In today's video, I will show you how to
pair your Sony Radio Commander with one
of their wireless flashes.
Welcome back to The Breakdown.
My name is Miguel Quiles,
and today I'm going to show you,
step by step, how to pair this radio
commander from Sony with actually their
newest Flash which is the HPLF60 RM
Flash. Now this process is going to be
the same for the 60 RM as well as the 45
RM f
Flash, and, but I'm going to use the 60
for this demo, and let's get started! Okay,
so, what we're looking at right now, we
have on this side, this is the Sony Radio
Commander, and this is basically going to
be the trigger. I'm just going to call it
a trigger for the rest of this video,
just to keep things as simple as
possible, but this is going to be our
trigger. This is what tells the flash
when to go off, and for the flash we have
the sony HVLF60 RM, this is their
newest radio control flash, and so let's
get this thing paired up. It's really,
really simple, and let's start first by
turning on our remotes. I'll turn the
screen here so that you guys can see the
backlight. Then we'll turn on our flash
here as well. The first thing that I
would recommend doing, if you're going to
pair these two devices up, and you don't
really have to do this if you bought
these brand new, and you're pairing these
for the first time, but if you tinkered
with the menus, or you did anything to
change any settings, I would recommend to
reset both devices before you start. This
pairing process, just to make sure that
you didn't change anything, that maybe
you might need to change later, so we'll
start first with the remote control. In
order to reset it, we're going to press the
Menu button here.
We're going to go over to reset, we're going to
select that, and we're going to hit OK.
You're going to see the word 'reset' show up
on your screen, that tells you obviously
that the remote has been reset. So now
that this has been reset, we're going to set
the, we're going to actually reset the flash
here, so we're going to press menu and we're
going to go into the menu, and we're going to
select 'reset' in the menu. we'll hit OK
alright? So now both devices have been
reset completely, we're going to start this
from scratch. This is basically the
default setup, if you bought this and
you're pairing it for the first time,
this is basically what the setup would
be. So let us begin.
Now that we've reset both devices, let us
begin the process of pairing up these
two devices, and super simple, first thing
that we're going to do, is on our flash, and
again this is the same thing you're
going to do for the 45 and the 60 RM.
We're going to hit the function button on the
back here. We're going to arrow down to
where it says WL off or wireless off, and
we're actually going to turn that on! So
in order to turn that on, we just press
the center button, and we will move over
RCV or receive, and we'll hit that
center button, and that's going to
confirm that the wireless is now turned
on, and now I can communicate with this
Sony Radio commander. Now what we're
going to do, is we're going to pair these
devices, and in order to do that, we're
going to select the menu button on our Sony
Commander, and we're going to arrow over to
where it says pairing, and from there
we're going to hit that center button, and
there's a selection or an option that
says add, and we're going to pick that, and
as soon as you do that, it's going to say
'waiting added zero', now this is just
letting you know that it's waiting to
connect to another device, and obviously
it hasn't found one, that's why. it's a
zero so we're going to fix that on our 60
RM flash, we're going to hit 'menu', we're
going to arrow over to where it says
pairing. We're going to do the same thing, it
says 'start pairing now'. if you did not
change it from 'WL off' to the 'receive'
mode, the step that we just did, this is
actually going to give you an error as
soon as you go into that pairing mode.
It's going to tell you that the wireless is
turned off, so that's why I'm telling you
make sure that you turn it on first. It
will save you a step. All right, so we're going to
select 'ok', and right away you could see that
it says it has been paired with a WRC
1 M, which is your radio commander and
you will also see on the remote here,
you're going to see it says added 1. So
these two are now paired up, and if you
want to test that you could simply press
this test button here. I don't know if
you could see that in the video, but the
flash is paired. They are going off, so we
are set technically. This is ready to go,
However I'm going to take this a step
further. I'm going to show you how to
basically make it to where you can
control the power levels with your
remote control. So let's take a look at
that now. At this point what we're going to
do is we're going to press this menu button
on the radio commander.
We'll press it one more time, this is
going to take us back to our main screen,
and we'll do the same on our flash. Now
what I would like to do, it's currently
set to TTL, so obviously with TTL, it's
going to select our flash power
automatically for us and that's cool. If
you're shooting an event, if you're
shooting a wedding or something of that
nature, you don't have the time to dial
in your settings manually. You can use
TTL, and it works fantastic for me
personally. I like to have the control
and the ability to be able to kind of
change the power automatically or change
it manually, I should say, and so I want
to show you how to do that. So what I'm
going to do is on this remote here, we're
going to press the function key, and we're
going to select this right now, where it
says TTL, and I'll turn this light back
on. Right where it says TTL, we're going
to select that, and we're actually going
to change this to 'group'. So now that it's
set to 'group', it's going to be kind of
useful, because what we could do, is we
could actually control our flashes in
different groups. So what does that mean?
This flash that we're looking at right
now is set to group A. Now let's pretend
like I was I don't know, let's say I'm
shooting in the studio, and I have this
as my main light. I could set this main
light to group A, and let's say I had a
hair light or some other type of light
maybe a fill light, thats
coming from an additional flash. I could
actually set those two different groups,
so I could have a group B and a group C,
and a group D, and I could control
individually each of those flashes or
even groups of flashes, because maybe
that hair light might actually be two
lights, that's cool! You could put both of
those two lights in the same group, and
then from the remote ,you can change the
power for those groups, at the same time,
just by changing it in the settings. It's
pretty slick, but we only have one light
today. It's going to be pretty easy so we
only have a group A which is this flash
here, so what we're going to do is, and you
could actually see if you're curious.
Miguel... how is he figuring out that he's
in Group A? You look on the bottom here..
it says Group A, so if you wanted to
change that. You could do that if you hit
the function key, you could actually
select that group, and you can change it
anywhere from A to E, but we're going to
leave it on Group A, and so what I want
to do is, I want to change this to where
I can control the power of this flash
from the remote, so in order to do that,
what we're going to do is, on the actual
remote, we'll turn on the light again.
You're going to notice now we changed it to
group, and we're going to arrow over, and
you see right now that group A, is set into
TTL mode, and we said we didn't want to
do that, we wanted to control it manually.
So I'm going to select, I'll go back, just so
you can see that. So I'm going to select
where it says TTL on Group A, and now
you're going to see all the modes for each
of the different groups, so I'm going to
select A, and I'm actually just going to
select 'manual; for my mode, so at this
point Group A is set to 'manual', it is one
to one power, so if I flash this. This is
going to be at full power on Group A, now
if I want to change that, all I would
have to do is just roll this wheel, and
you're going to see that it's going to change
anywhere from full power all the way
down to one, 1/128th power,
which is the lowest power of the flash.
So I'm going to put this to a quarter
power, and at this point our power for
group A has been set, which is our main
light here.
Now you might run into a situation where you
might be trying to change your power on
this group, and the very first thing that
you have to make sure, if something isn't
working, if you change the settings, and
you're noticing that full power and
1/128th power is like exactly the same,
which should not happen,
chances are what's happening is that
your flash is not set to 'command link'.
I'll show you how to fix that, if you go
into your function menu here, you're
going to arrow down to where it says level,
and it's currently set to command link,
when it's set that way you're good.
That's actually what you want to see, if
you're trying to control it manually,
because that means that from the remote,
I have manual control, the commander is
linked to the flash, which is why it says
command link. However let's say you
wanted to override these manual settings,
or rather the settings that are coming
from this remote, what you could do is
you could actually roll the wheel, and
now you're noticing on the back of the
flash it doesn't say 'command blink' anymore
now it says 1/8, 1/16, so on, and so forth,
so I can manually dial in the power for
this flash from the actual flash unit itself.
It's going to override the
settings that are on the remote control,
so you have two options, you could either
set it to command link, and if you have
it set here, you are going to actually
set your power from the Sony Radio
Commander, or you could manually set your
power settings here, on the back of your
flash. So there's two different ways.
Sometimes what I have seen happen, many
times, is people will have it set to have
power on the flash, and if you try to
change the power setting on the remote,
it doesn't actually work, because it
needs to be linked to the remote, in
order for it to be able to control the
power. So that's it, that's how you set up
your radio commander, your Sony Radio
commander with your Sony Flashes, and
again the process is exactly the same,
with the 60 RM, the 45 RM, and if any
other radio control flashes come out in
the future, the process is going to be
exactly the same. You're going to pair
the two devices up, and they're ready to
go. Hopefully you found this tutorial
helpful. If you have any additional
questions leave them in the
section below, and I will definitely get
around to answering them. While you're
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all sorts of cool stuff. Thank you so
much for watching The Breakdown today.
I will see you guys in the next video.
Bye everybody!