Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: Robcat on September 06, 2011, 03:47:55 pm
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What do people recommend for a cheap, reliable wireless trigger for studio strobes (Alien Bees)? I only need short range (< 20 feet/6 m)and don't have issues with other shooters so don't need multiple channels. Every time my synch cord falls out or I step on it I swear I'm going wireless...this time I mean it :)
Rob P
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Hello,
Pocket Wizard are the Roll Royce of wireless triggers. I’ve used other brands and the Pocket Wizard’s are the most reliable of them all.
Cheers
Simon
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I use a cheap $20 eBay set from gadget infinity. But since my strobe work is only occasional and is for tabletop setups, the rare misfire doesn't matter. If you are shooting people or something with movement, I would go for better quality (or if you are a heavy user).
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I'm not sure that "cheap" and "reliable" go together very well, sorry. If I had Alien Bees I would look at the Radio Popper studio version, which lets you set the power levels from the transmitter.
http://radiopopper.com/the-jrx-system
You can get the kit for about the price of one Pocket Wizard transceiver. That said, I've been using PW's since my original Quantum Radio Slaves bit the dust many years ago and they always work.
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Yongnuo units have a fame for having both a reasonable price and reliability.
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Rob,
Although the PW's are the top dogs I have had very reliable results with Paul Buff's Cyber Syncs. The only caveat being that I am not able to shoot at the camera's full sync speed without a dark band appearing on the side, but they do work one stop slower.
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I just got a transmitter and two receiver "cowboy" set from Amazon for $29. About as cheap as you can expect. Bought the set for back up. Worked fine. 4 selectable channels.
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I'm not sure that "cheap" and "reliable" go together very well, sorry. If I had Alien Bees I would look at the Radio Popper studio version, which lets you set the power levels from the transmitter.
Ah yes, all is relative in the price/performance world. I had in mind a reasonably well made paring knife vs a 26 function Swiss Army knife. The Radio Poppers look very interesting and even have some Swiss Army-type functioning to control the Alien Bees, which is icing on the cake for me. Thanks.
Rob
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I do commercial and editorial work, but not weddings or similar , and use the PocketWizard Control TL system for triggering Einsteins and Elinchroms with a connection for an external Skyport receiver, as wel las and either Canon e_TTL Speedlites or Nikon i-TTL speedlights. I have a couple ofthe AC-9 adapters on order as well. Thye have worked consistently and reliably for me for well over a year now. If I wantto just adjust the output on everything I use the camera's flash biasing controls, or if adjustign the ratio between different lights, I'll use the AC3 Zone Controller module.
If I am working with very long (over 100 feet) camera to flash distances then I pull out my MultiMAX units.
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If you're just trying to trigger Alien Bees you can get any of the cheap-o wireless transmitters off eBay. I have one I paid less than $20 for from China and it works just fine. It ain't no PocketWizard, but it fires the strobes when I fire the shutter.
Neil