Joseph S. Wisniewski wrote:
Sorry to hijack the thread, but while tech support is listening...
How quickly could an Einstein (in action mode) respond to a "set power" command in the Cyber Sync protocol?
I once built something called "Flash Thing" (yeah, big points for originality) and one of the things it could do was monitor Nikon or Canon digital TTL protocols (either wired or by watching the optical message traffic) and fire any number of banked "old fashioned" analog TTL flashes at whatever power level the TTL flash fired at. The way I used it was to set the "digital flashes" at 2 stops under exposed, and then have a bank of three old analog TTL flashes "boost" each digital flash. So, a Nikon SB-800 would get teamed up with three old SB-80 or SB-24 (could be any old TTL flash, that's just what I had). The exposure compensation is necessary, because the old TTL flashes are contributing to the main flash, but not the metering flashes, so the metered flash has to be 2 stops off for a 4 flash "mule team".
I'm thinking one could play the same trick with a digital TTL flash teamed up with an Einstein. The Nikon SB-800, Canon 520, etc. performs the TTL metering, the "black box" says "there was a 'group A to 13% power' message, let's send the channel 1 Einstein a 13% power message", "there goes group B to 25% power, send the channel 2 Einstein a 25% power message". There's about 5ms between messages, and at least 30ms between the last "set power" message and the "fire" pulse.
It could even work with old style Bees and White Lightnings in FEL mode. And with Einsteins in color mode instead of action mode.
Set power, even if in action mode, involves dumping or recharging the flash capacitors and takes time.
I discussed this issue at length with Jim Clark (LPA) and understand that doing TTL and ratios between speed lights involves pre-instruction the lights as to their individual power, waiting for them to set their power, calculating what the color temperature(s) will be, then taking the picture.
I recently examined color temperature shift of SB800 and 58-EXII in manual mode . . . around 1000°K variation. With McGuiver HSS methods, the color temperature between multiple flashes is going to show these variations.
Too many complex technical issues for me to want to spend my time on this, and trying to make special models for each camera maker.
I'm not really a fan of the idea of trying to use TTL with multiple studio flash units, or HSS for that matter.
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