Trouble Shooting
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situations, a certain number of mis-fires will occur purely attributable to inconsistencies in the Master and Slave flash
system itself. As the RadioPopper P1 system simply repeats the signal with a high degree of accuracy, these mis-fires
attributable solely to the flash system itself will still happen.
3. Your camera’s metering system must be able to observe the amount of light being emitted by the wireless Slave
during the Pre-Flash. If it doesn’t see this light, it will not command the flash to emit a Main Flash. If you’re shooting
at long ranges (and we know you’ll go outside and try it down the street - right?) - remember you’re shooting much
beyond the range your camera’s metering system was intended to be able to measure this Pre-Flash.
If you’re shooting with anything other than a tight telephoto lens at these longer ranges, or if the Slave flash is hidden to
such an extent that it contributes very little light, you’ll notice much reduced reliability. In these situations, you should
set your Slave flash to operate in Manual mode. Some Master flash devices allow you to remotely adjust the setting of
the wireless Slave from the Master device. This (with most hardware) eliminates the whole pre-flash logic which should
greatly improve reliability in these longer range situations.
4. Consider the Recycle Time of your remote flashes. When shooting wireless, you tend to shoot faster than usual
without waiting for a full recycle. You’ve also probably got that flash placed some distance away from the subject which
means it’s firing at a higher power, causing further delay to recycle. This also applies with High Speed Sync - which tends
to make your Slave flash cycle more deeply.
A flash that is not completely recycled will often still emit a pre-flash but won’t have enough ‘charge’ to fire the main
flash. Also note that the red blinking “beacon” light on the front of the flash (on Canon hardware) often starts blinking
before the flash is actually fully recycled. You may need to wait a couple seconds after this beacon starts blinking before
actually taking the next shot.
Sidenote: We HIGHLY recommend PowerEx rechargeable NiMH batteries for your flashes. They cycle way faster than
anything else off the shelf, even with the external battery pack. They haven’t paid us to say that, we just think they’re
awesome. Get them at mahaenergy.com.
5. Sometimes a Slave flash may get confused and stop responding correctly. No kidding. This happens without the P1
Radio system also - many people have had the experience of a Slave flash acting “funny” when using the ‘line of sight’
system even without the RadioPopper P1 system.
This “getting confused” seems to have more to do with the Slave flash than the P1 Radio. To “un-confuse” it, try pressing
the Pilot button on the back of your Master Flash or IR Commander. This should cause all slave flashes to emit a short
pop of light indicating they are alive. This also seems to “clear” any confusion. Do this Pilot operation a couple times to
be sure.
6. Try changing the ETTL channel on your flashes. This sounds strange, but even before the RadioPopper system came
along, many photographers have found greater reliability on certain ETTL channels. If you’re using a SpeedLite 550EX as
your master, set it to ETTL channel 4, or 3 as an alternate as it won’t work on ETTL channels 1 or 2.
7. Check your batteries. All of them. There is no “auto cut off” when the batteries in your P1 Transmitter and P1 Receivers
