The Strobist Corner: Attention Pocketwizard Flex TT5 Users
The fact that Pocketwizard have a new TTL enabled unit is old news. The Flex TT5 and Flex TT1 have been shipping for almost a year now.
In the beginning the Flex units were having some hard time dealing with radio interference coming from some of the Canon flashes. This interference comin from the Canon flashes had impact both on distance and reliability of the TTX units.
The good news: Pocketwizard made a 580 radio-frequency-blocking-beer-holder for the delinquent Canon flashes. They go by the code name AC5 (I can only guess that it stands for Allocation Control, or Algorithmic Collision. Go figure).
The even better news: Pocketwizard decided to provide them AC5s shields free of charge to US photographers who bought the Flex units.
The not so good news: If you are living outside of the US, this offer is not for you. Other thing is that the AC5s will be free only till the end of the month.
Good news again: photographer Daniel Aqua posted a DIY tutorial on the Flickr pool that shows how to build a Canon shield at home.
Here is a quote from the tutorial:
... I headed to the local Art Shop ... and got a copper/aluminum sheet for $30 dollars. cut a few pieces and taped it to the flash and BINGO! problem solved. Without this DIY soft shield, I was lucky to get 15 meters distance from the flash, with the soft shield, I stopped testing at around 150mts away.
- Link to full tutorial by Daniel Aqua
- Link to TT5 story @strobist
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Comments
Got Em, More Good New and Some Bad
I've had the AC5s for a little over a month. The good news is they do work and they take up a lot less space than the original metal shield design. The sleeve also acts as a nice carrying bag for your PWs. The bad news is that it adds a bit of setup time, raises the height of the flash over the umbrella mount and makes it difficult to change settings on the slaves. I was thinking of making a little window in the back of mine and using some velcro to open/close the hole. Still, I have to had it to PW for providing them for free.
this is really bad news, ridiculous...
this is really bad news, ridiculous...
The not so good news: If you are living outside of the US, this offer is not for you. Other thing is that the AC5s will be free only till the end of the month.
And we pay a lot for this set in Europe!!! What's the reason for this?
Robert
untested
did they even test the flex with Canon's flashes before they released it? It doesnt seem like it.
Yeah Great
or you can not buy crap in the first place... There are alternatives that work properly without requiring a condom to be used on the flash, so I don't see why Canon shooters are sending money to LPA for this rubbish.
The older units are just great and it's a PITA that the new units are not a real product but that is where it is now and we require an additional set of stuff for the radio eTTL since LPA don't have a viable product available.
shielding
Owners of the Canon flash might be better served by taking the flash apart and painting the inside with a EMI paint. There are special EMI paints for this at something like 50 dollars a liter. But I would suspect any paint with metal in it like aluminum paint would work well enough for this and be considerably cheaper. When done, you are done. No mess, nothing to remember to bring or to have fall off. It's something electronic manufacturers have done for years but apparently Canon decided to save a buck along with a poor noise surpression design.
EMI paint
http://www.lessemf.com/paint.html
copper paint
http://www.blockemf.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=743&products_id=5118
re: PW shields
the comments on this post went somewhere I did not think it would go. While I understand they reflect the hard feelings some customers have I think PW are acting correctly.
1. They did not hide the problem. In fact, PW came right up and stated that there's an issue, and the lighting gang (here and here) made sure every user on web knew about it
2. It turns out, Flex were mostly affected by old flashes. Not the ones you get in the store, but the ones you'd find on eBay. There is definitely a lesson to be learned here for the next generation of products.
3. PW took responsibility and shipped AC5s free to any buyer in the US (I can not understand why Europe was left out, and this is the only thing that bugs me about PW and this issue)
4. AC5s are now part of the product for no extra charge.
So aside the Europe thing, I think PW did well. Ideas for improvement? let us know.
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