New tool in the camera bag

September 02, 2015 • Leave a Comment

A while back I posted about a wireless transceiver set that I had picked up so that I can use and adjust a flash remotely while off camera. Well today I got in and had the opportunity to use a companion piece to this equipment.

This is the Cactus RF60 flash.

The Cactus RF60 can work in several ways.
1) It can be used on top of the camera, just like any other flash.

2) It can be used on top of the camera and control other flashes that are connected to the Cactus V6 transceiver. These transceivers are different from most in that you can control the output (brightness) of each flash independently in up to four groups.

3) It can also be used off camera, to receive signals and commands from the Cactus V6 on top of the camera.

Today I was able to give this a test drive shooting a product for Jayco Vent Valve Inc. I have shot their products in the past, but we needed a shot from directly above looking at the lid of the hatch. Here is the photograph that I made.

Jayco JT81040 lid on white-Jayco Thief hatch JT81040 Lid

Here is how I set up the shot. I placed a white background under the product. The camera has one Cactus V6 transceiver in the hot shoe on the camera, as the transmitter, controlling the settings on the flash units. The RF60 is set in receive mode on camera right. Then I had a Pentax flash unit above and to the left with a Cactus V6 set as a receiver to control the Pentax flash.

So basically two Cactus transceivers, one Pentax Flash and one Cactus flash. You can adjust each flash separately from each other right from the controller on the top of the camera. In the above photo the Cactus flash was set to 1/128th power, and the Pentax to 1/64th power.

I had a few connection issues when a first started, but once I worked those out, I had full control of the light output from both flashes. All without the need to touch the flash. Very cool.

I will be shooting a lot of Jayco products over the next month as they work on putting together a new website and catalog pages.

Keywords: Jayco, OK, Oklahoma, business, catalog, city, hatch, industrial, oilfield, photography, product, products, thief, website, white

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