Man, am I excited! It’s the kind of excitement I get when I feel that I’ve just struck a bargain. And indeed it seems I have. For a while now I’ve been fascinated by the articles on Strobist and after reading everything that I could about the subject of lighting with the help of off-camera strobes, I decided to take the plunge. Photography is, after all, painting with light. And if there’s not enough light, or the light is of poor quality, your photography suffers.

 

So far, I own the excellent Sigma 500DG Super flash for my Canon, and a Canon off-camera flash cord. The Sigma also has the excellent ability of acting as an optical slave, which means that it will fire when it senses the light from another flash. I have used it a few times in this manner, with the integrated flash on the Canon 30D or the older 300D as a trigger. Here arises somewhat of a problem. Maybe I don’t want to have the subject lighted from the front, but I can’t move the triggering flash. OK, I could use a mirror to deflect the light from the subject, but that would be quite messy. Another thing is that the optical slave usually needs to be in line of sight of the master.

 

The most elegant solution is, of course, a bunch of Pocket Wizards. Which are also extremely expensive. I simply have no idea how I could overlook these cheap eBay remotes (which are the subject of this article) for so long. In the end a friend pointed me in the right direction by supplying me with a direct link to an eBay auction.

 

This is probably current knowledge but I will repeat it nonetheless. These so-called “eBay remotes” are cheap devices, for the most part made in China or Hong Kong, but herein lies their brilliance. They are 10 times cheaper than Pocket Wizards! And eBay is full of them. Simply search for something like “4 channel wireless slave trigger/remote” and you’ll get dozens of listings.

 

I purchased 1 set containing a transmitter and a receiver, plus an additional receiver. I should’ve got one more receiver but I can always get that later. I was even more amazed by the fast delivery. I got them in less than a week, all the way from Hong Kong.

 

Now let me get a few things straight first:

- this guide is meant strictly to show how to configure the Sigma 500DG Super flash to work with these eBay remotes.

- the photos I’ve used for illustration are, once again, far from professional. Don’t like ‘em? Too bad.

- these photos (as well as all the rest on this site) are copyrighted to me. You may not use either of them in any way without my permission.

Here’s what I got for a total of $47.40, including transport from Hong Kong and shipping insurance:

 

The first impression I got was that these things are pretty darn small. I was expecting something a lot bigger and clunkier. The receivers use one 3V CR2 Lithium battery each. I assume the transmitter has a smaller battery inside but I haven’t opened it up. Once it stops working I definitely will.

 

Here’s the transmitter, bottom and top.

The bottom features the flash bracket and two switches labeled 1-2 and O-N. The labeling is a bit misleading since I initially assumed that O-N means “On” and I was asking myself how the hell is this a 4 channel device. Of course, this was before I read the “manual” or rather the single piece of paper describing how to use the thing. Actually, the 4 channels are set easily by using one of these combinations:

1-2

O-N

O-2

1-N

 

The top of the trigger has two main features. There’s a TEST button and an LED. You press the test button, the LED blinks red. Ergo, device is operational. The main use for this though, is testing that the receiver gets the signal. Once you set the receiver’s channel to match the transmitter’s, when you press the TEST button, another LED lights up on the receiver.

 

The receivers are more… ahem, complex: a black box with a removable mounting bracket (which luckily is made of metal), an on-off switch and an LED. This is the same LED that flashes when the TEST button on the transmitter is pressed (only if a matching channel is set).

 

The back of the receiver is actually the lid of the box and it also contains some embossed text informing about the type of battery that it uses.

 

Disassembling and opening the receiver reveals a few surprises. Though the outside doesn’t give much inkling of the quality of this product, the insides are a lot cheaper looking. It’s like a bunch of electronic components and some wires were thrown inside. But who cares? The whole thing feels pretty solid when closed. I would be careful though with inserting the battery and operating those switches. Excessive force may rip them out of their sockets.

 

The inside of the receiver contains the 3V sCR2 Lithium battery and the same channel switches that the transmitter uses. These must be obviously set to match the transmitter.

 

On top of the receiver is the metal hot shoe for the flash, which seems pretty solid. I’m not sure how well it’s fixed to that plastic box but so far it hasn’t budged a millimeter.

 

With the trigger and remote I also got this short sync cable which turned out to be very useful… at least until I realized my mistake. More on that later.

 

Here are the recipients of my new equipment. The Canon 30D and the Sigma 500DG Super flash. Notice the home-made diffuser.

 

Initially I was under the impression that the transmitter went on to the camera’s hot shoe and that’s that. Testing the device yielded nothing. It didn’t work. I fiddled with the flash settings, then I decided to use the supplied sync cord to connect the transmitter to the camera and lo and behold: the setup worked! Then, just as I was writing this paragraph I recalled what a friend, who bought the same type of remotes and who also uses a Canon 30D, told me: the transmitter should work without the cable. I realized that I had connected the sync cable only after I had fiddled with the flash settings. So I hadn’t even tested it again without the cable. I just did, and sure enough it works. This is even better than before! In fact, it’s so good that I’m in the process of ordering a third receiver as I’m writing this piece.

 

OK, having ordered my third receiver, let me move on. Oh, why am I getting 3 receivers? Because I feel that 3 flashes are optimum for most lighting situations and requirements. Also, I’m expecting two Vivitar 283 flashes to arrive any day now (off eBay, of course).

 

This is what the receiver looks like mounted on the flash. It seems puny compared to the massive flash but barring hurricane winds, it should stay put on any light stand or tripod.

Speaking of which… after receiving these remotes I realized another thing: dedicated light stands are expensive. The cheapest ones are at least $40. So why not use a cheap tripod instead? A 5-6 ft. aluminum one which is also reasonably rigid and stable for a flash can be had for around $20.

 

Having described these wonderful cheap remotes let me continue with a short tutorial on how you can get your Sigma 500DG Super flash to work with them. There are several steps that need to be performed, once you get the remotes out of the box.

1. Attach the transmitter to the camera.
2. Set the transmitter channel to, say, 1-2.
3. Open the receiver and set the channel to 1-2.
4. Insert the CR2 Lithium battery making sure to observe the polarity. An outline of the battery is drawn on the circuit board to make sure you get it right.
5. Close the lid on the receiver.
6. Connect the receiver to the Sigma flash.
7. Turn on the receiver by setting the switch on the front to the ON position.
8. Test the connection by pressing the TEST button on the transmitter. At this point both LED’s on the transmitter and receiver should blink.

 

Next, turn on the Sigma flash and cycle through the different modes by pressing the MODE button until the LCD screen displays C0 SL, as shown below. (C0 SL means that the flash acts as a slave on the “0” channel). Note: someone has pointed out that C0 SL actually means Optical Slave, while C1 SL is Wireless Slave. I tend to agree because lazy-ass that I am, I haven’t consulted the manual. At this point the flash is ready to fire. Clicking the shutter will fire the flash. One thing that I haven’t had the chance or the necessity to test is the range of these remotes. So far they work great around the house.

 

It took me a while to figure out, but it’s actually easier to change the power of the flash than I initially thought. While still in C0 SL mode (never move away from this mode when using the remotes because the flash won’t fire), press the SEL button a couple of times until you get something like 1/1 SL. That means the flash is at full power. From here, you can vary the power with the +/- buttons. The steps for this particular flash are: 1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128. Very handy. You can keep varying the power while you shoot, without moving away from this selection.

 

The Sigma 500DG Super also has a couple of other options in the C0 SL mode and you cycle through them with the SEL button. First there’s the channel selection option where you can choose between channels 0,1 and 2. Then there’s the aperture selection option where you can choose a work aperture. I haven’t fiddled around with this option and I assume it is part of the manual operation mode.

 

So here’s the deal: for a hundred bucks you can get yourself set up with a pair of Vivitar 283 flashes and these super cool wireless remotes. I’d be hard pressed to find a cheaper setup, unless I built the remotes myself and went for even cheaper flashes. Even then, the Vivitar 283’s may not be the best choice. The 285HV’s are better because they have a power variation dial. But then again, there are several ideas floating around on the internet about how to add a vari-power module to the 283. We shall see. For now, my job is cut out for me: experimenting with lighting will take up a lot of my spare time.

 

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 7th, 2007 at 11:58 pm and is filed under Article, Lighting, Review, 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.