# who can trigger an optical slave with their phone?



## qleak (Nov 17, 2014)

I have a nikon sb700 and my samsung galaxy s5 cannot trigger the optical slave. I've tried both camera apps and strobe apps to no avail.

Anyone have any luck triggering an optical slave with a phone? Let's talk about setups that have tried and failed and also those that have succeeded. 

Best,

-Q


----------



## tirediron (Nov 17, 2014)

Not that I've ever tried, this, but I'm curious... why would you want to?


----------



## Designer (Nov 18, 2014)

Once I had my flash set to slave, and went into the church choir loft to shoot the Christmas program.  Not only did my BI flash set it off, but so did everybody's cell phone flash.  At halftime I took it down.


----------



## qleak (Nov 18, 2014)

tirediron said:


> Not that I've ever tried, this, but I'm curious... why would you want to?



I wanna see just how good a cell phone camera can be. Light is the great equalizer in photography right?


----------



## qleak (Nov 18, 2014)

Designer said:


> Once I had my flash set to slave, and went into the church choir loft to shoot the Christmas program.  Not only did my BI flash set it off, but so did everybody's cell phone flash.  At halftime I took it down.



This sounds like a good reason to not have cell phones trigger the optical slave


----------



## Designer (Nov 18, 2014)

qleak said:


> This sounds like a good reason to not have cell phones trigger the optical slave



That was not part of my plan.  I simply did not think of other photographers when I made my setup.


----------



## astroNikon (Nov 18, 2014)

qleak said:


> tirediron said:
> 
> 
> > Not that I've ever tried, this, but I'm curious... why would you want to?
> ...


you'll have to control your shutter and aperture a bit better as off camera flash will add light, which you have to compensate for.  And some method to control the light output would help too.

From what I read in the past I thought a cell phone needed a Xenon flash to properly trigger a slave flash.  But I guess that isn't the case with the church issue above.

I was curious in the past too, but couldn't get anything to work.


----------



## photoguy99 (Nov 18, 2014)

Some slaves are more finicky than others. The good ones are looking for pretty specific signatures of a flash unit going off. Others, I suspect, can be triggered by any sudden bright light.


----------



## astroNikon (Nov 18, 2014)

photoguy99 said:


> Some slaves are more finicky than others. The good ones are looking for pretty specific signatures of a flash unit going off. Others, I suspect, can be triggered by any sudden bright light.


That would make sense.  I couldn't get my SB700/800s to react at all to my iPhone5


----------



## Designer (Nov 18, 2014)

I don't know anything about the iPhone5 flash, but supposed it has "red-eye reduction"?  Then if so, it is probably going to "pre-flash" which might throw the slave into a tizzy.


----------



## astroNikon (Nov 18, 2014)

Designer said:


> I don't know anything about the iPhone5 flash, but supposed it has "red-eye reduction"?  Then if so, it is probably going to "pre-flash" which might throw the slave into a tizzy.


Good point.  Unfortunately, I can't control that with the iPhone.
Plus I could never get the sb700 to flash, even pointed directly at it.
but I gave up quickly, it was just an experiment.


----------



## qleak (Nov 18, 2014)

Designer said:


> I don't know anything about the iPhone5 flash, but supposed it has "red-eye reduction"?  Then if so, it is probably going to "pre-flash" which might throw the slave into a tizzy.



I think some phones also have a focus guide pre-flash that cannot be disabled also...



photoguy99 said:


> Some slaves are more finicky than others. The good ones are looking for pretty specific signatures of a flash unit going off. Others, I suspect, can be triggered by any sudden bright light.



With the SB700 i got the impression that it is more about how quickly the light popped. I have accidentally triggered my SB700 in a dark room by flicking on a CFL lightbulb.


----------



## MOREGONE (Nov 18, 2014)

astroNikon said:


> From what I read in the past I thought a cell phone needed a Xenon flash to properly trigger a slave flash.  But I guess that isn't the case with the church issue above.



This is my understanding as well. There are very few phones with Xenon flashes. Mostly Nokia 808 pureview, 1020, 928. then from Samsung you have the S4 and S5 Zoom's that have Xenon too. 

Really surprised by @Designer's experience, what type of flash was that?


----------



## Designer (Nov 18, 2014)

Nikon SB-910  on a light stand up about 9 feet above the floor.  

I wondered about what the other people thought when they looked at their photos and saw what that flash did to their shots.


----------



## astroNikon (Nov 18, 2014)

of course the next question is .. what is needed to hook the iphone up to be able to do radio triggers ...


----------



## D-B-J (Nov 18, 2014)

Couldn't you focus on a really bright source of light to lower the exposure to make it perfect for when the flashes popped? IF it did work...


----------

