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Pocket Wizard alternatives?
I just bought my very first lighting kit (I love Alien Bees - my lights are pink and yellow. Hehehe.) and I realized post-purchase that it might help to also buy something to trigger the strobes. Duh... So after checking out B&H and recovering from my price-induced heart failure, I got to wondering if there's an alternative to Pocket Wizards that's more affordable for us no-income beginner types. Do any of you have any suggestions that I might investigate? Any help would be most appreciated! Aug 17 06 01:08 am Link sync cord Aug 17 06 01:10 am Link if you want to be untethered, you will need the pocket wizard if not sync cable to the master light. slave the others. (they have optical triggers) if i'm telling you something you already know... apologies. Aug 17 06 01:12 am Link Micro Sync is very good and a bit cheaper... (and much more compact) Still 300 though http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/control … Navigation Aug 17 06 01:16 am Link Sita Mae Edwards wrote: Sure, go to Ebay and grab one of the wireless devices for about $20-30. Sure, they're cheap but they work fine. Plug one piece into one light, slave the others. Other piece goes on your hot shoe. Works up to about 30 feet. Eliminates the need for a sync chord which can get in the way pretty easily. Aug 17 06 01:18 am Link oldguysrule wrote: Don't forget the option of mounting a flash to your camera in such a way that it does not affect the scene but sets off the optical triggers on all the strobes. Aug 17 06 01:22 am Link Sita Mae: There are several alternatives available on ebay. Most are chinese made and they come in several models: Battery operated [receiver and xmitter], single channel ...cheapest and most unreliable by reviews. Battery operated [receiver and xmitter], 4 channel ..... more reliable by review Battery operated [xmitter], receiver AC powered, single channel...good reviews Battery operated [xmitter], receiver AC powered, 4 channel...about the same, good reviews. That said, I own the first and haven't had problems, but others report problems including unreliability of firing, sync problems at > 1/200 sec, distance problems etc. You might try popping down to the swap meet on Sunday, one or more of the vendors will have them for $40-$60. Ebay can cut about $10-$20 off the cost if you are willing to bid rather than "buy it now", but the wait may make it impractical. http://www.cameraexpo.com/ShowDates.html for the swap if you are interested. BTW, in jealous of the bees, had my eye on some for a while, but getting a new camera came first. Congrats on the bees  Aug 17 06 01:27 am Link HELLLOOO NURSE !!! ;-)  Otay ... Sync cord yeppers = anywhere between 55 & 100 bucks-ish, depending on length, brand & sale or not - but you also need a little do-hickey-widget-mah-bob ....(& that is the professional, "offical" photographic term for it - please quote that directly when inquiring it from said photographic sales person .... that goes between your camer & said sync cord to protect your cameras eletrical inerds from some bizzar twist of fate that could hiccup the lights power back into your camera or else a big ole smokey *poof* that will send ya ah cryin .... Or... if your indoors & MAYBE if the circumstances are JUST right outside .... you could get a super cheap, on-camera flashhead (SB 28 or Metz or Ebay) & use it to trigger your lights, "optical-slave-stylee" .... (had to do that a few times myself - just point the head away from the model - turn the flashheads power all the way down & disfuse it too & dial your lights up a bit ae well.) &..... I just went into my camera store/drug-den to purchase those lil micro stylee pocket wizard thingies & my girl Mary said ... "Yep! We got 'em - On Sale too ...then she leanded over the counter & with her cute-Mary-stylee-ness went ..... "PSssst* don't do it" ... followed by some unfavorable, whispered tech info. Or .... Just bite the bullet & turn yourself into a mattress actress for the weekend so you can just do it right & easy & get your PW's , like I had to. The H-Dawg & I did all of the above for a long *ss time before the whole "mattress-weekend-thang" .... if ya feel ??? Love ya Sis - !!! Goodah Ruk !!! J. Aug 17 06 01:36 am Link Here ya go, homie: http://hannemyr.com/photo/gt301b.html I've been using these Chinese Cheapies because I'm cash strapped. Not very durable, short range and lots of misses at sync speeds above 125th. Other than that, well, till I win the lottery it'll have to do. Aug 17 06 01:41 am Link Jason Fassnacht wrote: i think my head just imploded Aug 17 06 08:50 am Link I use a sync cord. Works great. It's awesome, actually - I've used the same one for 15 years and it's still on the original batteries! mjr. Aug 17 06 08:55 am Link I use Calumet LiteLinks. Work great, cost less then Pocket Wizards. Aug 17 06 09:00 am Link Sita Mae Edwards wrote: You have a D70 so the Sync Cord won't work for you (unless you get one of those that plugs into the Hot Shoe, I believe those exist, not sure.) Aug 17 06 09:22 am Link Chip Morton wrote: This looks like what I'm using, too. It was repackaged into a box with English writing and a sticker that says "Opus" was placed on the transmitter. I got mine from Norman Camera and Video for about $100. It works great with fully charged batteries, but I do shoot in a pretty small (12 x 17) "studio". Aug 17 06 09:36 am Link What kind of camera are you using? Most newer ones have a setting for your built in flash to act as a slave commander so that it only puts out enough power to trigger optical triggers in a external strobes (causes no real light on the subject). If you don't have this, you can buy their $15.00 hotshoe adapter and then use the 15 foot cord included which will fire one and in return cause the others optic trigger to fire that strobe. Aug 17 06 09:41 am Link Apfel Photography wrote: The sync cord is the cheapest solution, and sync cords should have come with your AB strobes. If your camera doesn't have a PC terminal for plugging in the sync cord, you'll need an adapter that plugs into the hot shoe. Nikon makes one that works fine. Wein makes one that's a little more sophisticated called the "Safe Sync" that will shield your camera from excess triggering voltage from the strobes. You shouldn't need that with the ABs (or with other new strobes) since the currently used sync voltages are within safe limits. On the other hand, I suppose there could always be a malfunction that could fry your camera, so the SafeSync might be the safest bet. Aug 17 06 09:58 am Link Chip Morton wrote: I bought one of them when I got my Speedotrons. GARBAGE. (NOT the Speedos) I was missing more shots than I was taking. You really need to see the face a Model give you when the equipment doesn't work. :-( Aug 17 06 10:04 am Link ebay has good items cheap. Aug 17 06 10:05 am Link I got my Chinese Cheapies on eBay for about 30 bucks and They have worked just fine, havent missed a shot. I accept that it might stop working at any moment. Aug 17 06 10:05 am Link these cheap wireless triggers work pretty well. well worth the $30 price - buy a few though, they are sorta lightweight. http://cgi.ebay.ca/4-Channel-Digital-Ra … dZViewItem oops, same one that chip mentioned... Aug 17 06 10:06 am Link The thing a ma bob to protect your camera from a 40,000 volt hicup is a Wien Safe-Synch. They come as Hot Shoe only or Hot Shoe +PC. They make 1 foot long connectors that have the PC terminal on one end and a male plug or phonoplug on the other to attach to your lights. If your lights use the female plug that looks like you can plug your toaster into it then you can get away really cheap. Camera > Safe-Synch > PC to Male adapter > any extension cord > strobe. Then get a slave trigger that plugs into your other lights. Now you are set to go and your lights will always flash. One word of warning ALWAYS follow the Manufactures' instructions for the sequence of attaching and unplugging the equipment with power on or off. The voltage to trigger the strobe can toss you across the room. A models' cat got too curious near my Speedo power pack. She could never find the cat but her place had the smell of burning fur for days. Aug 17 06 10:20 am Link Thank you very much for all the suggestions and helpful information. I'm going to give the eBay Chinese Cheapies a try, because if it's possible to be inexpensively wireless I'd be really happy....and if those don't work well or for long I'll see about some of the other solutions y'all have offered, such as the sync cord or using my camera's flash to trigger the strobes. (I've never used the flash on my camera, this is uncharted territory!) Talk about a great resource thread. Thank you very much everyone! Aug 17 06 10:25 am Link Hey, by the way, I just fired off a test roll using a Chinese Cheapie with a Fuji 690 and it DID NOT sync above 125th. Just a little FYI. Aug 17 06 12:00 pm Link Chip Morton wrote: How fast will the Pocket Wizard sync? The Microsyncs are limited to 1/180. Aug 17 06 03:30 pm Link There's one other thing that you should consider so that there's no surprise. The AB units you have use a mini plug to attach your triggering device, whether the sync cord, Pocket Wizard or something else. Most of the radio slaves that I'm familiar with use a 1/4 inch mono plug. You'll need to get a 1/4-to-1/8 adapter cable to adapt the radio slave plug to the input socket on your ABs. I got the necessary set up at Radio Shack, which consisted of a 6 foot cable with an 1/8 inch male plug on one end and a 1/4 inch male plug on the other end. I then added a little converter plug that had 1/4 inch female sockets on both ends. The radio slave plugs into on of the two female sockets. The 1/4 inch plug on the cable goes in the other end, and the 1/8 mini plug goes into the AB unit. Sounds like a lot of stuff, but it's very simple once you get the two pieces from Radio Shack. Aug 17 06 03:37 pm Link Good point, James. With some delicate blade and shrink tube work, you can splice the PC cord and attach a different connector. The Microsyncs only go to 180? Crap. Aug 17 06 06:26 pm Link FYI... on those Chinese cheapies.. a couple of items to note: 1. Must be at least 5ft apart from each other due to interference. 2. Must use Akaline Batteries for them to sync properly (NiMh doesn't work right for whatever reason) 3. Make sure your camera supports sync at higher speeds..It isn't uncommon for many cameras not to sync flash above 1/160 or so...just depends.. Thought this may help someone. Andrew Aug 17 06 06:36 pm Link okay so i tried using my built in flash to trigger two monolights... and they fire but the image is underexposed compared to when i sync up with a cord...what gives? i can't figure out why if they're firing the exposure would be different...? (at the risk of this being a dumb question...) **figured it out - using my 550ex speedlite set on standalone as opposed to master. pre-flash was mucking things up as far as my in-camera flash goes... Aug 17 06 07:13 pm Link I use a Wein IR trigger. I have the Alen Bees remote so I plug the reciever into it and only need one reciever that way. The Wein transmitter is very small and unobtrusive on the camera hot shoe. The whole thing functions flawlessly and if I ad d more lights (I now have four monolights) I can patch them in. It is a real joy to be able to control the whole light system right from the camera position. Aug 17 06 07:21 pm Link I bought one Chinese transmitter/receiver thingy on ebay. I thought it worked ok. If I worked alone that worked fine. I merely put the transmitter on the camera and the receiver on one light and when that light went off, so did my others. Because I sometimes go to locations where many photographers work in close proximity, any flash by anyone would trigger most of my lights. So, I bought 3 more...one for each light. Heck, they were cheap! Then came the problems and the discovery that you get what you pay for. I ALWAYS synch at 1/125 sec. However, I got many bad images where ithe exposure was way off (low) and many with partial images that resembled a flash synch problem. I thought my shutter was gone because every indication I had seemed to indicate that. For my next shoot, I rented a camera because I hadn't sent mine back to Canon yet. Guess what? The rented camera did the same damn thing! After further diagnosis, both cameras worked fine in available light. The problem turned out to be the damn Chinkanese wireless devices. I'm gonna now get me some Tamrac Micro Synchs. The pocket Wizards have a transmitter that is just too friggin big! I dunno much about the Calumet or Wein stuff, but generally, items with those names on them are pretty good. I am selling my Chinkanese stuff, cheap, so if anyone wants 'em, lemme know. I do not guarantee that they'll do anything other than collect dust. IE: as-is. Aug 17 06 10:51 pm Link I didn't read all the replies carefully, so I don't know if anyone mentioned this--I've used white lightnings for a while and love them. Both the wl's and ab's have sensitive optical slave triggers. But I've recently been shooting in locations where I couldn't get enough light into the sensor to trigger the flash. For $99 I just bought Paul C. Buff's (maker of wl, ab) LG4X, wired remote control. It uses regular modular phone lines and it's supposed to be able to trigger a flash through 100 feet of line(!). You can fire 4 flashes in sync with this little black box. And here's the kicker--you can control the light output from the box. You don't have to manually adjust every light when you're setting up ratios, etc. Pocket wizards won't do that (for 3 times as much $$). I don't work for Buff, by the way, although I used to live down the street from them. JD Aug 17 06 11:03 pm Link I hate to trash a well meaning product, but... I've had a pretty bad experience with the MicroSync. The transmitter in my studio has broken 3 times in the last year (always replaced under warranty). The 3rd one still feels flimsy, and I suspect it will fall apart like the others. The cover plate for the receiver falls off all the time, but it hasn't actually broken like the transmitter has. The stated max sync speed is 1/160 second, but that is optimistic. In reality I can't get much above 1/100 second. I've tried it with a number of different cameras, and get the same result. I'm very disappointed. It is a very elegant design, and WAY smaller than the bulky Pocket Wizards. But they don't seem to be constructed very well, and the sync speed is atrocious. And it is only a small savings off the price of the Pocket Wizard. I'd avoid the MicroSync. Aug 18 06 12:23 am Link Scott Aitken wrote: Interesting. I have the MicroSyncs too and like them a lot. I have had no problem syncing up to 1/160. What broke on the transmitter? The receivers seem bullet proof, but I did have to replace the transmitter after I lent it to another photographer and got it back damaged. In my case, there was a slight split along the seam of the two halves of the casing. I suspect that the other photographer tried to put it on the wrong way and applied excessive torque to the unit. In any event, I'd be curious to know what went wront with your transmitter unit. Aug 18 06 08:41 am Link It's all about the quality of the pocketwizards! Accept no imitations :-) Aug 18 06 08:47 am Link Mikes Images wrote: "Chinkanese"? Dude! You do know this is a public forum, right? Aug 18 06 08:49 am Link So, in case anyone cares I thought I'd report in now that I've been using my cheap knockoffs long enough to have an opinion about them. I've decided they're great, given the right circumstances. For figure work they're fine - that's a very slow, meticulous, sculptural process. For the kind of portraits I do, though, where eliciting emotion and spontaneity is important, they're awful. There's a noticeable lag time that has me missing those split seconds of genuine emotion before people remember they're being photographed and put on their portrait face again. I hate portrait face. In short - I'll be sucking it up and saving for the Pocket Wizards. Sep 25 06 10:46 am Link i not sure the name of it It's unbranded here in canada but it think it's branded as savage in the US but it was only 150 CDN But ti works great for me in the studio and small halls It's but no means as good as a wizard but ntil you can afford a wizard it's great happy hunting Sep 25 06 10:57 am Link I use I guess old school device a Quantum transmitter and receiver. You can get them in two and four channels. It's range is about 300 feet. They might be around 200 something. Sep 25 06 11:12 am Link Good thread! I have used Quantums for years and recently purchsed one of the chinese cheapie units. It would work well most of the time and then occasionally go on the fritz. From this thread I realize it was the sync speed issue. I haven't used it except on a few location tests and hadn't bothered to debug the issue. Thanks. Sep 25 06 11:12 am Link I just got the cheapie 4-channel ones with the AA-battery receivers. Fresh batteries and 200+ shots @ 1/125 without a single misfire - using a single receiver on a power pack system. However, there are interference issues when using it to sync Canon flashes; bought an extension cord for the reciever - flash connection and will be trying that out this week. Apparently having the receiver away a couple feet from the flash solves the issue. Sep 25 06 11:19 am Link |
