Sony NEX 6 Off Camera Flash Help

[Gymnayzium]

Hello, all. I recently acquired a pair of JTL Versalight J-160s that I would like to pair with my Sony NEX 6. I am connecting the lights to the camera via a Wein Products HSHSB hot-shoe sync cable.

I do not have a slave, so I can only plug one light into my camera at a time. When the JTL is connected to the camera, and the in-camera flash is not activated, the JTL does not fire at all. When the JTL is connected, and the in-camera flash is open and activated, the JTL will fire about 20% of the time at random. What could be causing this problem?

Any suggestions on how I can connect both JTLs to my camera and have them fire consistently?

[inkista]

It looks to me like the J-160s actually does have a built-in optical slave ("slave sensor") on top (from their website):



and that's why the flash is firing sometimes when your built-in flash fires. Do you have the built-in flash in M mode? (i.e., no pre-flashes for TTL?). A lot of optical slaves don't work or can't recycle fast enough between a preflash and the main flash burst, so having your built-in in M, and visible (line-of-sight) to the slave sensor would help get more consistent firing without the cable.

Usually there's some kind of switch to turn the slave function on/off and to tell the flash to "listen" to the sync port instead, but I'm not seeing one. Maybe it's the audio switch? (or is that for a recycle beep?)

Otherwise, I'd check or swap the PC-to-3.5mm sync cable and it could also be the sync adapter you're using. I'd actually recommend looking for a hotshoe adapter that has 3.5mm vs. PC on it, because that way you can just go to any electronics/audio equipment store and use a regular headphone cable as your sync cable, rather than messing about with PC connectors. The 3.5mm minijack is actually more robust and secure than a PC connector.