A couple of readers pointed out some time ago as a reference to my Using an eBay wireless trigger with a Sigma 500DG Super flash article, that using the C0 SL setting for firing the flash is ok, AS LONG AS no one else is firing flashes nearby, since the C0 SL setting is for the optical slave feature of the Sigma flash. Now that’s a very valid observation and I thank those readers for astutely pointing it out.

Well, it took me all this time to get my lazy ass in gear and start experimenting with the Sigma 500DG Super flash and find out whether there might be other settings that we can use for wirelessly triggering the flash without activating the optical slave feature. People may rightly point out that I could just RTFM but hey, I wouldn’t be such a manly man if I had to rely on manuals, right? Right??? I’m just kidding on the “manly man” part but I do like to think of myself as a “dudely dude” or something along those lines.

Anyways, I digress. Thing is, like many other dudes out there, especially considering my background in engineering, I hate reading manuals. I always prefer to try and figure out that pesky gizmo on my own, whether it’s a physical device like a digital camera or something less tangible like a user interface. Case in point: the Sigma flash.

Once I decided to play around with the settings, it didn’t take me long to figure out that there are indeed 2 modes apart from C0 SL that the flash can be triggered wirelessly, without activating the optical slave. And these modes are called (duh!) C1 SL and C2 SL. Here’s how to activate them.

First, get to the C0 SL setting by pressing the MENU button several times. Here’s what you should see on the LCD screen:

Next, press the SEL button once. “C0” will start flashing. At this point, C0 is the optical slave setting, meaning that in this position you can trigger the flash both optically and wirelessly. It doesn’t really matter for me if the flash can be triggered by other flashes because I’m not currently working in an environment with other photographers but for many other users this can be an important issue.

Now, with the “C0” flashing, press the + button once for the C1 setting and once more for the C2 setting. Both these modes can be used for wireless triggering, without activating the optical slave.

Finally, press SEL 3 times to save the setting.
On the first press, you can change the flash power, between 1/1 and 1/128. By default it is 1/1, i.e. full power.
On the second press, you can apparently set the F-stop manually. I don’t have any use for this so I won’t bother getting into details why it might be useful but the default seems to be F/22.
On the third press the setting is saved and you should see this screen:

And that’s that. It was actually very simple and logical but the biggest hurdle was getting over my laziness. Oh, and if all else fails, RTFM!!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 7:49 pm and is filed under Lighting, Tutorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.