[Curious Yellow]

How many of you guys use Sigma flashes? I've seen a few pictures from the 430EX and 580EX users and searched for other threads, but I've only found one so far about using the Cactus as an off camera flash accessory with a Sigma flash, and a few about flash bounce and diffusers.

I'd be interested in knowing how the Sigma flashes serve you. Especially if you're a 530 Super DG owner, or are using Speedlites + Sigmas or are using multiple flashes in master/slave combos. Could you let me know how you usually setup?

Any example pictures, or pictures from off camera flashes would be much appreciated!

[ksten]

Hi,

I don't own any Sigma flashes I'm afraid but a world of information can be found here: Strobist Flickr Group. Have a search through the pohotographs as people describe their flash setup when they post. Also have a search through the discussions.

David Hobby has his Strobist blog here, which is also very useful.

Cheers.

[Curious Yellow]

Cheers ksten.

I've read the strobist blog but I've only had a tentative poke at the flickr group, it does seem like a good starting point though!

I've had a mess around with a few shots but I'm trying to save up for a second flash and I was wondering what the opinions of people using the specific combination of the 580EX II and the 530 Super DG were before obtaining one of those. There are some decent SB-26 flashes on e-bay and seeing as how he advises that those are decent off camera flashes I was hoping to save some cash by getting me one of those instead as well!

[ksten]

No worries.

I think if you're looking for info about combining a 580EXII with a 530 or SB-26 and Cactus remotes then it would be well worth asking the question on the strobist flickr discussions. The main thing would be to check for people reporting problems with using the cactus remotes with each type of flash you're interested in. There are always other ways of doing things though (Different radio triggers, optical triggers etc.) so no matter what flashes you get I'm sure there will be a way of getting them to fire together.

I can only tell you that my Cactus V2's have now problems with the 580EXII and 430EX - apart from the occasional time where it doesn't actually fire a flash, but I'm happy with that for the price. If I needed greater range / consistency then I'd probably look at PocketWizzards (But each costs the price of a flash!) or wait and see what happens with the upcoming RadioPoppers (Supposedly they have a large range, good consistency & ETTL).

Have fun!

Cheers.

[Curious Yellow]

Thanks for the quick reply!

I'll mostly be using them indoors and using a 580 EX II as a master with an off camera shoe cord. Not thinking about going wireless yet! I was looking at the 530 Super as a slave to the 580 and was hoping the 530 could be triggered by the 580, so that's what I'm trying to do for now.

The reason I'm apprehensive is because some people seem to be of the opinion that Sigma and Canon flashes don't combine as seamlessly as Canon and Canon or Sigma and Sigma for multiple flash usage so I'm hoping to see some opinions of people using a similar setup really.

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

I use a 430ex and a vivitar285 The vivitar was about £70 I think imported from USA. It is cheap and effective. I use pocketwizards, if I was doing it again I would probably look at the cactus thingies. Pocketwizards are reliable but they are expensive. Also, despite what the forumsay, they are not what I'd class as "professional". I was expecting an alloy housing of some sort to make them robust but they are plastic and I've already had the hotshoe smash on one of mine when a light stand fell over.

[Peakoverload]

Edited for Clarity (never try typing something at the same time as trying to explain something similar to someone standing next to you!!):

I have the Sigma 500 Super DG and rate it very highly and also use it off camera.

Things to remember.

If you have a Canon speedlite it will only act as a slave to another Canon. So lets say you have a 580EX on your hotshoe but a 430EX on a stand somewhere else. The 430EX will fire when the 580EX does. If you replaced the 430EX with a Sigma 530 Super or Standard it too would also trigger.

If you had a Sigma 530 Super on your hotshoe it would trigger another Sigma off camera but it would not trigger a Canon because Canon don't like you to use anything other than Canon!

If you have a Sigma you could even trigger it from the onboard flash of your camera or from studio lights without the need for any cables or anything. This is something you can't do with Canon without spending obscene amounts of money, in fact a Canon can't trigger from the on board flash at all!


What's the difference between a Sigma 530 Super DG and a Canon 580? Other than that Sigma is £150 cheaper, more 'compatible' with our flash/lighting units (in terms of triggering) and only fractionally less powerful than the Canon there isn't much difference. There's no way you could tell the difference between photos taken using the Sigma and those using the Canon, it's just a light source afterall.

[Curious Yellow]

That's true, a flash in the end is just a light source.

It's the combined usage which I find intriguing/baffling.

I'm just trying to see if there's anyone here with the same combination as I'm proposing (580 EX II master/ 530 Super DG slave) and how reliable they are in that combination. The manuals also seem to think they'll both support E-TTL II I think, but I don't know how support for different metering modes work when they're not being triggered by the same make of flash if you catch my drift.

Eg: Does the Sigma support E-TTL etc modes when being triggered off the Canon, or will it only be triggered by the Canon and need the flash exposure settings set manually? Stuff like that really.

@Gordon: I'm hoping to be able to carry these around and just set them up quickly with some ball bungees etc. I don't know how portable the Vivitars are and what type of power sources they use. From what I read they seem to be more stand mounted flashes and a bit bulky?

[Peakoverload]

Right, this is where it gets complicated and potentially expensive.

ETTL-II is supported by both speedlites.

However.

Think about what ETTL does. It tells the camera how far away the subject is from the camera based on what focal length it used and where it's focused to. The critical thing to note here is that it is distance to the CAMERA.

So lets say you are 3 meters away from your subject but you place your flash 1 meter away or 4 meters away. The camera has no way of knowing that the flash isn't the same distance away from the subject as it is. Therefore ETTL just goes out the window.

If you really want to go with ETTL metering when using off camera flash then, for Canon, you would need to buy:

TTL Hot Shoe Adaptor 3 £57
TTL Distributor £42
Off-camera Shoe Adaptor £20
Connection cord 3m £42

And even then you would still have one speedlite on the camera. If you wanted both speedlites off camera than you would need an additional connection cord and off camera shoe adaptor adding another £62 to your budget!

Canon do a Speedlite Wireless Remote Transmitter ST-E2 for £150 which I think carrys ETTL but I'm not 100% sure.

In both of these scenarios you would HAVE to have two Canon speedlites.

If you had two Sigma 530's they would do TTL wirelessly but you can't do TTL with a Sigma and a Canon.

The BIG question is, do you really need TTL metering for off camera flash?

Obviously you will want some way of checking your metering and like many of us you may not like the idea of working out the maths to do this manually. So why not treat your speedlites like studio lights and buy a flash meter?

The Sekonic L-308 S Flashmate is just the ticket and at £125 is very reasonable. In this scenario you could:

Use a 50EX either on the hotshoe of your camera or by using a sync cord have it off camera, have the 530 Super DG off camera and set to just trigger off the 580EX. Set the L308 to meter from the flash, fire the flash, take a reading and adjust the speedlites accordingly. I.e. pretty much as you would in a studio environment. The advantage of doing this is that you have no wires to trip over, utterly portable, doesnt require massive expenditure on Canon only hardware, allows you to buy the cheaper Sigma speedlite and means that you have a good lightmeter for general use as well.

HTH

[Curious Yellow]

That does help thanks!

I was hoping to get just the off camera cord extension for now and use it with the 580 EX II. Then use the Sigma in slave mode and set it to be triggered optically through the 580. I didn't know I'd lose E-TTL functionality by using it that way because as the Sigma was supposed to support E-TTL II I thought it would be capable of working with the 580 in E-TTL mode

The Sigma looks an interesting gadget just for the optical slave functionality, so I may wind up getting it for that. I just wish there was a place where I could look these things up without having to badger you guys for this type of info constantly!

And yes, it does look a lot more expensive now!

[Curious Yellow]

Having read everything you guys have told me and having had a lot of looks at manuals and manufacturer sites I think I've finally figured out how to do this for anyone who's interested.

I've been to the excellently written photonotes site and it seems like the method I'm proposing can work.

According to the person who writes it I can use the OC-E3 cord to preserve E-TTL functionality and use a 580 EX II as a master and then use the Sigma 530 Super DG as a slave to it and retain E-TTL functionality because the Sigma supports E-TTL it can work as an E-TTL slave as well.

Surprisingly the hot shoe adapter according to the site will make you lose E-TTL functionality. So it seems pretty much useless for anyone wanting to use E-TTL.

For anyone who wants to read more about it, here's the link. I think I'm probably going to get the 530 Super in light of this info. The only downside semes to be the extremely low resale value of 3rd party flashes. Hopefully it will earn its keep!

For anyone who's interested, here's the link.

http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-f....html#wireless

[ksten]

Hi again, I just wanted to confirm that the ST-E2 does retain ETTL information. I'm assuming that if the Sigma flash is compatible with ETTL when being controlled by the 580EXII then it will work with the signal from the ST-E2 (I've never tried this though).

You can get the ST-E2 is £93.99 from One Stop Digtal (Hong Kong based store, but I've used them many times and can recommend their service) so it is about £55 more than you can get an OC-E3 for. The advantage is that it frees up the positioning of the 580EXII as you're no longer limited to 2 feet from the camera.

I realise that £55 isn't exactly a small amount of money over what your latest spending plans are, but I just thought I'd mention it anyway.

Scanning back over this thread, maybe you have the OC-E3 already? In which case just ignore me!

Cheers.

[Brammers]

I'm a big user of wireless flashes - it's one of the reasons I shoot Minolta. Minolta's wireless flash system is superior to Canon's in that it's all built into the camera body - no need to muck around with ST-E2s or 580s on the hotshoe, everything always maintains full ETTL compatibility . As a result I can't advise you whether a 530 will seamlessly integrate with a 580, other than to say that I can use Sigma 500s alongside Sony 36/56HS and Minolta 2500/3600/5600s with no loss of function at all. What I consider important comes next.

In your latest post you wrote about maintaining ETTL functionality. I'd like to ask you why this is important to you. For me, the point of getting the flash off the camera is to really control the light source - its direction, intensity, colour & quality. Using ETTL gains you convenience but you lose fine control over intensity, as the computer figures out the power to output to give a 'correct' exposure.

For the kind of work I anticipate you trying, having thought about cables and mentioned indoors, I'm going to suggest that you go fully manual. This will give you the minute control over intensity that ETTL 'puts rubber gloves on' - leaving you adjusting power ratios and flash exposure compensation instead of doing what you really want to do - telling the flash to output just a little more power.

If you are going fully manual then just go for something simple to use like a Vivitar 285 - these are great because on the front is a big dial with settings for 1/16, 1/8, 1/4 ,1/2 and 1/1. It doesn't get any simpler! Slave these up to an optical hotshoe (£5 each, 1 needed for each flash) or use cables (PC is very safe).

ETTL certainly has its uses though, and it's a killer feature when you don't have a controlled environment - I like to hand a couple of Sigmas to an assistant when I'm shooting a festival. The pop-up flash gives fill-light, the 2 sigmas automatically adjust to the rest of the scene and give a great 3D effect. ETTL also makes for killer quick and easy mobile studios - 2 flashes to the front at 45degrees, set a 2:1 ratio and shoot. All done in 30 seconds.

For what it's worth, here's my 2 setups:

Studio type shots - 100% manual.
Pop-up flash on camera if needed (manually adjustable)
2x Sigma 500s on manual - optical strobe mode
2x Vivitar 285s on manual - triggered by PC cable or peanuts

'Live' type shots - 100% automatic
Pop-up flash on camera
2x Sigma 500s

Hopefully that will help you decide if you do actually want ETTL, or if you can save a lot of money with those SB26s or 285s.

Quick note on the flashes mentioned - Sigma 500s are ok but they're not as good as the Sony/Minolta originals. We use a different hot shoe to you Canon guys - we don't need to mess around screwing flashes in with the dials, you just click it in and it locks, then press a button to release. The Sigmas don't fit the hotshoe as well as an original, and their button is pretty lame - more a stalk. The swivel heads also aren't as good as the originals. I'd guess Canon's top of the range flash is as good as Minoltas, so the same probably applies.

The vivitar 285s have utterly useless hotshoes - they're brittle as anything and snap off really easily - so badly that there's even a market for selling replacement metal hotshoes. One of mine sports one already. They also take an age to recharge from 1/2 or full power and are seriously noisy. Lots of light though, and the knob on the front for output is way better than diving into menus on the Sigmas.

[ksten]

I agree with what Brammers has said about being in total control of the off camera flashes with manual rather than ETTL. For me it's a similar reason to shooting raw - so that I can make the PP decisions rather than the camera.

However, I wanted to post this tutorial here. It shows that even with ETTL you still retain a high level of control with the advantage of being able to do it all from behind the camera. I found it useful anyway.

Looking forward to seeing the photographs that you're going to be making.

Cheers.