Remote triggering my D90 with PW ii's - NEED HELP ASAP!

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Remote triggering my D90 with PW ii's - NEED HELP ASAP!

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nfiorito

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Joined: Feb '10
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Wondering if I can get some (timely) help. I used search and tried Google with no luck.

I'm trying to trigger my d90 using pocket wizard plus ii's and a cord I purchased that says it should work for this purpose. It has the 3.5mm plug for the PW on one end, an on/off switch in the middle (to keep camera 'awake') that I got from ebay but looks exactly the same as this one (and is likely the exact same) *Link Removed*

I'm having trouble getting the camera to fire remotely though, even though I'm (hopefully) following PW's instructions on their site and manual.

I have one PW connected to the cord, and the other end in the "GPS" input on the camera. I've tried using all the channels, and even channels one away from each other as you do in a relay set up.

I know some signal is getting through, however, because when I press the remote (not connected) PW, the red lights are glowing and the camera's lens starts searching for focus. Something is getting through, but the shutter won't actuate.

Is there an in-camera setting I need to change? I don't think I have to set it to the wireless remote setting, at least that doesn't seem to work.

Any suggestions? I actually would like to be able to trigger the second camera (D90) from my d700 so that when the d700 takes a pic, the d90 does as well. I believe I would just put a PW on top of the d700 to do that, but have to figure out how to get the d90 to remote fire first.

Thanks for any help you can give!

Posted 2 years ago #
Testing123

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Joined: Oct '10
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Is this simply a problem of you having your D90 set to only shoot upon focus-lock and the camera not being able to achieve focus-lock?

And you are doing this with the cable's pre-release switch set to "on"?

P.S. - If not in manual exposure mode make sure you black-out the eyepiece.

Posted 2 years ago #
nfiorito

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hmmm, wonder if that's it.
I'm at work so I can't try it now. I shoot in Manual so that shouldn't be a problem.
You'd think that once it found focus though it would shoot, but didn't seem to be doing that. I will try that though.
I'm trying to figure it out now because I'm leaving work in a couple hours to shoot a guy doing a backflip off a grain elevator into Lake Superior (about 120 foot jump) and would like as many angles as I can get!

Posted 2 years ago #
Testing123

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nfiorito said:
You'd think that once it found focus though it would shoot, but didn't seem to be doing that.

It won't have time to find focus AND shoot if you don't have the cable's pre-release switch (the equivalent of holding the shutter half-way down (with all the battery consumption that implies)) set to on, as the PWs send a momentary signal, not a continuous one.

Still, this is just a guess, curious what others come up with.

Posted 2 years ago #
adamz

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Joined: Mar '09
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I would say, check the batteries first
secondly, don't know the cable brand You have but there are 3 different connector cables for d90 from PW, I guess in Your case the basic one "n-mcdc2" should do the job, although You haven't stated which PW units You have.

another question: is the PW releasing d700 shutter?

anyway, please make sure You have same channels on both PW units.

Posted 2 years ago #
nfiorito

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I don't have a regular 10pin cable for the d700, so I haven't been able to try that, although I would like to pick one up soon. I'm going to play around a bit more, but so far I think I've tried all of these suggestions with no success save for the focus-lock. Good to know that the channels have to be the same for sure.
I did say in the OP that I have PW plus ii's, but there is a lot of writing in there so it's easy to miss!
hmm, says link removed for the pic of the cable that I already bought for this purpose for the d90. Maybe this link will stick: *Link Removed*

Posted 2 years ago #
Testing123

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Joined: Oct '10
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Regarding

adamz said:
I would say, check the batteries first
secondly, don't know the cable brand You have but there are 3 different connector cables for d90 from PW, I guess in Your case the basic one "n-mcdc2" should do the job, although You haven't stated which PW units You have.

another question: is the PW releasing d700 shutter?

anyway, please make sure You have same channels on both PW units.

nfiorito said:
I know some signal is getting through, however, because when I press the remote (not connected) PW, the red lights are glowing and the camera's lens starts searching for focus. Something is getting through, but the shutter won't actuate.

strongly suggests it is not a cabling, battery, or channel issue - which is why I suspected a problem on the D90 side.

I see five points of potential failure:
1 - D700. Unlikely?
2 - D700 to the PW. I don't see a test where this has been ruled out.
3 - Master PW to Slave PW. If I'm reading nfiorito's description right the above test eliminated this point.
4 - Slave PW to D90. I believe the above test eliminated this due to focusing action, but see below.
5 - D90. Unlikely?

Now, despite nfiorito's test, there exists the possibility that the cabling is wrong and the slave PW is triggering pre-release instead of release. This means point 4 is still not completely ruled out.

But, yea, like Adamz said, rule one of wireless trigger troubleshooting is REPLACE THE BATTERIES.

Posted 2 years ago #
nfiorito

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Joined: Feb '10
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If anyone's interested, it turns out one of the soldered connections in the camera end of the cord was broken right out of the box.
Beware the cheap Chinese ebay cords...

Posted 2 years ago #
crismet83

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Joined: May '11
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@nfiorito: Hi there! My name is Cristian, and I have exactly the same problem here, So i was just wondering if you ever get this problem fix? I know that its been like 6 months since you post this! , and i hope to hear from you with any type of help. Thank you in advance.

Posted 2 years ago #

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Remote triggering my D90 with PW ii's - NEED HELP ASAP!

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