Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I'm using 3 Einsteins and one AB800. The 3 Einsteins all have the CyberSync receiver and the AB800 is on optical slave. The last two weekends I have started experiencing total misfires. While I have always had an occasional light not fire, these are all black frames. Usually four or five shots together, then skip a couple of hundred shots and it happens again. The battery on the trigger is two months old, so I'm thinking it is not the battery. And I haven't changed (introduced) any wireless devices that haven't always been in my environment.

Any ideas on what to check to troubleshoot this?

First, never let the age of a battery steer you away from it being suspect. I have heard (more than once) of brand new premium batteries being DOA right off the shelf and out of the package. A quick test would be to press the test button of the transmitter, and count how many times the LED blinks. Once, the battery is probably fine. Multiple times means the battery is low, no blinks means the battery is very, very low.

Have you noticed a correlation between misfires and verical or horizontal orientation?

Have you noticed if the CST's LED blinks red when you try to trigger?

Is the CST in the hotshoe of the camera, or connected via PC cord?

Thank you for the quick answer to this. It has taken me a couple of weeks to do more testing. After replacing the battery in the CST, it still misfired. A lot. It starts after a hundred or so pops. The failures are both horizontal and vertical. The only thing I've changed since this started occurring was the addition of a battery grip on the 5DM2.

The CST is on the hotshoe.

After the misfires started yesterday, I switched to the CC on the hotshoe and the misfires were greatly reduced, although not eliminated. I plan on trying one more new battery (from a different store - all name brand) in the CST this week just to be thorough.

Does this mean the misfires did not happen before the battery grip? If so, have you removed the grip to see if the problem goes away? I dont specifically know how it would be possible for that to be a cause, but....

Have you tried changing frequencies in the off chance there is interference?

I'll do a limited test this week. Different body, no grip, new battery, different Einstein, interference free location.

I say limited test because this normally only starts happening after a few hundred pops.

I have been experiencing this same problem for quite some time. I am using 2 AB 800's and 1 AB 1600. All lights have (AC) CSR+ and I have two CST and a Cyber commander. Seems like the issue is somewhat better when I keep the Cyber commander out of the mix. But it still happens with the CST's. I've been through several batteries, but never seems to fix the problem.

Have you tried a different frequency?

I have had the same issue using the CST in the hotshoe. I found that the little ball contact on the CST wasn't making good contact with the hotshoe. Switching CSTs solved the problem.

A quick followup.

After more extensive testing and experiencing multiple misfires with both the CST and CC over the weekend I noticed that it was worse when I was copying files out to my viewing stations from my laptop via the wireless. I switched frequencies on the cybersyncs and things improved. I probably need to switch channels on the router to find as much extra space between the two as I can.