New Alternative For Flash Triggering
March 11th, 2009
Last month PocketWizard announced the MiniTT1 and FlexTT5. The significance to real estate photographers is that before these two new products using neither Canon’s E-TTL II or Nikon’s i-TTL CLS automatic flash controls was not very practical because the range of both of these infrared triggering systems was too limited for shooting real estate. These new products allow you to run the Canon or Nikon flash TTL triggering systems over a radio signal that goes through walls and for long distances.
At least on the surface using the MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 appear to have two benefits for real estate shooters:
- Wireless remote TTL: This means you can control multiple flashes don’t have operate in manual mode. PocketWizard ads say “…make taking off-camera flash photos as effortless as slide-in, turn-on and shoot“.
- Hypersync: This is the ability to increase the sync speed as high as 1/500 on some cameras. This means you’ll have more flexibility to control bright windows.
- Lower cost: These new triggers cost less than the old PocketWizards.
Both Rob Galbraith and Strobist blog have detailed articles on these new PocketWizard models if you want to get in to the full details. Also the PocketWizard release video is worthwhile.
For real estate shooting, it seems the increased sync speed is clearly a major benefit of these triggers but at this point I’m not sure whether the wireless remote TTL with multiple flashes would make a real estate photographers life easier or more complicated.
5 Responses to “New Alternative For Flash Triggering”
marcus March 12th, 2009 at 4:08 am #
It’s a real shame that they don’t seem to support manual adjustment of the flash power, only ttl.
I use nikons cls with 3 slave strobes for almost all of my RE photography, but never using ittl. I just don’t understand how they can support ittl but not manual remote adjustment, seems like a pretty dumb move from PW considering all of their current customers use manual flash output all the time.
New Alternative For Flash Triggering - Larry Lohrman | Photo News Today March 12th, 2009 at 10:21 am #
[...] Source and Read More: photographyforrealestate.net [...]
Michael Asgian March 13th, 2009 at 8:11 pm #
@ Marcus: Remote adjusting of flash power in manual mode is impossible… it’s not a lack of feature. I doubt even Nikon or Canon can do that on own flashes.
marcus March 15th, 2009 at 12:35 am #
@Michael, I don’t know about canon but with nikons CLS it certainy is possible.
I always use remote adjustment of my strobes in manual via CLS, it’s my goto method of working. su800 master on the camera controlling 2sb600’s and an sb800, all manual, all controlled and adjusted from the camera.
Also, it is possible for the infa red triggering needed for this process to be converted to RF and back again as radio poppers have proved:
http://radiopopper.com/
And they CAN be used to control the remote strobes manual output, unlikes the PW’s. [I just can't buy them as I'm in UK]
Ty March 22nd, 2009 at 4:21 pm #
Adjusting manual flash ratios among groups is part of the Canon Ettl system, and is fully supported by radiopoppers. I use it all the time.
As a side note, I have fired radiopoppers from distances of 100 ft, as well as firing strobes on the 2nd floor of a home from the basement (obviously, with an assistant verifying they fired.) Never had a misfire.