Wireless Flash Trigger Comparison
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.
At first I was dead set on going with the Gadget Infinity triggers, at about $40 you really can’t go wrong. I figured if they didn’t work well I could just chuck em. Thinking about the mantra, pay now or pay later I decided to skip this step and start right off at the next level.
And the winner is….. Pocket Wizards!!! The plain fact of the matter is: THEY WORK…everytime. I knew going with the Pocket Wizards I would be able to hook them up and just start shooting. I was a little annoyed that they don’t come with any cables, for the price you pay I feel they could at least give you a one foot PC cord.
The Cybersyncs and Skyports were really close, feature wise and price wise they are pretty similar. Each offers slightly different advantages over the other. I decided to skip on both of these because of smaller issues, poor design and non-standard batteries. I will admit that these issues would be easy to overlook to save a few dollars compared to the PWs.
Another plus for the PWs, they use standard double AA batteries. I didn’t think I would care about the battery type until I compared all the products and their batteries. The CyberSyncs and Skyports use a coin battery and custom rechargerable battery respectively for the trigger device. Though not a huge deal, being able to use extra eneloop rechargeable AAs seems much more convenient.
The Radio Poppers are an interesting little product. In short, they allow you to use full E-TTL control and capabilities with your off camera flashes. They don’t need line of sight between the camera and flashes either, they convert the optical communication to radio. A huge benefit of this is the ability to use high speed shutter sync with off camera flashes. Though they are packed with cool features, the price tag is a bit steep, and I also was getting impatient as they are a brand new product. The JrX units aren’t quite as feature rich, but they are priced accordingly, more in line with the CyberSync price range. They have just started selling the PX units with the JrX units shipping in about another month. Check out their blog for more info.
Well that’s my thought process for deciding to go with the PWs. I know what most of you are thinking, “I could have told you to just get the Pocket Wizards right away.” I like to be thorough in my research. I should receive the PWs shortly, so stay tuned for pics to be posted.
Tags: flash, Photography, pocket wizards, strobist