Pocket Wizards.

[I @ M]

A brief impression of the Pocket Wizard FlexTT5 transceivers 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.
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.

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.

[sportsshooter]

I use them all the time, I shoot most of the time with 3 or 4 cameras when working.
One of the things I did last summer while shooting cricket was take 2 tripods, I have a camera in hand, 2 on tripods and shooting wirelessly. Got some great shots. I use them for other sports, rarely use mine for flashes tho, but I never ever shoot people in the studio anymore

[I @ M]

The TT5 controllers weren't bought for remote camera triggering ( even though they are very capable at that as well ) as the ultra cheap Yongnuo triggers do a very good job of that.
I was only interested in the Pocket Wizards TT5s to enable fast flash synch speeds.

[Lani]

How do they go with your studio strobes Andrew? I have been looking at getting some too, again purely for an increased shutter speed, and curious as to why the flex tt5's and not the minis Also how tricky is the setting up of them?