Cactus Wireless Flash Transciever V5 Duo Review

[arich]

Originally Posted by Redneck

Again, how do you fire the main light through a V5 at a higher speed than 1/250s without seeing a dark curtain?

I don't believe you can.

Does anyone know if these prerelease cables could function for the V5's as well?
http://www.flashzebra.com/shutter_pw/0090.shtml

[fotobug57]

So am I assuming correctly from what you are saying is that even if you mount your speedlight onto the hotshoe of the V5 that is in the camera's hotshoe, you do not have a direct connection with the camera?

[fotobug57]

Originally Posted by Redneck

Kent, thanks for the feedback but that doesn't prove anything since you are putting the SB-800 in the hot shoe of the cam (without V5, so it will get the high speed sync information directly from the camera and not from the V5). I doubt that you will actually see if the other V5 triggered lights fired in high speed sync or not.
We all can shoot high speed syncs way over 1/250s without the Cactus V5. The question still remains how to do it with or through the V5.

Again, how do you fire the main light through a V5 at a higher speed than 1/250s without seeing a dark curtain?

I am assuming from what you are telling me that if you have your flash mounted on the hotshoe of the V5 that is in your camera's hotshoe, there is no direct communication between the camera and flash?
You still have to have at least one Auto FP compatible flash connected directly to the camera. The setup that I described previously did eliminate the dark curtain, but as far as just firing thru the V5 (or V4) only, it does not work in my experience...you have to have at least one compatible flash connected directly to the camera. And while the flash being in the hotshoe, prevented me from attaching the trigger normally, I was still able to connect the trigger to the PC terminal on the flash and therefore I was able to get the other flashes to fire and still eliminate the dark curtain.

[Redneck]

Well yes, that's the problem. If you put, let's say, an SB600 on a V5 mounted on the camera you can't get sync speeds faster than 1/250s without curtain because the V5 won't pass through any TTL or whatever signals.
Of course you can put the SB600 directly on the camera and shoot in FP high speed sync but that doesn't have anything to do with the V5. And how would you even know if the high speed sync works over the PC port (without curtain) when your main light (directly connected to the camera) is already illuminating your motif?

[brewercm]

Originally Posted by Redneck

Well yes, that's the problem. If you put, let's say, an SB600 on a V5 mounted on the camera you can't get sync speeds faster than 1/250s without curtain because the V5 won't pass through any TTL or whatever signals.
Of course you can put the SB600 directly on the camera and shoot in FP high speed sync but that doesn't have anything to do with the V5. And how would you even know if the high speed sync works over the PC port (without curtain) when your main light (directly connected to the camera) is already illuminating your motif?

I guess you could test how the other flashes are working if you put some good old electrical or duct tape over the flash that's on the camera hotshoe. I'll bet that you are still getting the black line from the shutter though since the only high speed sync flash would be covered up.

I don't have the cactus triggers so I can't test this theory.

[fotobug57]

Originally Posted by Redneck

Well yes, that's the problem. If you put, let's say, an SB600 on a V5 mounted on the camera you can't get sync speeds faster than 1/250s without curtain because the V5 won't pass through any TTL or whatever signals.
Of course you can put the SB600 directly on the camera and shoot in FP high speed sync but that doesn't have anything to do with the V5. And how would you even know if the high speed sync works over the PC port (without curtain) when your main light (directly connected to the camera) is already illuminating your motif?

Seems that the answer is obviously that you cannot get high-speed sync thru the V5's. The setup with the V4's I was describing was a way I found to get around that obstacle...as long as one Auto FP capable flash is in the camera's hot shoe, you can eliminate the curtain. Now you have to trigger the other flashes that are in the receivers...with my SB-800, no problem...just connect the trigger to the flash's PC terminal and it will fire the other flashes (of course they will not be affected by the Auto FP setting...if you didn't have the flash in the hot shoe. you would still get the black curtain, but since that one flash in the hot shoe will take care of eliminating the black curtain, it does not matter if the other flashes are syncing at the higher shutter speed, the black curtain has already been eliminated. in other words...you only need the one flash set to to auto FP...the other ones won't matter if they sync. Now one problem this will present for the SB600 is that the 600 does not have a PC connector so you will have the challenge of finding a way to trigger the transmitter so that your other flashes will fire (perhaps by an optical sensor that could trigger the transmitter) Again, while this set up was done with the V4's, it should also work with the V5's.

[Redneck]

O.K., I've been heavily working (studio and outdoors) with two sets of Cactus V5s over the last 4 weeks and I thought I might add a little bit to this review.

Good thing first, I can't remember I had a single misfire so it does what it is supposed to do.

Now the bad things.

1. NO high speed sync possible, as promised in product descriptions and user manual, with both of my bodies (Nikon D300 and D700). Maximum sync speed: 1/250s. That's it.

2. The battery drawer opens very easy. When I touched the V5 and tried to either put it in the hotshoe of the cam or to pull it off, it opened the drawer and the batteries might fall out. At the beginning I lost the batteries almost every time I tried to attach the V5 to or take it off the cam.

3. There is no "incativity switch off or low power standby" function. So if you forget to switch the V5 off after the shoot, the batterie power will be lost the next day you need it. This still happens to me at almost every shoot and it is very annoying. These little suckers will eat your batteries up whenever you forget to switch them off.


Thought some people might be interested in a "real working world" experience.

[groovyone]

Andre,

Sounds like those things have not improved from the V4s then. Thanks for the update!

[arich]

Originally Posted by Redneck

O.K., I've been heavily working (studio and outdoors) with two sets of Cactus V5s over the last 4 weeks and I thought I might add a little bit to this review.

Good thing first, I can't remember I had a single misfire so it does what it is supposed to do.

Now the bad things.

1. NO high speed sync possible, as promised in product descriptions and user manual, with both of my bodies (Nikon D300 and D700). Maximum sync speed: 1/250s. That's it.

2. The battery drawer opens very easy. When I touched the V5 and tried to either put it in the hotshoe of the cam or to pull it off, it opened the drawer and the batteries might fall out. At the beginning I lost the batteries almost every time I tried to attach the V5 to or take it off the cam.

3. There is no "incativity switch off or low power standby" function. So if you forget to switch the V5 off after the shoot, the batterie power will be lost the next day you need it. This still happens to me at almost every shoot and it is very annoying. These little suckers will eat your batteries up whenever you forget to switch them off.


Thought some people might be interested in a "real working world" experience.

Yeah the kinda sorta claim for HSS is annoying as all it means is that cameras that support higher than normal sync speeds (like the D70) can use that with the V5's.

My battery trays have been very solid, maybe you can get them to replace yours?

The switch thing is annoying but as someone who came from cybersyncs with NO power switch just having one is an upgrade.

I will say that they have great range and I've never had a misfire, the remote trigger function is also really nice, though I seem to have misplaced the sync cable

[biggin]

My complaint with the battery trays is a bit different, they do seem to want to pop out pretty quickly but to put them back in you have to pull them out a bit and push them back in... would be nice if I could just push back in quicker.