Studio lighting for a real beginner

[harlyn]

I want to experiment with studio lighting for portraits of friends and family. I ordered a mid price 'kit' which consisted of 3 x B Series master flash heads, 3 x sync cords for wired connection, various light modifiers, 1 universal radio trigger and a backdrop. I set one light up and the backdrop and fixed the sync cord from my camera (5D) to the back of the strobe. I tested the strobe which flashed correctly. My question is: what settings do I put the camera on to make the strobe fire? Let me just say that there were absolutely no instructions with this kit! I'm getting very frustrated because no settings I try seem to work consistently. I've tried manual, setting the shutter speed to 1/125 but I can't get a reading even with the aperture wide open. I pointed the camera at the softbox and locked the exposure, focussed on my subject and the strobe fired. When I did exactly the same thing 30 seconds later, the strobe did not fire. What am I doing wrong?! Someone help before I go mad!!

Lindsay

[Anbesol]

Are they attached wirelessly, or wired? What mode have you set your camera to, and what flash type do you have selected in it? Are you using hotshoe connection?

[icicle]

Welcome to the site.

I don't have any experince with studio lighting, so I'm going to put my .02 cents out here anyway.

You mentioned you had bought a radio trigger, did you happen to buy the receivers for the other strobes?
Maybe your strobes need a longer wait time to recharge?
Or maybe you have a loose conection some place?
Is your pop up flash on the camera up?

Best of luck to you.

[harlyn]

Thanks for your input! I think I've resolved the problem: I used the radio trigger instead of the sync cord and hey presto, everything works just fine! Didn't anticipate that a sync cord straight out of the box wouldn't work correctly!

regards
Lindsay

[Celebrity maniac]

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