*ist DL and Xtra Flash

Help!!!

I have today got my Xtra Flash unit from Pentax User and tried it a number times

The problem seams to be that the Xtra Flash goes off to quickly ( I know this as I've taken a picture of it and the Xtra flash should of shown in the picture)

I've turned the red eye off, and even done a 1 second exposure to try to pick up the flash to no avail

Any ideas anyone

Thanks, Ian

Surely it's not possible for the Xtra flash to fire before the one attached to the camera - unless you're using the anti-redeye preflash!

It must therefore be a synchronisation issue.

There is a miniscule delay between the light leaving the camera's gun, being detected by the Xtra flash's sensor and the light from the Xtra flash getting back to the camera.........so perhaps the shutter has already closed!

The relationship between flash power and camera to subject distance is critical and more complicated when a secondarily flash is added to the equation.

I've very little experience of using flash setups but I'm sure someone will come up with a full explanation but if the Xtra flash output isn't registering, it must be too late rather than too early - which would explain why it doesn't show up on the long exposure

The Preflash of the P-TTL of the on camera flash is triggering the xtraflash before the shutter opens. Unfortunately I don't think you can turn the P-TTL off when using the built-in flash.

The XtraFlash can only be used with cameras with either no pre-flash or where the pre-flash can be turned off.

you need one flash unit on camera that won't fire a preflash to fire any slave flashes unles you have programable slaves that'll ignore the preflash.
you cannot use the built in flash because it'll always preflash.
you can however, set your slaved flash to a lower power setting and use slow sync and/or 2nd curtain sync, your external flash will fire both on pre-flash and second flash but the second flash should sync at least

Also, if you enable red-eye reduction there's about a one second pause between the preflash and the main flash, and hopefully the slave will have recovered in that time.

Matt