Creative and business resources for photographers – ProPhotoNut

23 Comments Add your own

• 1. Mark  |  December 3rd, 2009 at 3:40 pm

  Hi Damien,

  Sorry for commenting on an old post, but I wondered what you thought about the relative merits of the MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 as the transmitter? Both in terms of build and signal quality and manageability. (I still haven’t seen them in the flesh, so unsure about relative sizes).

  I’m expecting that there’ll be occasions when I want a flash on-camera for fill at weddings, so interested in whether you think the Mini or a Flex would be better in this regard?

  Using it on a 5d Mark II if that makes any difference.

  Thanks!

• 2. Andy mcdonald  |  December 3rd, 2009 at 6:39 pm

  Damien

  i’m ready with cash waiting, but want to know if the Beat software has improved things. I need to flex at least & a trigger.
  I’m suing 580’s series 1’s & 2’s

  Should i buy?

  Andy

• 3. Andy mcdonald  |  December 3rd, 2009 at 6:40 pm

  sorry for bad spelling!!

  Andy

• 4. damien  |  December 3rd, 2009 at 8:27 pm

  Hi Mark,

  I think the Mini is neat and small. The flex is bigger but better because it is more versatile and takes AA batteries. I find the Mini battery compartment not snug enough so I put a small card spacer in to maintain the pressure on the button cell.

  I’d get 2 Flexs if you can afford the extra £20 or so. Both the mini and Flex will let you shoot with on camera flash and remote flash. Bear in mind that the Flex and Mini have the same strength of construction and it is not advisable to take ‘portrait’ format shots with the flash on camera, not that you would want to because the lighting would look terrible.

  Regards,

  Damien.

• 5. damien  |  December 3rd, 2009 at 8:28 pm

  Hi Andy,

  Get yourself a pair of Flexs we have a deal on at the moment, download the Beta software and get shooting. You’ll never look back.

  Regards, Damien.

• 6. Mark  |  December 4th, 2009 at 4:00 pm

  Thanks for the answer – much appreciated! I’ll be going ahead and ordering two Flexes.

  Then I’ll be reading as much as I can on using them!

• 7. Denz  |  December 14th, 2009 at 2:33 pm

  Damien, what about the range issues with these puppies. I’ve not been able to hit more than 27m with my 580EXII, and the AC5 RF shield isn’t available in UK until Jan – AND will cost another £25 (should be free in the box really).

  What are your findings?

• 8. Vance  |  December 15th, 2009 at 9:14 pm

  I’m currently using the beta version on the 5D MKII and it has resolved so many problems for me! Highly recommend anyone with a MKII to do the same!

• 9. damien  |  December 17th, 2009 at 12:00 am

  Hi Denz,

  I’ve not reached the limit of range on my PW system. Even using a 200mm lens with a figure in the landscape shot I get the system to trigger my 580 EX2s and 430 EX2s with no problems. 27m is a long way to be shooting but I’m sure you must have a need for it. If you switch to the standard system and use manual power settings rather than TTL for the times you need that range that should sort it I suppose. Getting accurate TTL might be an issue when such a small section of the frame will be lit, especially if it not bang in the center. I think I’d need a 600mm lens before I needed TTL at 27m. If there is sufficient demand for the AC5 RF we will be stocking it for sure.

  Regards, Damien.

• 10. damien  |  December 17th, 2009 at 12:06 am

  Hi Vance, I’m on the version too and can report no issues as long as you update all your units together.

• 11. Denz  |  December 31st, 2009 at 1:04 am

  I see the beta firmware has now moved to an official release.

  Am I right in thinking that with the 5DII and a Speedlite the new PW system has no extra flash power benefit up to normal sync speed (200). Beyond that however, there is :
  a) Full power flash extended to a shutter of 250 (HyperSync)
  b) From shutter speeds of 320+ optimised flash provides an extra boost equal to +1 of FEC. (compared to normal Canon HSS mode)

  Pocket wizard site claims that in manual mode brighter bursts are available up to 2 stops more – how can I test this? I set my Speedlite to 1:1 power but didn’t see any extra brightness with or without the PW system.

  Thanks heaps
  Den

• 12. Denz  |  December 31st, 2009 at 1:45 am

  Just to follow up – the brighter bursts in manual flash are significant upto normal 5DII sync speeds of 200. As a test I flipped a PWmini mounted flash into manual 1/8 power (camera manual) and found the same exposure without the PW needed 1/4 +0.3 on the 580EXII speedlite. So a nice boost in power BUT there is a colour shift with the PW (bug).

  Thanks for now

• 13. George  |  January 9th, 2010 at 2:17 am

  There are annoying bugs in the new firmware v5.

  With ETTL flash if you bounce the flash (any direction other than head on) you will get a large amount of flash underexposure.

  The solution is to DISABLE the new pre-flash boost feature – which actually is supposed to increase the reliability of bounce flash! Perhaps the problem is the the pre-flash boost is just too strong forcing the ETTL to underexpose too much. Perhaps a diffused flash levels things out – I only bounce bare flash.

  However, I used the beta firmware previously and I do not recall this problem.

  Another bug is I do not seem to be able to take flash pictures at F22 – the PW simply will not fire the flash.

  Anyone else found some bugs?

• 14. damien  |  January 9th, 2010 at 10:40 pm

  Hi George,

  I agree the +f/18 bug is back. It was in the original beta v250 that I tested before the release of the PWs in Europe. With release of v300 it had gone and now it’s back with v500. I expect there will be a minor update to correct this. As for the pre-flash boost, it is needed for distance shooting where the flash is some way off and perhaps only illuminating part of the frame, well out of the range of the Canon IR system. It’s an inherent limitation of the Canon system. I agree it would be better to have the original low power preflash for close work and that is something you can set using your configurations. Set C1 to high power and C2 to low power, that’s what I’ve done.

  I’ll feedback the f/18 issue to PW. I know for sure that all the team are working flat out on the Nikon system at the moment. They had to break off to sort the 7D out and now they are back on Nikon duty I think.

  Regards, Damien.

• 15. George  |  January 10th, 2010 at 1:32 am

  Cheers Damien,

  Using C1 and C2 to work around this is a nice touch.

  While you are feeding back to PW – can you PLEASE suggest that they also extend the benefits of MANUAL flash power boosts to Speedlites mounted on camera.

  Manual Flash power boost only works on FLEX mounted Speedlites if you also have Speedlite mounted on camera. Surely this function can be local too.

  I hope I don’t have to purchase their upcoming Zone Controller just to get this ability.

  Best wishes,
  G

• 16. David Fenwick  |  February 20th, 2010 at 10:08 am

  Hi Damien,

  I thoroughly enjoyed Speedlight Mastery (in all the glory of blu-ray) and it inspired me to purchase a minTT1 and a couple of FlexTT5s. I’ve just received them, updated the firmware and then had a quick play and encountered a syncing problem when shooting at 1/250 and 1/320s. I’m using a 5D Mark II with 580EX IIs.

  Having worked my way through the instruction manual and addenda (yawn!) I was under the impression that I shouldn’t need to tweak any settings in the PW Utility -am I mistaken though?

  Any advice would be most appreciated.

  All the best,

  David

• 17. Ian Taylor  |  February 21st, 2010 at 9:44 pm

  What do you mean by a sync problem – you mean it doesn’t fire?

  Did you make sure you reset the units after installing the beta firmware?

  thanks

• 18. David Fenwick  |  February 24th, 2010 at 4:09 pm

  When a camera and flash sync it means that the shutter is fully open when the flash fires. For a 5D Mark II the fastest sync speed, with Canon’s own control system, is 1/200s, PocketWizard have optimised timings for Canon’s flash system which they call HyperSync. For a 5D Mark II it should now be possible to sync at 1/250 and 1/320s.

  With my 5D Mark II, however, I’ve found that I can’t reliably sync at these speeds. It occasionally works but, more often, I see a dark band at the bottom of my image due to the second shutter starting to cover part of the digital sensor when the flash fires.

  I’ve spoken to PocketWizard who suggest that not all examples of a 5D Mark II will be capable of syncing at these faster speeds. If the body has seen lots of action (I shot 60 weddings with mine last year) then the movement of the shutter blades can deviate from normal.

  To get round the issue I’ve just manually set the shutter speed at which the PocketWizards switch to using high speed sync (FP) flash. So full powered flash until 1/200s and then the lower-powered FP-mode from 1/250s.

  The PWs trigger my Speedlites without issue and were all reset after updating the firmware.

  David

• 19. Ian Taylor  |  February 24th, 2010 at 4:35 pm

  Hey David,

  Have you seen this http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-9884-9903-9907

  This camera is not capable of a clean 1/250 full power sync. So you did the right thing. The main benefit is the high speed sync where you get an extra stop of flash juice at high shutter speeds.

  You can always crop out the black margin given the nice resolution of the 5D2 files.

• 20. David Fenwick  |  February 24th, 2010 at 5:54 pm

  Hi Ian,

  The post you refer to is for old firmware. Here’s the info for firmware version 5.000.

  http://www.pocketwizard.com/products/images/TT1-C.pdf

  And the relevant part:

  “We changed the optimized HSS crossover point to automatically detect based on camera type. This allows the 5D and the 5D Mark II to sync at all shutter speeds with Canon Speedlites right out of the box without needing to use the PocketWizard Utility.

  “High Speed Sync (FP Flash Sync) Begins At” will automatically be set to 1/320 for the 5D and 5D Mark II, and 1/400 for all other camera models. This feature is automatically engaged by default, or can be set by selecting “Auto” for “High Speed Sync (FP Flash Sync) Begins At” in the PocketWizard Utility. Selecting a different HSS crossover point overrides the auto setting.”

  I’ve yet to test PW’s claims for HSS. I have my fingers crossed!

  All the best,

  David

• 21. damien  |  February 25th, 2010 at 11:59 pm

  Hi David and Ian, Sorry for the delay in replying – I’ve been away. My 5Dmk2 has a sluggish shutter too so I set my FP threshold to 1/250th. I have the latest firmware 500.8 and it seems stable again. I must say I’m having Canon TTL issues at the moment. My last shoot with ST-E2 was all over the place for some reason. I hope all has been sorted for you. Damien.

• 22. David Fenwick  |  February 26th, 2010 at 7:40 am

  Hi Damien,

  Glad to hear that I’m not the only one with a sluggish shutter but slightly concerned to hear about your TTL issues. I assume you were using the ST-E2 in conjunction with PWs?

  Would you be confident enough with the PW system to use it at a wedding?

  All the best,

  David

• 23. damien  |  February 27th, 2010 at 11:13 am

  Hi David,

  I was using just the ST-E2 and 3 Speedlights. The variation between shots was wild at times. I tried using a 580EX2 as a non firing master and I couldn’t get it not to fire even when it was correctly set. My system threw a wobbly for some reason. I was not using PWs because my Evolvers didn’t have PWs for this shoot.

  The PWs are rock solid with the firmware 5.008 and if anything it is the Canon side of the circuitry that can be a bit flakey at times. And yes I use the PW system at weddings.

  Damien.

Leave a Comment

Trackback this post  |  Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed