They have always worked flawlessly which allowed me to put flashes where I need them to add to, enhance, or replace any lighting I find. To say that these are a staple of my work, wether it is a portrait or a wedding or commercial shoot, would be like saying I should carry a camera. I love having the ability to pull small flashes out of my bag and shape the light any way I want. The only draw back was that with the PW plus II flash exposure was manual. Not so bad, but when a flash or strobe is fifteen feet in the air or hidden behind something it would be nice to be able to change settings from a distance.Enter the PocketWizard control tl system. This system uses the new PocketWizard mini tt1
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and the new PocketWizard flex tt5. +a.jpg)
It enables full automatic control and full manual control from the camera at a distance up to 800ft. Or so the advertisements say. My results out of the box were about nine feet. .jpg)
Needless to say I was not happy. For a few weeks I read everything I could and went back and forth with LPA who designed the new units. In the end I was dealing with Patrick Clow. I cant say enough nice things about Patrick. He has been a great help and he seems truly concerned that photographers are able to use these new tools to their full ability. He arranged to exchange my mini tt1 and my flex tt5 and suggested that I use Canon’s 430 ex2 line of flashes rather than the 580 ex II that I was using. .jpg)
As it turns out the whole problem comes down to radio noise (RFI) that is being emitted by some Canon flashes especaly the 580 ex II. The 580 ex II is so noisy that the receiver (PW flex tt5) cant "hear" the signal sent from (in my case) the mini tt1. Pocketwizard has announced a RFI shielding device called the AC-7. As of my writing no price or street date has been announced. Too little too late for me I have already gotten rid of my 580 ex II in favor of the smaller and apparently less noisy 430 ex II. Did pocket wizard drop the ball on this? Absolutely! It is un thinkable that a company with such a reputation for perfect reliability would rush products to market that are incompatible with canons flagship professional flash. Further more to use that flash in all of their print and web adds is inappropriate at best and seems far closer to blatant false advertizing. .jpg)
In fairness I should say that the new control system works very well with the canon 430 ex II s I am now using, though I should never have had to go through a month of troubleshooting to find out. At least one person at LPA is trying to smooth this over. Thanks Patrick.
