Quote Originally Posted by Mark Elberson


Do you know (or have you heard) if the range and/or reliability of the Flex system increases when using manual mode as opposed to E-TTL?
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Yes, it's theoretically a 50% increase. From http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-9884-9903:


"<span class="data"]The official range of the MiniTT1 transmitter, when
sending to Plus II and MultiMAX receivers and therefore using Standard
channels only, is about 1200ft (about 365m). When transmitting to a
FlexTT5 in a wireless TTL configuration, which means ControlTL channels
and Standard channels are being used (in this mode, the MiniTT1 sends
both ControlTL and Standard signals), the range is about 800ft (about
240m)."


That said, I had a few trigger misses the other night on a family portrait shoot, in a room that's about 11'x24'. Four flashes in use, all manually set: a key light (580II, with CP-E4 battery and PW AC5 soft shield), a fill light (580II, with CP-E4 battery and PW AC5 soft shield), a low background light (580II), and a high background light (580II, with PW AC5 soft shield). Interestingly, now that I think about it, it was the high background light that seemed to miss the most often. For the sake of mention, neither background flash had a CP-E4 to speed the recharge, and two cameras were in action for much of the night, so a variety of factors could have led the flashes to be not ready to fire.