Wein 940-030 Hot Shoe Micro Slave for Professional Strobe Units

I use this in different multi-light setups, and for the most part, it doesn't disappoint. I've used it to add flashes to wired setups and wireless setups alike, mostly without trouble.At a recent evening shoot of a car on a dark night, this came in handy, as I didn't have anough wireless receivers for all the flashes necessary to light car. So, I pulled out my old wireless trigger set, attached the transmitter to this optical slave, and used it to sync the additional wireless flashes. It came in handy. The only problem I noticed was a slight delay between the whole setup. This wasn't a problem due to a long exposure. I just had to make sure my camera was on front curtain sync flash instead of rear curtain sync.The thing to keep in mind is that optical slaves are never 100% reliable, no matter the make or model. This, I've found though, is fairly reliable, and I may buy one or two more.

First, my gear:Canon 580EXmkIICanon 430EXpair of PocketWizard radio triggersWein HS (you know, the item this review is about)Camera (doesn't really matter): Canon 30DIt seems that this little guy gets the job done whenever there is a direct flash in the room. If the 580EXmkII fires, so does the slave; If the 30D's pop up flash fires, so does the slave. Even tried it with the tiny flash built into my Canon Elph SD800IS and it fired every time. Distance seems fairly good as well, but my tests were all within 20-25'.So far so good, right?Here's the scenario that I had hoped for:+ 580EXmkII and 430EX each on light a stand shooting into umbrella; 580 is connected to a PocketWizard; 430 is mounted on the Wein HS+ 30D's hot shoe triggers PocketWizards, PocketWizards trigger 580, flash from 580 triggers 430Problem seemed that the intensity of the 580 when diffused by the umbrella is not strong enough to trigger the slave unless they are REALLY CLOSE (like, within 5') to each other.I even tried setting the 580EXmkII to manual with full power (1/1) and zoom at 105m to give it the highest output possible. Still, got no joy from the slave unless it was very close to the 580 (not to mention, that may not be the desired output for making the photograph).Interestingly, the Wein HS seemed to go off almost every time when I would use the 'pilot' button on the 580 into the umbrella (or fired the Elph into the umbrella, for that matter) at decent distances, but I couldn't get it to go from the PocketWizard, not matter how I set the 580's output.Grrr...Since I am not sure if my failed experiment is due to a defect in the product or just my own overzealous expectation, I still rated the Wein HS with 4 stars because when using a direct flash source, it responded every time.In order to shoot the way I want (with 2 umbrellas) I think I may need to try of the following:+ trash the optical slave idea and either use wires for one flash or pony up for another PocketWizard+ try the Wein HSXL and hope it is more sensitive (advertised 600' range; 2x the price of this unit, but still less than another PocketWizard)+ buy another one of these, leave the PocketWizards out of it and trigger both flashes with the 30D pop-up.+ try an optical slave of another brandSummary:this seems like a decent product for the $$ and although I couldn't get my setup going reliably the way I wanted to, I would recommend this item as long as you use a direct (or very strong diffused) source as a trigger.

I read the reviews but figured it couldn't be all that bad and I was right it did work... It popped when it was supposed to and everything seemed to work.The problem I had was the hotshot area is not flat so when you are tightening things down it is not possible to tighten it all the way... I was using it with a Sunpak 120j which is a heavy flash and there is no way I would trust this to hold the flash up over time.

The Wein slave, when it worked, was fairly decent. Synced in sunlight off of a plain old optical slave. Some flashes won't work with it, most notably the latest Vivitar 285HV flashes. And if you try to trigger it with your E-TTL flash, it'll trigger poorly.But the real problem? Well, use it for a year or two and it'll mysteriously stop working. First my older one died. Then the newer one died. And there's no warning, one day you'll have a model over to photograph and all of the three-light setups you have in mind will have to be done with two lights.For the price, it should last.