Lighting Tutorial
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To expand on this a bit - you need to get the camera's trigger signal to the strobe. If your camera has a hot shoe, there are adapters that go into the shoe (just like a speedlight does) that have a PC port; they're just a little "block" with the male shoe on the bottom and a PC connector on the front; some have a female shoe on top of you want to use an on-camera flash and an external flash.
If your camera or lens has a PC attachment, you can cable up to that.
Radio triggers are the most convenient things - no cables snaking around, nothing to trip on that will knock your camera over, and the PC connecter is a real POS that can fall out easily, so having it wired to a radio trigger on a cold shoe keeps it from being knocked around. You can get a cheap set of Chinese triggers for fifteen bucks or so (Amazon, Adorama, etc). They generally have a 1/8 or smaller mono plug and a shoe connection and come with cables, some also come with adapters for larger mono plugs. But in my experience, they don't work with some older gear - the cheap ones won't get a signal from my RB lenses or from my Minolta Spotmeter F. Maybe older/more butch trigger circuits with too much resistance? I dunno.
The old Quantum Radio Slaves work with everything I've tried them on, but the transmitters and receivers are huge and clunky, like a pack of smokes. Your best bet on a budget (if the Chinese stuff doesn't work) is look for a used set of Pocket Wizards. The original ones are small and have 4 channels with a mechanical slider (1-4) switch. Some models are receivers or transmitters, some are transceivers which can be set to send or receive. Later models have an LCD screen and many more channels and you set them via up-down buttons; but channels 1-4 on those will work with the older 4-channel models, so you can mix and match. It can be handy to have more than one receiver if you have lights spread around a set or are using very direct lighting that won't trip an optical slave. (Most monolights have an optical slave built in, which senses the pulse of a flash and fires the monolight at the same time).
You can buy little optical slaves - the Wein "peanut" slaves are popular, and they have various synch connectors available. So if your optical slave isn't in a place where it can "see" the flash, you can hook a little peanut to an extension cable and stick it in the set somewhere.
The most common synch ports I've seen are the PC connector, 1/4" mono (think electric guitar cable), 1/8" mono (like headphones but only 2 connectors, TS vs. TRS), and the even smaller-than-1/8" mono connector. Some older units (Speedotron in particular) use a 2-blade connector that's the same as an ungrounded U.S. household electrical plug. Those are handy since you can use a lightweight, common household extension cord if you need to wire them to an optical slave, but I don't think any manufacturer still uses that for synch. But it's easy to end up with a range of flashes with different connectors (I've made a reflector holder to get Speedotron reflectors on old Vivitar 285 flashes - handy for outdoors, but the Vivitar has its own proprietary connector). So being decent at soldering can be very handy, you can buy the various male and female connectors and make whatever cables you might need.
If your camera or lens has a PC attachment, you can cable up to that.
Radio triggers are the most convenient things - no cables snaking around, nothing to trip on that will knock your camera over, and the PC connecter is a real POS that can fall out easily, so having it wired to a radio trigger on a cold shoe keeps it from being knocked around. You can get a cheap set of Chinese triggers for fifteen bucks or so (Amazon, Adorama, etc). They generally have a 1/8 or smaller mono plug and a shoe connection and come with cables, some also come with adapters for larger mono plugs. But in my experience, they don't work with some older gear - the cheap ones won't get a signal from my RB lenses or from my Minolta Spotmeter F. Maybe older/more butch trigger circuits with too much resistance? I dunno.
The old Quantum Radio Slaves work with everything I've tried them on, but the transmitters and receivers are huge and clunky, like a pack of smokes. Your best bet on a budget (if the Chinese stuff doesn't work) is look for a used set of Pocket Wizards. The original ones are small and have 4 channels with a mechanical slider (1-4) switch. Some models are receivers or transmitters, some are transceivers which can be set to send or receive. Later models have an LCD screen and many more channels and you set them via up-down buttons; but channels 1-4 on those will work with the older 4-channel models, so you can mix and match. It can be handy to have more than one receiver if you have lights spread around a set or are using very direct lighting that won't trip an optical slave. (Most monolights have an optical slave built in, which senses the pulse of a flash and fires the monolight at the same time).
You can buy little optical slaves - the Wein "peanut" slaves are popular, and they have various synch connectors available. So if your optical slave isn't in a place where it can "see" the flash, you can hook a little peanut to an extension cable and stick it in the set somewhere.
The most common synch ports I've seen are the PC connector, 1/4" mono (think electric guitar cable), 1/8" mono (like headphones but only 2 connectors, TS vs. TRS), and the even smaller-than-1/8" mono connector. Some older units (Speedotron in particular) use a 2-blade connector that's the same as an ungrounded U.S. household electrical plug. Those are handy since you can use a lightweight, common household extension cord if you need to wire them to an optical slave, but I don't think any manufacturer still uses that for synch. But it's easy to end up with a range of flashes with different connectors (I've made a reflector holder to get Speedotron reflectors on old Vivitar 285 flashes - handy for outdoors, but the Vivitar has its own proprietary connector). So being decent at soldering can be very handy, you can buy the various male and female connectors and make whatever cables you might need.
Definitely refer back to your info as i progress...Thank You
BTW.....in my other lighting thread, Matt recommenced that i buy a book called, "Light, Science and Magic"..
It arrived just a few days ago.
My version wears a 1990 copyright.
Anyway, it is fabulous. I have only breezed through it, but it really explains things very well even for a beginner.
Maybe 100 years from now it might become obsolete, but for the foreseeable future, i cannot imagine there being a better book on the subject.
Thanks Again
BTW.....in my other lighting thread, Matt recommenced that i buy a book called, "Light, Science and Magic"..
It arrived just a few days ago.
My version wears a 1990 copyright.
Anyway, it is fabulous. I have only breezed through it, but it really explains things very well even for a beginner.
Maybe 100 years from now it might become obsolete, but for the foreseeable future, i cannot imagine there being a better book on the subject.
Thanks Again
MattKing
Moderator
You are welcome
.By the way, for the core of what it deals with, I don't think that that book can ever be obsolete. Light is light, and the way that we perceive light is unlikely to change in 100 years.
Some parts of the book deal with how one might use available equipment or light capturing tools/devices to make use of light. It is those parts that have changed to reflect current availability, and it is those parts that are vulnerable to obsolescence.
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