Originally posted by dogzilla For some reason I cannot get any of these flashes to flash using the cactus triggers.
Hmmh, sounds very odd.
Please excuse me for trying to make sure that the most basic things are set correctly.
Is it possible that your flashes are facing the wrong way?
- Mount a flash on a V6. Make sure that the flash's back end points the same way as the V6's LCD panel. If the flash has an LCD display, you should be seeing both displays from the back. Your flashes do not seem to have LCD displays, so you should be seeing the on/off switches of the flashes when looking at the V6 from behind, i.e., seeing the V6's LCD panel. Make sure that the flash is pushed into the hot-shoe all the way.
- Turn on the flash and set it to manual mode. Make sure the flash is not set to perform optical triggering. Set the power to something non-zero, e.g., full power.
- Turn on the V6 by moving the switch to the "RX" position. The group choice does not matter.
- Fully press the test button on the V6 (the one the flash is sitting on). There is a half-press which is used for testing communication and AF, and a full press. If you press correctly, the status light will flash in green.
If the flash does not fire then either there is a defect or you have incompatible models.
It is
very unlikely that your models are incompatible. There are only a few exotic flashes that require digital communication with a camera before they enable the most basic centre pin firing that the V6 uses. Your flashes look nothing like that. They are flashes with a standard ISO hot-shoe, correct?
Please try the above with all your V6 units to exclude the possibility of one or two units having an issue with the female hot-shoe.
You could also check, if you are comfortable doing it, to test whether the flashes support the standard centre pin firing, by shorting the centre pin contact at the bottom with the ground contact on the side of the flash's hot-shoe. Or just double check that they are still firing with your old equipment.
Another test you could make to troubleshoot is to see whether you can obtain a flash from someone else and see whether it works with the V6.
You could also check what the selected flash profile is. Press the "menu" button and turn the dial until you reach "CHOOSE PROFILE". Make sure you have "MANUAL FLASH" selected for your initial tests.
Once you can get a flash to fire in the way described above then you can move to triggering via the transmitter which just requires to use the same channel and having the respective groups active (the button with the group letter(s) you chose for your receiver(s) must be lit).
I checked the troubleshooting section of the manual, but it does not have any other hints for this problem.
I hope the above helps.
If things still don't work, please send an image or describe the results of further experiments. It would be most unusual for all your units to be defective.