Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

We do primarily sports photography and I recently purchased several alien bee sets to take team and individual photographs. I generally have several photographers working in a gymnasium or cafeteria. We are using the sync cord to fire the primary light and the slave cell fires the second light. My problem is that when one set of two lights is fired it also sets off the other sets of lights in the gymnasium. I am happy in one respect to see how well the slaves works with alien bees but I can't have each set tripping each other every time a photo is taken. How can I stop this from occurring or is there a work around? Thanks!

Any time the sync jack is empty, the slaves will fire. You have a few choices to remedy this.

You can get one of these, and run a sync cord to each light from the camera:http://www.paulcbuff.com/ss1.php

Or you can run a sync cord from the camera to one light, then use a Y-splitter and run a mini phone to miniphone cord to the next light, which has a Y-splitter, then another cord to the next light, etc. The final light would not need the Y-splitter. Y-splitters are available at Radio Shack and other places. The cords may be available there as well (make sure you do not get attenuating cords). Alternatively, you can check flashzebra.com to see if they have any or all of these items.

You can also get a radio trigger such as our CyberSync system:http://www.paulcbuff.com/cybersync.php and attach one reciever to one light and daisy chain the rest as described above. Better yet, get a reciever for each light.

Also, if you get the CyberCommander and CSR+ or CSRB+ receivers, you can remotely adjust the lights, meter the lights, and save the set ups.

If you use any of the remote methods, be sure each station is on its own frequency.