R
Ranger 9
Guest
I brought my Panasonic G1 to work today so I could use it for some overhead shots of prototype food products (none of the office cameras have articulating LCDs, so the Pana is more convenient.)
I was triggering the flash power pack via a "generic Chinese eBay" wireless flash trigger (made by YinHe Technology) and was surprised to find that the G1 would fire the flash on only about one out of three or four tries.
This was surprising since the trigger works fine on our office Canon EOS cameras, and I had used the G1 with flash via PocketWizards with a 100% success rate.
So I tried getting the YinHe transmitter off the camera flash shoe by using an off-camera cable... and found that once I did this, it triggered the flash flawlessly.
My guess is that something about the G1 (possibly the LCD) puts out enough stray RF to scramble the circuitry in the YinHe transmitter, which has a low-profile design that puts its circuitry very close to the camera body.
I infer that this isn't a problem with the PocketWizards because they use different frequencies, are less vulnerable to interference, have a vertical design that puts the guts farther from the camera, have an external antenna that delivers a stronger signal, or some combination of these factors.
Anyway, the takeaway is that if you use a wireless flash trigger on your G1 and find it's less reliable than usual, try getting it farther away from the camera (or maybe shielding it?) and this may resolve the problem.
I was triggering the flash power pack via a "generic Chinese eBay" wireless flash trigger (made by YinHe Technology) and was surprised to find that the G1 would fire the flash on only about one out of three or four tries.
This was surprising since the trigger works fine on our office Canon EOS cameras, and I had used the G1 with flash via PocketWizards with a 100% success rate.
So I tried getting the YinHe transmitter off the camera flash shoe by using an off-camera cable... and found that once I did this, it triggered the flash flawlessly.
My guess is that something about the G1 (possibly the LCD) puts out enough stray RF to scramble the circuitry in the YinHe transmitter, which has a low-profile design that puts its circuitry very close to the camera body.
I infer that this isn't a problem with the PocketWizards because they use different frequencies, are less vulnerable to interference, have a vertical design that puts the guts farther from the camera, have an external antenna that delivers a stronger signal, or some combination of these factors.
Anyway, the takeaway is that if you use a wireless flash trigger on your G1 and find it's less reliable than usual, try getting it farther away from the camera (or maybe shielding it?) and this may resolve the problem.