Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I shoot hockey tournaments for a youth sports photography company. We strobe the action using 2 Photogenic Powerlights, positioned on the same side near each goal. I trigger them simply with my CST and CSRB and CSRB+.

This combo has worked great for the last few years, however at last week's tournament, I had some frustrating issues with intermittent triggering. I replaced batteries in all three components, and it didn't seem to help very much. At one point I noticed that one of my two lights flashed, and on the next consecutive shots, only the other light flashed. For the most part, I'd see maybe one dark frame in every 15-20 shots, but the problem seemed to get worse toward the end of the day.

Could cold batteries cause problems like this? Normally we shoot over the glass, but this particular rink has higher glass, so we shot through it. Could there be interference problems?

Cold temperatures can cause a drop in voltage in the batteries, though I would imagine they would need to be very cold in order for there to be that big of a problem. If it is a new area for you to work in, try changing frequency.