Digital slaves - what are they?

If I choose to try some 'cheap' slave flash units to supplement the pop-up flash of my DS2, or a 360 flash that I might buy soon, I believe they'll need to be what some people have called 'digital flashguns'.

This, they say, is to avoid them firing when the first 'evalution' flash of the camera's flash fires.

If this is the case - and I can see the logic, what do I look for, say, on Ebay or elsewhere?

Do you know of any makes/models that I could look at?

Hope you can help.

John

You are correct. The *ist-series fire a preflash that will "fool" the slave into discharging completely.

There are three options you have open:

1. Use a dumb flash on the hotshoe and dumb slaves. The dumb flash will fire once, and the slaves will trigger correctly. This is what you'll get when using studio type flash equipment.

2. Use the pop up flash, and get a newer slave that can be programmed (or is already set) to ignore the preflash of digital cameras.

3. Use the AF360/540 in the correct slave mode. They have a choice of either "dumb" slave triggering (as in 1), or digital slave.

To be honest, it depends on how controlled your conditions are. If you want to do portraiture, then option 1 is a fine way to go - with Elinchroms or Bowens flash units. Hard to beat even with the dedicated guns. But in that situation there's not much variability. Studio lighting will give you tons of light, lots of manual control to get things just right.
On the other hand, if you're doing weddings, or snaps, then your requirements will be different again (maybe)!

Hope that helps!
Matt