If you've dabbled in remote flash, you'll be all too familiar with the upside / downside equation that comes with taking that handy little light source off the camera and putting it somewhere it'll actually do some good.
On the upside, the ability to put light exactly where you need it in the picture gives you back a lot of control over the overall look and feel of your images. You can punch a bit of light back into a shaded area, reduced the overall contrast a tad, or go for a moody, low-key look with lots of punch.
On the downside, you'll also discover a whole new world of faff. Stands to put the remote lights on (or volunteers to hold them - the 'voice activated lightstand' does have its uses, although it's another high-maintenance and bulky bit of equipment...). Cables. More batteries than you have pockets (or chargers) for. A growing familiarity with manual lighting ratios. And so on, and on, and on.
And that's a wrap, daaahlings
Canon and Nikon's clever wireless TTL systems never really delivered on their promise to free up a lot of this hassle for the simple reason that they rely on line-of-sight infrared communication between the camera position and the remote lights. Put a tree or rock in the way, shoot in bright sunlight or put a flash more than a few feet from the camera, and all that clever technology falls apart.
On balance, the extra batteries and cables and schlepping backwards and forwards to set ratios just works better. Which gives you some idea of just how limited the proprietary systems are.
A year or so back, upstart start-up
Radiopopper arrived on the scene with a device that promised to solve most of the problems: essentially, a radio bridge between the infrared gubbins at the camera and flash. No more line-of-sight limitations! It wasn't without its own issues, including a rather clunky-looking optical cable attachment to convert radio back into infrared at the flash end, but the biggest frustration - for me, at least - is that there's still no availability outside the US and Canada. Not even for the
new, slimmed-down and more user-friendly version. Bah.
So it was with some excitement that I read about
PocketWizard's new 'beyond TTL' triggers, the
Mini TT1 and Flex TT5. Promising essentially the same 'bridge' benefits as the Radiopopper units, the new PWs come with so many bells and whistles (and in such a compact and user-friendly package),
Rob Galbraith's summary of their features comes in a a whopping five pages. It's worth reading in its own right, but the gist of it is that the PocketWizard and Radiopopper units are fundamentally different:
- whereas Radiopopper piggybacks existing infrared systems, the new PocketWizard units take their TTL metering information direct from the camera's metering system and use their own radio-based communication protocols. In other words, there's no need for pre- or control-flashes between camera and remote flash, reducing shutter lag (and distraction for the subject) with the PocketWizard system.
- in practice that means that each E-TTL (for Canon) or iTTL (for Nikon) function needs its own equivalent built into the PocketWizard's firmware, because it's the PocketWizard unit carrying out all the control functions rather than just relaying information to the flash or camera's CPU.
- the main practical downside of this is that, for the time being at least, manual remote control features - like being able to control output ratios of remote lights from the camera position - are not supported by the new PocketWizards (but are supported by the Radiopoppers).
It sounds like the beginnings of a bombproof, hugely versatile system that should make the lives of photographers relying on remote lighting a lot easier. However, it's currently only available for Canon users... who live in the US or Canada. Nikon users, and anyone who lives in the rest of the world, will have to wait a little longer.
For once, I think it'll be worth the wait...
A police state by stealth?
If you're a UK-based photographer and haven't been keeping your eye on the news lately, here's something that should give you pause for thought: new legislation gives the police the power to arrest and imprison anyone who takes a picture of a police officer on the street. Yes, you read that right. You may want to think twice before raising your camera (or, presumably, phone), anywhere near a police officer, in case they march you off to the cells as a suspected terrorist.
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