I've been looking for an affordable flash for my C4000Z ever since I bought it. The Oly flash would be fine, but costs as much as the camera.

This new Vivitar slave unit has just appeared in my spam mail - available for £50 in the UK from 7DayShop. Looks promising, especially since it includes a bracket.

http://www.vivitar.com/Products/Flas...ash.html#DF200

Has anybody tried this unit? Any impressions of how it performs?

fenlander

No one can say since it's brand new and there's little info on it. The question is how it reacts to Olympus's preflash (most slave units will fire on the preflash and be dark on the main flash). With its "learning mode" the flash may be able to work with the camera.

The only slaves that I can think of at the top of my head are the Digi-slave line of flashes, and there's one from Metz which can be selected to fire on the second flash. Sorry I don't have exact model numbers.

The Sunpak Remote Lite II is a slave flash that works with digital or non-digital cameras. It has a switch to set it into the correct mode for each camera type ,ie trigger on 1st or 2nd light pulse from the cameras built-in flash. I have one and it works fine. It comes with a flash bracket.

The new Vivitar DF200 should also work with digicams, but I cant help think that its method of working is rather over-complicated. Why does it need to learn from the main camera flash? Why can't it just have a switch to tell it to ignore the cameras pre-flash? I think, by this strange learning mode it has, it sets up and saves a delay time in its internal memory. This is dodgy because with many digital cameras you may change the flash curtain and therefore the timing (perhaps?). Anyway, what do I know, it will probably be OK. Vivitar make some good flashes so they should know what they're doing.

Here in Australia, the Sunpak Remote Lite II cost AU$70, which is about UKP30. So, the UKP50 for the DF200 looks a bit expensive, I can only assume the DF200 is a more powerful flash.

Problem is I've never seen that Sunpak anywhere (I had a tough time finding an english page about it, and finally had to go to the Sunpak Japanese site and have it translated). The only Sunpak slave I've seen is the "Digital" flash which is really cheap and cheesy, and doesn't work with the preflash! Sunpak's .COM site has nothing on either flash!