaluative TTL) mode. I use a three flash setup with my 5D MkII for indoor work, 540EX as the main modelling flash and for it's Wireless Master mode. This flash triggers a slave 430EX secondary flash to control the shadows and finally a slave 420EX for the background lighting. This is the table setting out what functions are available: @tomweath If the 420EX fires ok when it is on the camera hot shoe then I think you can assume that your trigger/receiver assembly for off-camera flash shooting is not working correctly in that possibly the flash is being triggered after the shutter has closed. I assume that you have checked visually that the flash is firing when off-camera? Canon do warn that non-Canon accessories may work incorrectly or not work at all. Hope this helps.
Yea I was less than 100% positive since its gear i never use, but sounds like we are on basically same page, I figured the missing pin was a problem for the trigger, but definitely thought it should work as a slave.
I'm puzzled about the missing centre contact on the hot shoe, I've never come across that before but looking in the marketplace the range of modern Speedlite flash guns is quite bewildering - as are the prices. As my flash setup I mentioned earlier is 15+ years old my comments are probably out of date with more modern cameras.
Right ...the EX IIs like the 270 430 and 580 are generally the ones that are used with modern canon DSLRS starting early in the 2000s I accumulated 3 580exII flashes for my canon 5D2, they seem to work alright with my triggers off camera on my 5d4 but the last decade canon pivoted to a system with -RT and went radio signal with the newest version of most lenses like the 430ex 3 RT on the 600ex2 rt.
Thanks for the update johnsey. For the small amount of table-top close up and macro work that I do now I'll stick with my current set up, it will probably outlast me, for bigger stuff I still have studio flash and even some continuous lighting reflectors/heads. Looking in my box of stuff I see that I have still got a few Phillips No! Photofloods dated 1983 - a bit expensive to use nowdays given the cost of electricity here in the UK.
