Carried over from previous review on www.digitalweddingchat.com
“A tad frustrated as ive not gotten the range on these that I got since I first turned them on, since I turned them on!
Used these for the first time on a shoot. Dependable as hell up to about 30ft and around 1 wall (drywall) at the same time. 40ft in high sun and no obstructions about 52ft at night with no obstrutions. Put a average sized truck between you and the reciever and you can cut those numbers in half.
They have some things you have to learn, these wizards are not much like the ones of old. You need to connect with at least 1 shot to “connect” to them. Then your assistant can walk way with the slave flash and it works fine.
The thing im not liking is if your assitant happens to be 30ft away and you decide you want to use that flash, it often times will not connect. They need to walk back to within 3-5ft of you and then it connects. Then its all good.
A tad frustrating indeed.
I have done extensive testing with 3 different sets with friends here locally and have come to the conclusion im 80% happy with them.
The thing is, I will ONLY really be using these on beaches and in bright sunlight when the St-e2 does not work. Keeping that in mind, 30ft is plenty of range for most Wedding Photographers. Commercial guys might want to wait until version 2.
Ratios work well on them simply by placing the St-e2 on top of the transmitter. We did a bunch of testing for accuracy until 1am and concluded they are good to go with the exposures.
We mixed them with the original wizards to find out if the much shorter viable range of these had to do more with the SENDING of a signal or the RETURNING of the ETTL, indeed it was the return. When using the Mini TT1 with a previous generation Plus II we got about 110ft. Switching the Plus II back to the TT5 we got back down to 50ft.
So the “short” is definately in the units processing of the Ettl and sending data back to the camera.
These are like a new relationship, you have to learn what they do and do not like and it might take a bit of time to learn all the the ways it likes to be touched. Im going to do some more tests when we get back into the Country next week and put up some more pics and also my test video which I hope you will all find very thorough and unbiased.
Pocketwizard has a great product on their hand here that will be even better with soem firmware updates no doubt. If they could increase the range im sure the commercial shooter nerds would be appreciative as well.
Pros: Hotshoe placement (Ease of use, plug and play), USB updatability (FIRMWARE updates on the way), Build Quality, No need for brackets, velcro, tape etc, functions flawlessly with previous Pocket Wizards.
Cons: Not 100% dependable over 30-50ft, Channel buttons could have had better placement.”
The set:
Whats in the box:
Mini TT1 profile:
TT5 Profile:
Set together:
Max Distance for 10 consectutive shots 46ft in Bright sunlight 52 @ Night :
