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New Radio Popper system

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
http://radiopopper.com/docs/radiopopper_xsystem_pressrelease.pdf

Youtube presentation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlkRYcZL6b8&eurl

Maybe not for you high powered studio photographers but for us event photographers this is BIG!

A radio transmitter that can send ETTL/iTTL radio signals (the line of sight systems built into the flash units are notoriously unreliable, especially outdoors or with diffusion on the flash head), as well as controlling regular radio slaves (1700m range!) plus 3 controllable power channels for AB's or White Lightnings.

AB's are not particularly good studio units but they are very cheap, very light and reliable units on location, I have 3 and use them at every wedding. I also shoot with a combo of wireless ETTL and metered (bounced) strobes at each wedding in the hall. For me this is very big. The ability to get decent ratio lighting for outdoor portraiture even in bright conditions, and shot to shot consistency indoors, all with a unit that can can be used to fire and control the power of my AB's - that has me very excited. The new Radio Poppers are also a lot more useable than the previous version in general.
 
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Oxide Blu

Guest
Thanks for posting about that radiopoppers. I'm just coming up to speed on Nikon's speedlights and lighting control, was thinking how stupid a decision for IR was, radio would be preferred. Then I realized with all of the other radio hardware out there, diff freq used in diff countries, maybe IR isn't entirely a bad idea after all. Perhaps the ability of both would be the best.

Only drawback that immediately caught my attention was separate transmit and receive. I don't think there is that much more involved in putting both applications into a single module, and then use whatever external clip to secure it to the equipment. When I was shooting weddings I had redundant everything. If you are using 3 lights, you would need a minimum of 4 recvrs, 2 trsmtrs to cover yourself in the event a recvr or trsmtr failed. It would be nice to have a single unit that can do both, a transceiver, like the Pocket Wizard.
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
They've just let out the bag that the radio poppers will give hi speed sync with your AB strobes when used from a canon or nikon system. Given that you can adjust the power settings on 3 channels from the camera, the ability to have the control of strobes with hi sync and full on camera control is, for this event photographer, very big. Think outdoor events and controllable strobe level fill control without any compromises.
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
The point of this is that you're not limited to on camera flash with a severely reduced range/power due to using hi speed sync, more so you have full lighting control through modifiers, the speedlight flashes can't come close to offering enough power when using hi sync to shoot through a real modifier such as a softbox or brolly.
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Firstly re my comment above, it seems that you only get limited functionality using strobes with hi-sync, namely a sliding scale of cut power as you up the shutter speed. This is because a strobes 'flash' is actually a prolonged output of light and at certain shutter speeds you will only be catching a certain amount of that light. I assume there are strobes that have very short flash durations and those would work better, however you are working with a pretty hard to measure or predict amount of light output. It's a case of shoot, histogram, adjust, shoot again. BTW this is the same for the new PW's.

Secondly and more importantly, as LJ mentions above, the new PW announcement. WOW! A unit that is smaller, cheaper, more ergonomic and most importantly has the PW name and reputation. The unit goes on the hotshoe so avoids all the velcro and stickers nonsense of the Radio Poppers. A couple of other BIG advantages is the cheaper price, transceiver (at same price but slightly bigger than the plain transmitter) rather than needing to worry about expensive backup, the transmitter reroutes the ETTL signal so that you have wireless ETTL without the noticeable lag or annoyance of multiple flashes (only one preflash), BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY WITH ALL PW'S! Sorry, but that is very big, it can act as a regular transmitter for all legacy PW's but did you see the size of it compared to a Plus II? The transmitter can trigger either wireless ETTL or strobes or both whether the flash is attached to the camera or not, my main 'beef' with Radio Poppers.

In the Rob Galbraith report http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-9884-9903 he mentions that the unit can do FEC with remote slaves eventhough the manual says that it can't (a big problem for me) and he mentions that at present the 5D mkII is not compatible which could possibly become a worrying trend for the future if Canon start getting anal about this. The units are firmware upgradeable so problems should be solveable.

Anyway, given the choice and assuming the units DO transmit the on camera FEC to ETTL slaves there is no question which I'm choosing. The bullet proof PW's. I'll pick up a bunch of 2nd hand older units for my strobes and the whole thing should be set up for the same price as a similar Radio Popper setup.
 

fotografz

Well-known member
Firstly re my comment above, it seems that you only get limited functionality using strobes with hi-sync, namely a sliding scale of cut power as you up the shutter speed. This is because a strobes 'flash' is actually a prolonged output of light and at certain shutter speeds you will only be catching a certain amount of that light. I assume there are strobes that have very short flash durations and those would work better, however you are working with a pretty hard to measure or predict amount of light output. It's a case of shoot, histogram, adjust, shoot again. BTW this is the same for the new PW's.

Secondly and more importantly, as LJ mentions above, the new PW announcement. WOW! A unit that is smaller, cheaper, more ergonomic and most importantly has the PW name and reputation. The unit goes on the hotshoe so avoids all the velcro and stickers nonsense of the Radio Poppers. A couple of other BIG advantages is the cheaper price, transceiver (at same price but slightly bigger than the plain transmitter) rather than needing to worry about expensive backup, the transmitter reroutes the ETTL signal so that you have wireless ETTL without the noticeable lag or annoyance of multiple flashes (only one preflash), BACKWARDS COMPATIBILITY WITH ALL PW'S! Sorry, but that is very big, it can act as a regular transmitter for all legacy PW's but did you see the size of it compared to a Plus II? The transmitter can trigger either wireless ETTL or strobes or both whether the flash is attached to the camera or not, my main 'beef' with Radio Poppers.

In the Rob Galbraith report http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-9884-9903 he mentions that the unit can do FEC with remote slaves eventhough the manual says that it can't (a big problem for me) and he mentions that at present the 5D mkII is not compatible which could possibly become a worrying trend for the future if Canon start getting anal about this. The units are firmware upgradeable so problems should be solveable.

Anyway, given the choice and assuming the units DO transmit the on camera FEC to ETTL slaves there is no question which I'm choosing. The bullet proof PW's. I'll pick up a bunch of 2nd hand older units for my strobes and the whole thing should be set up for the same price as a similar Radio Popper setup.
This is EXACTLY what I've been waiting for ... so it looks like these pups would also trigger my Profoto Rs ... and I wonder what's built into the new Profotos just announced in tandum with PW? Lots of cool stuff.
 

LJL

New member
I thought you might find that interesting, Marc. From the details given in that Galbraith review, these new PWs are looking pretty interesting and maybe able to start solving some previously annoying shortcomings. What would be interesting is if the new Profotos are incorporating some additional "adjustment" controls around the Hypersync stuff. That seems like the obvious next step.

LJ
 

dfarkas

Workshop Member
My rep came by the store today so I got a chance to play with the new PocketWizard MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 units. Very nice.

The hypersync tech is pretty amazing. A 1DsIII can now sync with studio strobes at 1/500th! The easy wireless TTL triggering is a breeze, with FP high speed sync working up to 1/8000th over radio. Pretty cool.

Regarding the new Profoto D1 Air monolights... they do not have the PocketWizards built-in, but rather the Profoto Air system. This allows remote power setting, modeling light control, etc. from the camera. It has eight channels broken into six sub-groups that can be adjusted independently. Very cool in its own right. But, if you want the hypersync tech, you'd have to plug the FlexTT5 units into your D1 strobes, and trigger with a MiniTT1 or another FlexTT5.

The D1 monolights have a 7 f-stop range in 1/10th of stop intervals. Fast recycle, super color stable, and more compact than the current gen ComPacts.

David
 

LJL

New member
Good information and update, David. I was not sure just what Profoto was going to unleash on us next after the Pro 8a stuff ;-) They were due for a monolight update, so these D1 units sound like they could be nice for some folks. So if one did the PW units with the new monolights, they would have to work two different controls, one for the D1 and the other for the PW. But i guess the point is to just use the PW to trigger the units, as most of what has been done before. Should be interesting to see how some of this continues to develop.

LJ
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Well, this test done by Tri Coast photo is not looking good for PW. I've cancelled my order.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=271786B24167854C

I just wish Radio Popper would pull their fingers out so that I can get the EU versions in time for the summer wedding season. I've given up on the side move to commercial photography for various reasons and am looking to really strengthen my wedding work. I'm dying to have ETTL off camera in a way that I can rely on!
 

fotografz

Well-known member
Well, this test done by Tri Coast photo is not looking good for PW. I've cancelled my order.

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=271786B24167854C

I just wish Radio Popper would pull their fingers out so that I can get the EU versions in time for the summer wedding season. I've given up on the side move to commercial photography for various reasons and am looking to really strengthen my wedding work. I'm dying to have ETTL off camera in a way that I can rely on!
Ben, you may want to read through this article.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-9884-9966

Apparently, the distance varies based on what flash you are using due to radio frequency noise interference from different Canon flash units themselves. Oddly, the best of the US/Canadian bunch is the older 550EX @ 950' and the worst being the 440EX @ 40'. The current 580EX-II is not so hot neither @ 100'. European versions of the PW units do a bit better with some Canon flashes ... like the 580EX-II @ 170' ... due to different RF configurations.

Also, a firmware update is imminent from PW that corrects some issues reported by beta testers.

As usual, the lesson here is to wait until the system is de-bugged, and then make a decision.

I await the release of the Nikon version, (and the subsequent additional wait for de-bugging) ... my interest lies with PW because these units are suppose to also trigger existing PW equipped units ... like all my Profoto R strobe gear ... thus making it more universal in use, and obviously smaller.

-Marc
 
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aprillove20

Guest
Such as a great updates and the ability to get decent ratio lighting for outdoor portraiture even in bright conditions.
 
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