Can I turn off the af assist beam for 430ex when its a slave?

Hi there

I got myself an infra red beam trigger set up for my canon 5dmkII to use it as a remote camera trap for wildlife photography. I wish to use my two 430ex speedlights off the the camera, controlled by the speedlight transmiter ST-E2. My problem is that the af assist beam turns on every second and Im worried this will scare away wildlife. When I turn the af assist beam off in the custom functions, this only seems to apply to when the speedlight is on the hot shoe and not when I use it as a slave. Does anyone know if its possible to switch off the AF assist beam when the speedlight is used as a slave?

Cheers
Pete

I don't think you are seeing the af assist beam. The red flashing light every second or so is the behavior of the flashes when they are in wireless mode. It has nothing to do with af. I do not know of a way to turn that off. I will be interested to hear if someone else does.

Keith is right about what I think you are referring to! You cannot turn that flashing light off on the slaved units, it is preset like that. Your only other option is to find some cheap radio triggers, if there is such a thing as cheap. One thing you could do is put a piece of gaffers tape over that flashing light, make it small just to cover the light itself and nothing more.

Just to confirm, it does say in the manual that the red light is the af assist beam (projecting a grid on the subject) that flashes every second when in slave mode. Obviously its not being used for auto focus, but thats what it is. Mitch, thanks for your suggestion. Unfortunately when I cover this red light, the flash fails to fire. One thing I will try is setting the flash auto shut down to 10 minutes through the custom functions. When I do this, I have a 1-3 second delay from when the camera powers up to when the flash is cycled and ready to fire. Probably the best I can do though.