Tests of the LumoPro LP160 with a Canon 60D, and a Canon 320EX off camera.

I recently purchased a small strobist lighting kit from Midwest Photo Exchange; a very bare-bones kit with just one LP160, a light stand, an umbrella, and the gels and random  stuff that comes with the kit.  Overall it was one of the cheapest, and best photography equipment purchases I’ve made.

I currently also own a Canon 320EX Speedlite, which has some nice features, if also some major limitations (no manual mode unless controlled by a camera directly, which isn’t a big deal now, but when I move to radio triggers, I won’t be able to use it with them).

Of course, I want to be able to use both my 320EX and LP160 at the same time.  The obvious way is to just mount my 320EX to my 60D, set it to manual or ETLL and set the LP160 to ‘S’ or ‘Si’ mode.  This has worked well in my tests, however I’d like to be able to shoot with my 320EX off camera.  This is easy to do if I just use the 320EX, since the 60D can send a proprietary preflash signal to fire the 320EX, however it gets interesting when you add the LP160…

According to the product page, with camera firmware version 1.05: “In ‘S’ mode, syncs EXCEPT on full power.”, using a 580EX II as the master, and a 430EX II as the slave.

This wasn’t very helpful to me since I don’t have those flashes, and my firmware is 1.09, so I ran some tests with the 320EX off camera, and here are my results:

Camera Settings	LP160 Settings	Result
Flash mode: Manual flash Wireless func: External only	'S' Mode	Entire system fails. (1)
Flash mode: Manual flash Wireless func: External only	'Si' Mode	LP160 fails to sync.
Flash mode: E-TTL II Wireless func: External only	'S' Mode	LP160 syncs, but fires twice, so will NOT work at full power.
Flash mode: E-TTL II Wireless func: External only	'Si' Mode	LP160 syncs up to full power, PROVIDED the 320EX fires at a high power level. (2)

Notes:

(1) The LP160 went off, but too soon, and in doing so somehow disrupted the signal to the 320EX, which then failed to go off.

(2) If the 320EX only needs to fire at low power (or is set to fire with low power using an ETTL bias, i.e. setting flash output to -2.0), then the LP160 fails to fire at all in this setup. I suspect that the LP160 thinks that the actual flash is another preflash unless it’s quite powerful.

Summary

It appears it is not possible to use the LP160 in conjunction with the 320EX off camera in manual mode.  This is disappointing, though I should point out manual flash will still work so long as you attach the 320EX to the camera directly.

The Lp160 will sync with the 320EX off camera when using ETTL.  However there are two catches: 1) if the LP160 is put into ‘S’ mode it will fire twice, it does sync, but not at full power. 2) if the LP160 is put into ‘Si’ mode it will only fire once and sync, but only if the 320EX goes off with enough power.

I hope this is useful to people who are considering using the LP160 with their 60D and existing Canon flashes off camera.  My plan however is to leave Canon flashes behind, and go with radio triggers and more LP160s.