580EX II Flash and Pocket Wizards

I am really confused. I have three 580EXII and rely on the infrared communication. This works in most situations but I would like to expand to the radio trigger for obvious reasons.
I read good and bad about Pocket Wizards (not that they are not great products by themselves) and the 580EXII. Supposedly the580EXII has signifigant RF interference that the 480 and 550 did not have that makes the combination undesirable. And the reviews on the 580EXII combined with Pocket Wizard Flex and Mini are discouraging.


What is the experience out there with Radio Triggers and the Canon 580EXII flashes.
Got experience or alternatives?

No first-hand experience yet, but I think the Flex units are perhaps the highest thing on my shopping list.


How far away are you putting your remote flashes? How are you mounting them? If you're using them less than 45' away and you have an opportunity to keep the Flex antenna as far from the flash head as possible, you'll be fine from what I'm reading. Otherwise, there are patches ranging anywhere from a mesh bag/filter to wrap the flash in, to separating the PW from the flash using an OC-E3 or equivalent, or an upcoming shielding product from PW.


For the most part, I see myself using the units at far less than 45' away, and therefore anticipate really good results. I really wanted a set last week on the sailboat, as the overhead flash for fill was both hard to trigger (camera orientation and remote flash orientation were tricky to ensure line of sight) and power-limited (HSS wasn't real strong for me; the PW HSS improvements would have made a world of difference).

I think you should investigate the Radiopopper PX units if you feel that your needs require TTL functionality at radio-triggering distance. They aren't hampered by the RF interference of the Canon units. If you can get by with manually adjusting your flashes, then look into cheap CTR-301p (on ebay) units or more expensive, yet completely reliable Cybersyncs.

Ok, we've had enough threads regarding remote triggering and as a DIY guy I thought about it several times - how 'bout developing our own open source remote triggering system? We could come up with something that is 10 times better than the best solution in the market which will cost as low as 1/6 of the alternatives.


All we need is few electronics guys who know what they are doing. Personally, I have some knowledge in electronics and I have friends and brother who work with it everyday so that could help. If there are any other "electronics guys"/engineers here who are willing to boost such a project, please let me (and all the forum) know.


Think of it - a reliable remote triggering system which features/supports:


Unlimited number of receivers


Great range


Reliability


Receivers which can handle high trigger voltage





... and more (just add ideas/features that you think could be useful).


If anyone is really interested, please reply here (or start a new topic for this project).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Oren

Ok, we've had enough threads regarding remote triggering and as a DIY guy I thought about it several times - how 'bout developing our own open source remote triggering system? We could come up with something that is 10 times better than the best solution in the market which will cost as low as 1/6 of the alternatives.


All we need is few electronics guys who know what they are doing. Personally, I have some knowledge in electronics and I have friends and brother who work with it everyday so that could help. If there are any other "electronics guys"/engineers here who are willing to boost such a project, please let me (and all the forum) know.


Think of it - a reliable remote triggering system which features/supports:


Unlimited number of receivers


Great range


Reliability
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Pocket Wizard has been the gold standard of triggering for years. They're at the $200 and $300 price points because they are reliable. They understand the timing aspects of photography, and their (discontinued) top-tier gear had impeccable timing adjustments available to them.


Others have done basic triggering, but no one could match the reliability/distance of PW without going up to the same price point.


Pocket Wizard has just begun offering TTL signaling in their product line. The Nikon world is outraged that they have to wait for the PW technology for several more months. That delay should be enough to convince you that multi-vendor TTL is hard.


If you're thinking you can build something better and have it retail for $33, go for it. I, personally, don't think it can be done.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Oren

Ok, we've had enough threads regarding remote triggering and as a DIY guy I thought about it several times - how 'bout developing our own open source remote triggering system? We could come up with something that is 10 times better than the best solution in the market which will cost as low as 1/6 of the alternatives.


All we need is few electronics guys who know what they are doing. Personally, I have some knowledge in electronics and I have friends and brother who work with it everyday so that could help. If there are any other "electronics guys"/engineers here who are willing to boost such a project, please let me (and all the forum) know.


Think of it - a reliable remote triggering system which features/supports:


Unlimited number of receivers


Great range


Reliability


Receivers which can handle high trigger voltage





... and more (just add ideas/features that you think could be useful).


If anyone is really interested, please reply here (or start a new topic for this project).
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There's already an open-source project in the works that is trying to do just that. However, they're finding out that the cost/perforance ratio is right at the line of Cybersyncs, if I remember correctly. Check it out (I don't have time to re-read the 197 thread posts at the moment).


http://www.flickr.com/groups/strobist/discuss/72157603711551219/?search=open+source+trigger


http://code.google.com/p/strobit/

Update: I was writing this reply before I saw Sean's reply. Ok if that's the case then I guess I should forget about this idea... don't bother to read the text below unless you are really bored and has nothing better to do [:D]





Actually, at least fort the beginning, I wasn't talking about supporting TTL. I don't have much experience with this, but I don't think you need TTL support when you shoot at a studio or similar situations to get good results.


I was also talking about a system for Canon users - not multi anything lol.


Besides that, do you have any good reason to think the way you think? Do you really think that the Cactus system which is unreliable worth $50? (I mean the parts it is made of)


I bet it doesn't, and anyone who needs something simple yet reliable to trigger his off camera 3rd party flashes could build his own triggering system for as low as few $.


Furthermore, the whole idea of open source was that anyone could take any part of it and do with it w/e they want. So for example, if all you need is something simply with no TTL/no nothing that just triggers 3rd flashes then you could have it. If you needed top of the line system with TTL support + some unique feature that only you need - you could have it by making small adjustments to the system (if you have the knowledge).





Ok this topic is too big and since you are not interested I'm not going to bother to write more about it for now. If anyone *is* interested though, we could start a new thread and talk about it with more details.

I guess I'm bored with nothing better to do. [:P]


So, I created a new post for DIY remote flash triggering.