It never fails. You are in the studio. You have set up the perfect shot, with 3 metres square of product, two anorexic models, enough flashes to be seen from space, and an alpaca. Neither the models nor the alpaca will take direction and the alpaca has been eating something all morning....this is a shot that needs to be done ...now.
You reach for your trusty radio trigger. Dead battery. No spare battery in your studio cabinet.
You reach for the good old synch cord. It has been wrapped up tightly and has a good old break in the wire somewhere in the 5 metre length.
You reach for the aspirin bottle.
If you are lucky enough to be using a Nikon D300, D700, or D800 you hurriedly dive into the menu and select Manual for the control that deals with the pop-up flash. Then you dial it down to 1/128 power, put your hand in front of the flash to shield the subjects from the flash, and fire it to see if it will trigger the IR receptors on your studio flash units. Yes? Let the alpaca loose and shoot that shot!
Or you could keep a new spare radio trigger in case your old valve and steam job packs it up. ( Note I have one so old that it is marked as the property of Benjamin Franklin...). We have the Hahnel units for a mere $ 110 that will do remote triggering of speed lights and for $ 20 more you can get a plug-in synch cord that goes into a Bowens flash.A little jiggery pokery and you can get that pulse into an Elinchrom.
Note for the studio cleaning lady - the alpaca was fine. That's actually one of the anorexic models. Sorry about that.
