Remote Strobe Thoughts

The economy might be in the toilet, but it’s shaping up to be a great year for remote triggering of strobes. First off, the Radio Popper guys have been pushing the envelope for sending TTL flash information around wirelessly. Now, the PocketWizard folks—the gold standard in remote sync—have massively upgraded their line with the ability to sync TTL with the announcement of their new ControlTL technology. Of course the tech for all of this has been shaping up for a few years, but this is a watershed moment. In short order, the way we worked with remote strobes last year will seem downright tedious in comparison with what we’ll be able to do this year.

I have to say that it would have been nice if Nikon and Canon had chosen to go with radios for their TTL systems to start with instead of IR/strobe pre-flashes to start with. But, that’s not the way it worked out. One can only assume that the various regulatory environments for radio spectrum world wide might have had a chilling effect on that. Or maybe, Nikon and Canon just didn’t think that far out when they designed their original systems and have been locked into their choices since. Thankfully, it seems that the third party market is taking care of breaking those barriers for us.

In my own work, I’ve been using straight up Pocket Wizards for a while. You can get a feel for this in my recent post about lighting up the TOC conference stage. Pocket Wizards have a great reputation amongst people who use them, deservedly so. There are very few products that just work as reliably as they do. Their cost has always felt a bit steep, but when you need something to work, well, it’s not worth quibbling much on price. The only downside to them is that—at least up until now—they have only provided a sync signal. As a result, in order to change up power levels, you have to visit each flash individually. In a large room, or if you’ve set up a strobe in a hard to access location, this can be a pain in the arse or even downright impossible. The effective result is that you wind up with only being able to shoot with one configuration. That can be a bit of a drag.

It hasn’t helped matters at all that I’ve found the Nikon CLS system to be a really amazing tool for configuring lights on the fly in smaller situtations—even when working with all groups of strobes using manual power levels. It’s left me wanting to have that level of control when shooting big stages. Even without a full-up CLS control of my lights, it would be nice to have at least the ability to raise and lower power on various groups of lights. Say, group A as main front lights. Group B as stage right lights, and group C as stage left. That way, I could change up ratios to suit any particular shooting position.

It’s now clear, thanks to the progress that both RadioPopper and PocketWizard have made, that 2009 will be the year that I am able to get to that point. The only question now is which direction to take. We know what the RadioPoppers can do. It’s a bit less clear what the capabilities of the PocketWizards will be when it comes to the Nikon CLS. We’ll have to wait a few months, it seems, to find out. Given the raw amount of ability in the Nikon CLS system, however, I’m hopeful that the story will be a good one. Certainly, the mount-and-go simplicity of the PocketWizards is extremely attractive.

But, as the annoying TV announcers are fond of saying, that’s not all! The recent remote control strobes announcements aren’t limited to just Speedlights. Profoto’s new D1 Air Generator monoblocks look to be really cool. Three different models for different power levels and a full radio remote control system that allows for super-fine tuning of each head’s power levels. I’m not sure these kinds of strobes would be totally practical for the kinds of stage work I do, but I’d certainly love their functionality in a more controlled environment—say an on-location portrait shoot. And, I can always dream a bit about being able to fly some D1s up on the lighting trusses and be able to control them from the floor.

Like I said, it’s going to be a good year for those of us that work with remote lights. We’re finally getting some of the gee-whiz that we always suspected we knew was possible. The exciting part comes next as we get to work with these new tools and see the images people come up with.

Related Links

• The Strobist PocketWizard FlexTT5 and MiniTT1: Full Review
• Chase Jarvis shares his thoughts in PocketWizard Lights it Up
• The awesome 5 page review by Rob Galbraith, Casting light on the PocketWizard MiniTT1 and FlexTT5