I @ M
08-05-2011, 1:42pm
A brief impression of the Pocket Wizard FlexTT5 transceivers (http://www.pocketwizard.com/products/transmitter_receiver/flextt5-nikon/) that I have just become the owner of.
So far they are excellent.
Working with them attached to an SB800 they give consistent results and it looks like the bad points of the Nikon CLS, light, distance or solid object interference between the camera and remote flash are a thing of the past.
As an example with my initial playing I was able to correctly expose a black object against the wall inside while keeping the ambient sunlight coming in through the window beside it to a correctly exposed level.
In aperture priority @ ISO 200 & F/4 the camera wanted 1/15 to expose the inside wall and metering the ambient outside light it wanted 1/1250. I set the camera to manual and F/4 1/1250 and the flash compensation down by 1/3 and had a look at the result. A further 1/3 stop less light from the flash had everything balanced very nicely. That was with the SB800 about 6 metres in front of the camera.
Next up was seeing how fast a synch speed I could get from the studio strobes.
The online manuals and tutorials are a little bit vague and haven't been updated for the newer Nikon triggers and receivers so it took a little while for the set up information to penetrate my thick skull. :D
The downloaded Pocket Wizard utility is there to check for firmware updates to the triggers / receivers and to also configure the way that the units work in relation to each other.
Part of the utility is a section to adjust the trigger to allow synch speeds higher than the camera is theoretically capable of.
After my initial tuning of the trigger the strobes are now able to synch cleanly with the camera at 1/800, no top or bottom curtain showing against a white back drop.:banana:
Further investigation into how the system works is in order as I am not sure that I have everything set correctly yet but at this stage I am very happy with the speeds attained as it should "freeze" violent movement better than the 1/160 that was about the happy maximum before.
So far they are excellent.
Working with them attached to an SB800 they give consistent results and it looks like the bad points of the Nikon CLS, light, distance or solid object interference between the camera and remote flash are a thing of the past.
As an example with my initial playing I was able to correctly expose a black object against the wall inside while keeping the ambient sunlight coming in through the window beside it to a correctly exposed level.
In aperture priority @ ISO 200 & F/4 the camera wanted 1/15 to expose the inside wall and metering the ambient outside light it wanted 1/1250. I set the camera to manual and F/4 1/1250 and the flash compensation down by 1/3 and had a look at the result. A further 1/3 stop less light from the flash had everything balanced very nicely. That was with the SB800 about 6 metres in front of the camera.
Next up was seeing how fast a synch speed I could get from the studio strobes.
The online manuals and tutorials are a little bit vague and haven't been updated for the newer Nikon triggers and receivers so it took a little while for the set up information to penetrate my thick skull. :D
The downloaded Pocket Wizard utility is there to check for firmware updates to the triggers / receivers and to also configure the way that the units work in relation to each other.
Part of the utility is a section to adjust the trigger to allow synch speeds higher than the camera is theoretically capable of.
After my initial tuning of the trigger the strobes are now able to synch cleanly with the camera at 1/800, no top or bottom curtain showing against a white back drop.:banana:
Further investigation into how the system works is in order as I am not sure that I have everything set correctly yet but at this stage I am very happy with the speeds attained as it should "freeze" violent movement better than the 1/160 that was about the happy maximum before.