Custom Variables 7 and 8
Wireless Flash Wake and Flash Fire (C Var 7 & C Var 8)
C Var 7 and 8 provide advanced control for managing external flashes, particularly in situations where the camera cannot wake or trigger flashes automatically. This feature is especially useful with Sony cameras, which do not send a wake signal to flashes before triggering them.
While flashes such as the Camtraptions F1 and Z2 do not require a wake signal, the Camtraptions Z Pro achieves much longer standby times by entering a low-power sleep mode. As a result, it must be woken before it can be triggered.
In such cases, the sensor can take over flash control independently:
- C Var 7 = 1: The sensor sends a 0.2 s Flash Wake signal immediately before the first camera trigger signal in any stills sequence. This wakes compatible flashes (such as the Z Pro) so that they are ready when the camera sends its normal shoot signal.
- C Var 7 = 2: The sensor sends both a Flash Wake signal before the first camera trigger signal and a Flash Fire signal after every camera trigger signal. In this configuration, the camera does not need to send any flash trigger signal—the sensor handles all flash timing directly.
The wireless channel used for these flash signals is defined by C Var 8, which can be set between 1 and 15. This should be set to a different channel than the main camera trigger channel.
The C Var 7 = 2 configuration is particularly effective for night-time photography, where long shutter speeds allow the flash to fire during the exposure window.
As long as the shutter speed is longer than the Full-Press duration, the flash will fire within the open exposure, even when the camera itself is not controlling the flash. The Full-press duration can be customised using C Var 3 so that the flash fires as quickly as possible after the camera shutter opens.
This setup provides a reliable and flexible method to trigger flashes entirely via the sensor, simplifying configurations where cameras have limited flash-control capabilities or when using off-camera flash systems in low-light environments.