I've heard there is a way to use your pop-up camera flash to trigger another flash off camera?
Anyone heard of this?
How is it done?
I have a 30D and a 580ex.

Thanks so much!









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i think you can do that with a nikon but not with the canon. you'll need either an ST-E2 or a speedlight mounted on the body to trigger another flash.

Wei is right you can not do it with canon currently but you may be talking about optical slaves on the off camera flashes. This would allow you to trigger them but then they would also go off with any other flash in the area as well.

Wein makes some optical triggers for almost any flash unit.

The problem with optical slaves is the built-in always fires a pre-flash. That pre-flash will trigger the slave, most likely causing the second exposure flash to not trigger. I don't know of any way to set the internal flash to manual.

It would work with a SpeedLite, since it can be set to Manual control which disables the pre-flash.

Wein also makes some optical slaves that take into consideration the TTL pre flash and do not go off until the second or main flash.

It all depends on what you are wanting to do.

I might be wrong, but I think two 580's can be set up so that the off-camera is a slave and the oncamera flash is a non-triggering master.

In the past, I've used a Sigma DG Super in Master mode, choosing the mode where the Master didn't contribute any light. I then set the 580 to slave. The Sigma did fire, but it was set low enough to not add any light to the scene. Worked in a pinch .