Anyone Any Ideas?

[CraigF]

Bought this product last week, http://www.stableimaging.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=37

Tested it a few days ago and it seemed to do the job very well.
Tested it further today for a longer period (only around 20 minutes) and it suddenly stopped working. Checked the snyc cable, power leads etc, and they were all fine.
After around 4 minutes it worked once then stopped again, few minutes later it did the same.
At this point i considered overheating but after only 20 minutes use that seemed a little far fetched.
I tested it using the test button on the back of one of the light units and it worked perfectly everytime. Pressed the test button and all the lights fired, again a second or so later for about 6 or 7 tests and they were fine.
Camera off, leads disconnected, reconnected, camera back on and nothing.
Im not sure whether its the lights, sync lead or whatever.
Any advice helpfull and appreciated as always.

 

[Garry Edwards]

The synch lead is probably the most likely culprit - my guess is that they have a 'split' connection at the camera end that can very easily enlarge and may need gentle pinching together from time to time. And, if your camera happens not to have a PC socket and you're using a hotshoe adapter, there's room for a bad contact there too.

It is though very possible that the flash you're connected to is overheating, especially if you happen to be using it with a honeycomb fitted AND the modelling lamp on, which is very risky, even though the modelling lamp is only 50W it will still get very hot without ventilation

 

[CraigF]

Hi Garry and thanks for the reply.
I felt the light unit and it was stone cold hance the reason i figured that was a bit far fetched. Modeling light was always off apart from when i first set it up and put it on to see how shadows and such were.
Would you recommend buying their wireless trigger? Its only £15 and in all honesty i would prefer that to cables hanging around anyway.
Cheers

 

[Garry Edwards]

IMO even the cheapest radio triggers are much more reliable than synch leads. The problem is, all manufacturers now use very low (>6v) voltage to fire the lights, mainly to avoid damaging some of the Canon cameras, which are very fragile in that department. The downside of low trigger voltage is that they only work if the connection is 100%.

But before you get a radio trigger you might want to test your lights, because if there's a problem with the actual lights then I expect you'll want to send them back.

You can test very easily, simply by firing a hotshoe flash or a pop up flash. If the lights are working then the slave will pick up the flash and fire your studio flash

 

[Jamesbuk]

I had a similar problem today whilst using someone elses studio kit.. basically every so often one of the lights wouldn't fire (the slave) and this turnt out to be because the master light had a soft box on, on a relatively low power and the slave wasnt detecting the light flash.. so by juicing the power on the master a tad they both worked perfectly.

So I would suggest playing with the power levels a bit and seeing if this fixes your problem.

Regards, James

 

[CraigF]

Just an update. Emailed the guy i dealt with at stable imaging and he gave me a few things to try. Havent had time yet but i also ordered a wireless trigger.
No nonsense from him either, said they would happily replace any part that wasnt working 100% as it should and if i wasnt entirely happy they would offer a full and no quibble refund.
I do really like the lights and their customer service appears to be excellent (email answered very promt and on a saturday) so i said if the wireless trigger does the job they can knock a little off a background setup for me.