Help with flashes!

[Pyro Steve]

I dont know alot about flashes but hopefully someone here can help me. I want a flash to hotshoe mount on to my 350d which will produce a series of flashes at set intervals while holding the shutter open in bulb mode..anyone know what im on about? any links? cheap and cheerful is best too

[soapdis]

hi im to sure wot u wanna do,but a cheap way of firing a flash at regulated intervals would be from another camera(old slr will do)with no film in it,
postion the flash and fire,with cable realse away u go,other wise doen camera shop with lots of money .if u want 2 flashes synced they do sell flashs with light senors that work with your camera flash.mainly used to fill in.i worked at colab one of europes biggest labs back in the day of silver and i used this tecniquie there with some strange results.have fun hope i helped

[slartibartfast]

Canon flash units have a stroboscopic feature, where you can set the frequency of flashes but this in mainly intended for short duration stuff, with the maximum being 1 flash per second.

You can also fire most flashes manually, although that's no good if you want to leave it unattended. Other that that I can't really think of anything cheap that's commercially available to do what you want.

What sort of effect are you trying to create ?

[Pyro Steve]

"Canon flash units have a stroboscopic feature, where you can set the frequency of flashes but this in mainly intended for short duration stuff, with the maximum being 1 flash per second."

This sounds about right for what I want!

Basically I am doing photos at my universiry student union at different events, I want to capture people dancing..with the affect of motion. I can do this by firing the 305d on board flash and then holding the shutter open..which gives a blured effect. However i want a more stroboscopic effect in the photos.

slartibartfast: which flashes have stroboscopic features? maybe a sigma version etc? will it say "stroboscopic" or be defined as something else?

[Deadly]

Would buying an actual strobe light achieve this effect? i realise a strobe you need to plug in isn't exactly portable, but for arguments sake, would that work? ie, set a strobe at a flash rate your happy with, then just open the camera shutter for whatever length of time your happy with?

[Pyro Steve]

Deadly, yeah that does work, ive done that before and it gives nice results..like a ball bouncing etc. However as you said not very portable

[Deadly]

Always wanted to try that, ie someone swinging a tennis racket or something, could make some interesting photos.

[Pyro Steve]

I think the SIGMA EF-500 DG SUPER seems to be a good bet..as I cant afford the Canon version of the same kind of flash...

[slartibartfast]

The SIGMA EF-500 DG SUPER does have a multi pulse feature. It's limited to a maximum of 1/4 power when using it though.

You can download the manual from here if you want to have a read.