Overwhelmed with EM-10 FL600R and radio TTL control compatibility

Good morning,

I have been reading for a few days now on how I might be able to use my EM10 (or epl6) with my FL600R and some sort of wireless transceiver. I have been intrigued by the cactus v6 but understand I cannot use them to control power remotely (except using through TTL?) I have been led to believe that this cannot be changed through firmware due to pin configuration on the flash unit itself. Other than getting a compatible flash or a cactus RF60 what options are there? I have also seen that using the FL50R profile on the cactus will kind of work.

The most recent Q and A I could find on this topic is from first quarter 2015.

I hate to dredge up old questions but am unable to find a clear answer to this.

Thanks for reading .....

You can use the Olympus flash in Manual mode with power settings configured on the flash itself.  That should work with almost every cheap wireless trigger (Cactus, Yongnuo, etc.).  There is nothing to set on the camera and you won't get any metering or TTL capability.  You may have to experiment to find out what the fastest flash sync speed you can use (might be 1/200th or even slower with the radio triggered flash).

john isaacs wrote:

You cannot control the FL600 with the V6. You can control power of FL50/50R with a profile provided by Cactus. This works well and I use it often for portrait setups. The V6 can control 4 groups independently, so I can independently adjust power on key, fill, rim, and background lights.

...

If you use a normal TTL m43 flash like the FL600 on the V6 on the Olympus camera hotshoe, does it pass full TTL functionality through to the FL600, and at the same time figure out the preflashes, etc., and fire the remote flashes (from whatever vendor), AND all of that with remote manual power control of the other vendor flashes?

That is really cool!  Hard to believe it could be robust and reliable for that price!

Hi

I post here about a cheap fully TTL compatible radio trigger called the Aokatec AK-TTL. I use it and it works well. It takes a bit of setting up, but is worth checking out.

Thanks for all the responses so far...I think I understand what you are explaining.  Here is what I want to do:  I want to mount a trigger on my camera and use the in-camera manual settings to control off camera flash. I need a radio signal vs. the optical since I find that the FL600R needs to be in line of sight and is unpredictable.  Is the cactus overkill for this?

berni29 wrote:

Hi

I post here about a cheap fully TTL compatible radio trigger called the Aokatec AK-TTL. I use it and it works well. It takes a bit of setting up, but is worth checking out.

can you give us some more details? which flash you use with these triggers , at what distance (inside or outside), how the flash perform - as TTL radio flashes (camera adjust the power when reads exposure) or as dum radio slaves with manual control?

john isaacs wrote:

D Knisely wrote:

john isaacs wrote:

You cannot control the FL600 with the V6. You can control power of FL50/50R with a profile provided by Cactus. This works well and I use it often for portrait setups. The V6 can control 4 groups independently, so I can independently adjust power on key, fill, rim, and background lights.

...

If you use a normal TTL m43 flash like the FL600 on the V6 on the Olympus camera hotshoe, does it pass full TTL functionality through to the FL600, and at the same time figure out the preflashes, etc., and fire the remote flashes (from whatever vendor), AND all of that with remote manual power control of the other vendor flashes?

That is really cool! Hard to believe it could be robust and reliable for that price!

The V6 does not do pre-flash; it isn't a TTL trigger. Mount a V6 on camera, mount the FL600 on the V6, configure TTL pass through, and the FL600 will fire as a TTL flash as if it were the only flash in use. When the final signal to fire the flash is sent from the camera, the V6 sends signals to the other V6s to fire at specified power levels for each active group.

Yes, that's what I was asking. That's cool. Perfect for an on-camera (or cabled) TTL fill with fixed manual main, hair, and accent lights that are controllable from the camera.

They don't list SB-26, but that was a TTL flash. I wonder whether it can be trained? I think I have an SB-28 as well.

Torsten Hoff wrote:

Cactus is planning a new transceiver that will work with digital TTL flashes like the FL600R. Hardware limitations in the current V6 prevent it from being able to control the power output of these types of flashes.

Thanks Torsten.....maybe I will hold off until this happens....

Hi There

I use the triggers with the fL36r, fl600r and fl50r. The system converts the optical flashes to radio, and you can mix and match radio and optical. It works in full TTL or manual. In fact in any way the standard Olympus system works.

I have not used the system outdoors, so am not sure of the range, but it should be similar to other radio trigger solutions. Indoors you can put the flashes in softboxes etc, and I have triggered them from other rooms when testing.

There are a few reviews on the net.

I will dig out a link to my set up for these I posted a while back on the lighting forum, and post it here.

If you are OK with manual flash you could use the Yongnuo YN560 TX with one or more YN560 MK3 or MK4 flashguns.

The YN560TX sits in your hot shoe and can set power level and zoom settings on the flash units as well as triggering them. The Canon and Nikon versions will work on Olympus cameras.

Manual flash is not at all difficult after a little practice.

Regards

John