Pocket Wizard Flex TT5 Review

[charles_m1]

<p>Since Amazon was having a 15% off sale on PW items (promo code: POCKETIO), I decided to buy 2 of the flexes. PW now includes the AC5 shield with their flexes, so I figured they should be very reliable now and all range issues are sorted out. I chose the flexes because they use AA batteries, whereas the mini requires some kind of button cell battery.<br /> Before I had these, I used a pair of Chinese triggers called Cactus triggers. They have worked quite well for me, but I know that people had trouble with these. I never used mine more than 10 feet away though. The reason I wanted the Flex is so I can use my flashes outdoors, in bright sunlight, and have ETTL. I am not a pro, but my subjects (usually my wife and/or my 2 year old daughter) often get inpatient when I am trying to fiddle around with settings.<br /> Since the Flex TT5 was so much more expensive, I wanted to test them very well to see if the reliability issues have been resolved.<br /> Out of the box, I read the "Quick Start" guide and got unreliable results. My flashes are: 580 exII, 430ex and a Metz 54MZ-3. <br /> The Metz fires the most consistently, but the Metz flash does not recognize any of the ETTL commands. The Metz screen says "TTL" and I cannot change it to "eTTL", so it fires at full blast only. I can set it manually to fire at lower power levels, but this would not be ETTL.<br /> The flash on both the 580 exII and 430ex keep going off even when I am not shooting a picture. I was not getting reliable results with either flash.<br /> So, finally, I go online and download the full manual from the PW website. The manual is very hard to read because there are a lot of addendums at the front of the manual. The addendums has bug fixes, added functions, etc. So I try reading it while playing with my new toys.<br /> That was time well spent. I found out that I am supposed to turn on the PWs before turning on the camera and flash. I also found that the first time everything is powered on, I need to take 2 "calibration" shots. <br /> After I followed those rules, everything worked well. But, the remote flash was only about 5 ft away from me. I put one flash about 40 feet away, then tried different scenarios to see how it worked. In all these scenarios, the 580 exII was on camera and the 430 ex was the remote flash.<br /> a. If the remote antenna was behind the 430 ex, it was very unreliable.<br /> b. If the remote antenna was in front of the 430 ex, it was 100%reliable.<br /> c. It was very annoying to cover the 580 exII with the sock because I wanted to set ratios on the flash. So on the 580 exII, I pulled the sock up so only the flash head was covered. It was still 100% reliable.<br /> d. Since #3 went ok, I tried to do the same with the 430ex, but it then, it became unreliable.<br /> During testing, I found that on the 580 exII, I can't seem to get the flash into master mode (to set ratios) when it is mounted on top of the Flex. In order to put it into master mode, I have to mount the flash directly onto the camera... is there a way around this?<br /> Here are my conclusions:<br /> 1. The positioning of the antenna is very important for reliability. If the flash is between the transmitter and the receiver, the signal quality is severely impacted, even with socks on both flashes. This means that we can't just slap on the PWs and start shooting, we'll need to always to aware of the antenna positioning.<br /> 2. It does not do ETTL with my Metz 54MZ-3, but they seem to communicate well with each other (no radio interference).<br /> 3. The socks aren't too bad to work with, since pulling the sock up on the 580exII does not seem to degrade the signal.<br /> 4. Having the 430ex mounted on top of the flex increases the height. This made it hard to fit into my softbox.<br /> 5. I wish it came with a real manual in the box. I don't really care for the online PDF download. I like having an actual paper manual, so if a computer is not readily available, I can look things up in the manual.<br>

6. The calibration shots are annoying. When I do them, my subject will think I took a picture.<br /> Even though they aren't perfect, I don't plan to return these. I like the fact that these are USB upgradeable and it is reliable as long as you know the limitations. I do hope that PW adds support for the Metz 54 MZ-3, then, I will have an excuse to buy another flex!</p>

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[scott_ferris]

<p>Seems they are still of limited value. I had a friend who gave up on them, I really want to like them but consistently hear of very short distance real world use they seem to offer very little over a well placed ST-E2, especially if you use a long extension for it.</p>

[zml]

<p>Yeah, PWs are awesome as remote camera triggers but PITA if you want to use advanced features of your flash heads. Too bad Canon is not crazy about getting into radio-controlled flash (and remote trigering in general) but the byzantine radio frequency usage laws make it very difficult/impossible for a product that has to legally work all over the world. (Say, using Wi-Fi outdoors is illegal in France and some other EU countries. There goes my WFT...)</p>