Friday, June 25, 2010

DIY Optical Slave trigger

So I have a number of ebay radio triggers for triggering off camera flashes. After modifying the transmitter to get reliable operation I have been quite happy with them. The problem I have with the receivers is that I keep forgetting to turn the power off on them when I done with them.

I also have a Canon A570 IS point and shoot camera and I would like to be able to use off camera flash with it. It has no hot shoe and no other flash trigger output. So I figure I could use some optical triggers for my flash use. I can set the P&S camera for minimal flash output (not that it has a very powerful flash) and optically trigger some remote flash units. Or I can still use an radio transmitter on the camera to cause a a remote flash to fire and that flash can trigger the optical triggers firing additional flash units.

So do I head out and buy a bunch of optical slaves? No way, not me. Instead I make my own. So I take a look on the Internet to see what others have done. Very little out there and I was not happy with the little I found. The better design required a battery to operate the circuit. But I didn't want to have to bother with batteries and power switches that I forget to turn off. So I come up with the following (for those with an electronic background and just wanna know).