issue with multiple strobe functionality D800E

I have two SB-700 Speedlight strobes and a D800E. I have a custom ring strobe plugged into the sync port and I wish to trigger the SB-700s from this ring strobe. My understanding is, the D800E uses the built-in flash to trigger the SB-700s when they're in "Remote", whether the built-in flash is active or not. The problem is when you hit the pop-up for the built-in flash, you disable the sync out, it's one or the other. Can anybody suggest a workaround? Many thanks.

The sb-700 has an optical slave mode. When you are in Remote, set it to SU4 mode rather than 'advanced'. I can't tell you much more than that, I'm not well versed in flash. This might not work with cheap led ring lights, but if the ring is a real strobe it should work.

You have to set your SB-700s to optical slave mode (SU4, I think). That way, the light of the ring flash will trigger the SB-700s to fire. It won't be TTL metering, however.

Hah, you beat me by a minute.

Blade Canyon said:

It won't be TTL metering, however.

Click to expand...

If the ring flash is triggered off the sync port, it's not TTL either, right? I think it could be kind of a weird result if the ring flash was manual and not participating the in the TTL pre-flash, and then the SB-700s tried to use TTL. I would think all manual flash would be the way to go in this case?

Okay, I found the SU-4 setting, see it works with the pop-up flash or one of the SB-700s mounted on the hot shoe, but alas not with my custom ring strobe. nickt said this doesn't work with cheap ring strobes, so I'm curious what specification is missing here. My custom strobe certainly wasn't cheap, but I struggle to see how the pulse of one strobe could be any "cheaper" from one LED to the next. We had to tune the pulse precisely to the curtain, not to get partial exposure as the curtain rises or drops, all that is working fine. What could be missing? Thanks for the input. I'm in manual BTW.

Another idea, depending on how far apart your lights are: buy a cheap optical slave and attach it to the LED ring light. (Let it hang.) Optical slaves that just trigger a manual flash can be bought for as cheap as $20.

Then plug one of the SB-700s into your camera with a long sync cord. That way, the camera fires one SB-700, and the ring flash and the other 700 fire as optical slaves.

Or get a radio trigger for one SB-700...

I don't know exactly what the slave needs to see, but I think it needs high intensity and fast. Not sure led's can deliver the 'punch'. I only said 'cheap' because I wasn't tracking there better led flashes out there now. I'm still thinking they might not have enough power and/or speed to trigger.

That's all great info, thank you. I'm aware LEDs release their energy more slowly than flashtubes, can see the no punch issue. For that, they can fire longer, mine kicks out 280,000 lumens continuous for up to 1/8 second (could be a video light with adequate thermal regulation and a higher capacitance controller). Oh, so just checked out Phottix Ares wireless receiver set, transmitter sits on the hotshoe, receiver attaches to SB-700, doesn't disable sync out port, that'll work. Many thanks.

It sounds like we haven't completely identified the cause, but I think nickt and Blade are on the right path. My guess is the LED ring flash doesn't have the intensity in the direction of the SB-700s to trip their optical slave.

Not to add more hardware into the mix, but it might be possible to have 3 Yongnuo 622s complete the trigger setup. One 622 would be in the hotshoe, and would use a sync cable from it to the ring flash (rather than the sync cable going to the camera body). The two SB-700s would each have their own 622 to trigger them, or have one SB-700 optically slaved from the other SB-700 to cut down on the trigger count.

Am I off base here?

I just looked up the Yongnuo 622, this one happened to say it was for Canon, assume they also support Nikon, and looks like it would work equally well, though one thing I noticed about the sync out port is that it doesn't feature a screw lock. The sync connectors are surely the cheesiest connectors ever, easily open up and make for loose connections. The screw in type will also screw you though, if you're not ready for the cheapness inside those from Hong Kong. While testing the custom strobe, we weren't aware of an unrelated issue causing the strobe not to fire, and thinking the connection might not be solid, I turned the connecter itself against the rotating screw-in lock. It took hardly any force to snap the tiny lead inside, as the design provides no lock against that happening, had to endure highly tedious rewiring of the sync chord coming out of the ring strobe.

BenjyvC said:

I'm aware LEDs release their energy more slowly than flashtubes, can see the no punch issue. For that, they can fire longer, mine kicks out 280,000 lumens continuous for up to 1/8 second.

Click to expand...

Well that explains why I'm getting motion blur in flash pics on my Samsung Galaxy Note 5.