Inconsistent firing of Strato rcvr by my Odin on a shoot

[jonathan7007]

I had a little 270 speedlite tucked in the area above a stove for an interior shot of a kitchen. Needed a kick light down on the stove surface. (The articulation of that little head/reflector is a added benefit.) There was some Gorilla tape holding it and the Strato Multi receiver in a corner. Wel, maybe a lot of tape... enough to cover the assemblage. Odin controller was on the top of the camera not far away. Sometimes the 270 would not go off. Sometimes it seemed like it lagged a part of a second behind the flash of the units that had Odin receivers. (I agree that this is hard to judge just by eye...) There are frames with no 270-included flash. Tape the culprit? There's no metal in the tape to act as a shield.

I bought one Strato to try out with the Odins because I usually set up this kind of work with plain old manual settings. I have Vivitars in addition to some Canon speedlites, and these Vivitars are always going to be manual. But I discovered that the Strato will not fire any of the Vivitars. I wrote Phottix to ask why but their first answer shows they are not yet sure what I am asking. I know Stratos are supposed to co-exist with Odins in a complex lighting setup but I wonder if I made a mistake? I need to trigger a Norman studio flash in 9 days for a shoot! (the pack needs a solder connection fixed so have not been able to test it yet.)

Thoughts?

jonathan7007

 

[wickidwombat]

i got a stratto 2 to test with my odins aswell for firing elinchrom strobes
I found it was not consistant too, I have not done a lot of testing but it took a while to get it to fire the elinchroms once it started to communicate it was all good then i turned everything off and came back and it had comms problems again. Maybe there is an order to turn everything on in?

Was your firing relatively consistant? or did you have breaks which may have let the 270 go to sleep?

 

[jonathan7007]

WW,
I noticed on another shoot that the 270 does go to sleep and there is no way to change that... makes its use on a set (room, whatever) problematic. Thanks for bringing it up as a factor. I will have to time the function and fire a "test" every once in a while before that unit of time is "up" -- to keep all the pieces awake. Have you found that you have to turn off the 270 and turn it on again? Because if so, wrapping these puppies up in tape like that -- making the switch inaccessible -- will never be a good idea in the kind of unattended use I needed on Wednesday!

I am about to repair (one solder connection in the sync outlet) a big Norman pack this evening and hope it will be fired by the Strato Multi. I can save a little by getting more Strato Multi's for these non-ETTL pieces.

Phottix did write back to say that they were surprised the Vivitar 285s I have did not fire with the Strato -- especially as the Odin rcvr fired those same Vivitars.

In their message they suggested, "Dear [email protected],
New answer was just posted on your ticket: Multi does not fire Vivitar 285HV.
Answer: Below is the reply from our tech support service: Is the LED on the Strato II Rx changing color - ie. is it receiving a signal from the Odin TCU? If the LED is lighting up and the Strato II Rx is receiving the signal I would say there is a problem with the unit as it will not fire from the cable or hot shoe. If the LED in (is?) NOT lighting up this could be user error in setting channels/groups (likely) or a faulty Rx. The flash - the Vivitar 285 - should trigger from the Strato II. We can't say for sure on the Studio pack. Most likely, yes. But, there are some packs that have non-standard polarity in the sync port."

OK, I am sure the groups and channel settings were matched with the sender/controller, so I will watch the little light on the leading edge when I test in a hour or so.

Will post back!

jonathan70007

 

[wickidwombat]

I dont have a 270 so not sure on the details but I am pretty sure its a communication problem between the odin and stratto once the comms is lost it seems to have a problem re-establishing automattically like an all odin setup does

have you tried the 3.5mm jack out of the stratto into the vivitars? its just a dumb signal and should fire (Also note i've tested this with a 3.5mm audio splitter cable allows 1 stratto reciever to fire 2 manual flash heads!

nice and cheap!

 

[jonathan7007]

Stratto rcvr is, tonight, firing my three Vivitars on every shutter release. I got out one of the Norman power packs and it fires that through the cord-out port on the back of the unit.

Fantastic!

I have NO idea what was wrong before. It wasn't channel or group mismatch... Wicked, I had tried the hard connection solution the first time around, because I have cords with the proprietary Vivitar connection plug. That didn't work then. Tonight the flash was working through the shoe.

I love hearing I can make/buy a splitter!

Thanks for the reply. Saturday's shoot depends on my Norman gear. I feel a LOT better, and don't have to return the Strato.

jonathan7007

 

[Stickman]

Did it ever work out?