Strobists: Sunpak 322 and Sunpak 522?

Question

I have an old manual setup I haven't been using for a while. I want to try the strobist method out using these flashes. I've seen people use the 522 with both IR and Radio. What about the 322? Camera is Nikon D40.

Answer 1

552 has more grunt, either ither would be great

Answer 2

Why didnt you ask this in the strobists group?

Yes they should work fine. Your not going to light large groups with just these two without knowing what your doing, but they should be great for getting into it. The main thing about the Strobist aproach is that you can adjust the power. I dont know your flashes from personal use, but if they can manual adjust (1/2 1/4 1/8 etc..) and arent just full or auto (red is f/#, blue is f/# and there is a sensor on the front) then your golden, except for triggering. If your 322 is an auto 322 then the trigger voltage would fry even a radio trigger. The optical triggers seem to work ok. The 522 might be fine with a radio trigger (most are rated at 50 volts) but you would definately want to check the actual voltage. http://www.botzilla.com/photo/strobeVolt... If you have only auto flashes they can be modified, but youd have to be good with a soldering iron and be comfortable with a capacitor that could fry you, literally. Electrocution type thing, and I'm not kidding. http://www.flickr.com/groups/strobist/di...

So in short, you may want to look into another flash to trigger these two with optical triggers. The pop-up flash wouldnt work either as it has pre-flashes and would trigger these too soon.

Camera, as long as you have either a hotshoe or a PC out, the camera make is irrelivant. As long as you can sync a flash to it, you can use it.