After playing around with my new Pocket Wizards and lighting equipment for most of the past week, I decided to go outside and take advantage of some nice sun we were having for a change.  As it was already mid-afternoon when I made up my mind to head out, I knew I couldn’t go far.  I decided to try and take advantage of the Golden hour that was quickly approaching and head into Albany for some city shots.

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Just a quick note that some new gallery images have been posted.  I have been having lots of fun playing with my new Pocket Wizards.  The only issue is I need more strobes now!

Here is a sample from a very early Saturday morning session.  Note my brother is not happy about “modeling”.

So it’s been about two weeks since I received my new Pocket Wizard Plus IIs. You may have seen my recent post discussing my options and why I went with the Pocket Wizards.  So far I have been extremely happy playing around with them.  You can see a recent test shot on Flickr here.

Over the weekend I saw on some discussion boards that Pocket Wizard is planning a new annoucement for today.  Well they made an announcement alright.  They introduced a new product line, the Mini TT1 and Flex TT5.  These products enable Full TTL operation.  I wont go into a full review here, Chase and Dave Hobby have already covered that plenty.

Dave goes into the specifics of what this product can do for you, even if you normally shoot in full manual mode.  A couple of the highlights that I like:  HyperSync technology – basically gives you an extra stop of power from your flash, software upgradeable (as a software developer I like when things can be upgraded in the future) and these units appear to have a metal hotshoe..finally.

My first thought when I saw this is this would have been nice to know about two weeks ago.  On second thought, Pocket Wizard maintains backwards compatibility so I can continue to use my current Plus IIs.  The prices appear to have been released and the units a slightly more expensive then the current Plus IIs.  THe Mini retails for $199 and the Flex is $219.  This will give the folks at Radio Popper some competition in the emerging wireless TTL space.  I may consider picking up a Mini or Flex to play with the HyperSync.  You can head over to the Flickr forum that is going nuts about this announcement.

After playing around with my recently purchased Canon 580ex II flash for the past couple months, I have finally bought all a start of the equipment to use it off camera.  I purchased:  10ft air-cushioned light stand, shoot-through or reflective umbrella and a strobe clamp.  The last piece of the puzzle was the wireless triggers.

I was looking at several options for triggering the off camera flashes.  I didn’t want to get a solution that I would not be happy with or need to upgrade in short order.  Here is my list of triggers:

• Alien Bee CyberSyncs
• Elinchrom Skyports
• Gadget Infinity V2S (eBay triggers)
• Recently Released Radio Poppers JrX /PX
• Pocket Wizard Plus II

I reviewed the products based on their advertised features along with anecdotal testimonials from various online photo communities.  There is tons of talk about off camera flash on the Strobist Flickr group.  Click the jump to find out the winner.  (more…)