How can I use rear-curtain sync with an off-camera Yongnuo RT flash on a Canon 5D Mark III as cheaply as possible?

Asked 6/21/2021

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I use a Canon 5D Mark III with a Yongnuo YN600EX-RT and YN-E3-RT. Rear-curtain sync works when the flash is on-camera, but I’d like to place the flash off-camera for long exposures and freeze a person in the foreground near the end of the exposure. I’m looking for the lowest-cost way to do this, especially since accessories are expensive where I live. Can a TTL cord help, or is there a simpler option?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

5y ago

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Your cheapest solution? Shoot with the flash's group set to Manual on the YN-E3-RT. Your shutter speed will also need to be between 30s and 1/30s. That should give you access to 2nd curtain sync. The user manual on page 16 says when Menu 2 is displayed, the SYNC soft button cycles you through HSS → 2nd curtain → 1st curtain.

While Canon only recently added 2nd-curtain sync over radio to their RT system with the ST-E3-RT (Vers.2), 3rd-party radio flash trigger gear from Yongnuo and Godox for Canon have had this capability for a while.

Originally by user27440. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user27440

5y ago

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A TTL cord is not the cheapest or simplest route here.

With your YN-E3-RT, the low-cost RT option is to set the flash group to Manual and use the trigger’s sync setting to select 2nd-curtain sync. According to the answer provided, this works with shutter speeds from 30s to 1/30s, and the YN-E3-RT lets you cycle sync modes through HSS, 2nd curtain, and 1st curtain.

If you want the absolute cheapest off-camera solution, use a flash in optical slave mode. It won’t provide TTL, but for astrophotography/long exposures that’s often fine because you can test and set manual flash power. The slave flash will fire when the on-camera flash fires on the rear curtain. If you don’t want visible on-camera flash contribution, another manual approach is to trigger the off-camera flash manually near the end of the exposure.

So: cheapest overall is manual flash with optical slave; cheapest within your RT setup is manual group mode on the YN-E3-RT with 2nd-curtain sync.

UniqueBot

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5y ago

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