Woohoo…Pocket Wizards!

Apr 3, 2009 by Bo    6 Comments    Posted under: Equipment Review, Misc Equipment

After a few weeks of debating I finally plunked down the dough and got a pair of Pocket Wizards PlusIIs.  These Pocket Wizards allow off camera flash and can work with small flashes (such as the SBs and big strobes).  With the pair of pocket wizards…I’m able to have 3 off camera flashes (Sb600, sb800 and sb900).  [apologies for crappy photos]

Note…the above picture is actually surprisingly hard to take considering the D50 in the photo was triggering the flashes.   More on the photo setup and getting SB600 hooked to pocket wizard at end of post.

There are many ways to trigger off camera flashes ranging from cheap Ebay triggers to Nikon CLS system with flash to CLS with SU-800 and Pocket Wizards.   Hit the link to read more about the advantages/disadvantages and why I chose the Pocket Wizards.

I initally owned a set of Cactus V2s.   Got a nice set for $50.  They are cheap and dirty…but it works…somewhat.  The downside to the Cactus V2s were that they are limited in their distance, in my test they often misfire after about 5 meters/yards.   The triggers also oftentimes get triggered by random signals causing the flashes to trigger unexpectedly.   Perhaps most annoyingly is that the triggers are built shoddily; I broke 2 receivers in one evening shoot in strong wind.   But they are CHEAP, and they have a hot shoe to attached flashes without pc syncs such as the SB600.

After breaking my triggers… I resorted to using Nikon’s CLS system with my SB800 or 900 as the commander module.  As great as it was…it wasn’t perfect.   I had trouble getting the flashes to ‘see’ each other.  I had to compromise my camera/light positions in order to get it all to work.  When I put my flashes in the softboxes, I had trouble keeping the sensor clear.  Keep in mind, I shoot on location, so this was all outdoors…haven’t had much of an issue indoors.

The next options were the SU-800 Nikon trigger or Pocket Wizards.  SU-800 still works off the CLS principle and you retain full CLS control using infrared.  With this system, I could easily control all three of my flashes…however the same communication.  The SU-800 unit costs $250.

With pocket wizards, they work off radio signal and would not have the communication issues I have encountered before, but the main thing is cost…$160 per transceiver.  To get all three of my flashes to work with Pocket Wizards, I’d need 4 transceivers…so$650.

In the end I opted for a pair of Pocket Wizards which would allow me to trigger my SB600 and then I can set my Sb800 and SB900 on SU-4 mode (optical slave).  Because the Sb600 does not have a PC sync, it takes an adapter to get it to work properly.

a hotshoe to male PC socket with other contacts taped off

a 3.5mm to female pc sync adapter

all together SB600 + Pocket Wizard = happy

A note on the photo at the top.  The D50 was attached to the Pocket Wizard transmitter which triggered the receiver on the SB600.  The SB800 and SB900 were set on optical slave and were triggered by the flash of the SB600.  The D50 was triggered by remote while I snapped away on my D2x at 8fps.

Got anything to say? Go ahead and leave a comment!