Hey everybody. Well, things have been ticking along nicely. I looked at the calendar and could not believe it is February already. Well, that’s not entirely true; I knew darn well it was February already because I have been filling up every day in January with clients, post processing or other equally as exciting stuff.
Anyway I thought I’d give you a quick update on the Pixel i-TTL remotes that I have been using for a little while now. I blogged about them late last year when I first got them but had not really had a chance to test them.
Well, several weddings and modeling shoots later – I have mixed feelings about these little puppies. On the whole, they work pretty well. They are marketed as being able to work with Nikon’s i-TTL metering system as well as the Nikon CLS “Creative Lighting System” wherein it is possible to have an off camera flash set-up with multiple flash units, all being controlled by a master unit, either using the camera bodies pop-up flash or a speedlight like a SB-800 or SB-900.
So, as for the triggers, i-TTL works like a charm. Nikon CLS – not so much, in fact not at all! This is a little disappointing but not a total loss.
The main reason I got these triggers was to use them at weddings, when it is all happening very quickly and you don’t really have the time to set up everything on manual and meter everything yourself. You need to be able to arrive on location, arrange the bride and groom in the shot, take a few frames – bam bam bam – and jump back into the car to head for the next location. I have also been having; um… difficulties in some scenarios getting enough power output just from one SB-900.
A little while ago whilst on a training day hosted by the amazing Louis Pang I was taken aback on how well Nikon CLS would work when combined with a Lastolite Tri-flash holder and three speedlights. Why have one flash trying to output at 100% when you can have three flashes achieving the same output only at 50ish% and over a much broader area. Louis was using Radio Poppers which he personally had purchased whilst in the USA. Unfortunately Radio Poppers are not available outside the US at the moment, so I had to look elsewhere. Are you still with me? I’ll get to the point soon!
So I had to keep looking around for suitable triggers, and in the absence of the PocketWizard Flex and Mini TTL triggers still I chose to get the Pixel triggers. As you can see by the image, this is what the whole set-up looks like. I was initially a little worried about how sturdy the whole arrangement would be, but so far so good. The Lastolite Tri-Flash holder is cast alloy and tough as nails, so no worries there. The Pixel Triggers however, I am a little more concerned about, especially for the two horizontally mounted SB-900’s. everything is holding together just fine so far, and I am especially careful (some may say anal) with my gear but time will tell how they will handle a few weddings.
This image was taken this afternoon whilst my son was playing under the back porch. I used just a single SB-900 and a Pixel trigger firing through a Lastolite EzyBox Hotshoe 60cm softbox. I also had a second SB-900 with a Pixel trigger placed behind my son and set to -1 stop output to provide a subtle rim light on his left side. The point of this was to try out the Pixel triggers in a rapid-fire situation. My Nikon D700 was set to [Ch] shooting mode (i.e., 5 fps) and I had the camera set to manual mode, f/2.8 @ 1/320th Second shutter, ISO200. I was aware that the flash batteries would struggle a little bit to keep up so I was limiting the bursts to five frames. Predictably the last one or two frames were in the burst were a little weaker as far as the flash output was concerned but overall the flash output was fairly consistent. Cool.
The last image shows a recent wedding I shot using the Pixel Triggers and a homemade tri-flash holder thanks to my good mate @JBcamera, as whilst I had ordered the Lastolite Tri-Flash holder it had not arrived in time for the wedding shoot. Anyways, the set-up was essentially the same; 3x Pixel Triggers, 2x SB-900’s and 1x SB-800 all mounted on a monopod and carefully held upright and in place by my awesome assistant. Those keen followers out there of my work (yeah, both of you!) will recognize this image as one that I posted on our Facebook Page the other week.
So, as you can see, the trio of flashes has enough output to balance the bright afternoon sun. Interestingly, the overheat warning came on the SB-900’s after about 15 minutes of shooting various poses and scenes on the beach. This did surprise me, as I was thinking that the higher number of flashes meant that each one had to work a little less. In hindsight, they probably were, and I was probably shooting a lot of frames in quick succession. But I do know that if the flashes had been set to manual mode, ½ output power I could shoot “pop pop pop” all afternoon without them overheating. I put this overheating down the fact that because I was in i-TTL mode the flashes were all pre-flashing for each shot in order to achieve correct exposure and therefore they had to work five times harder than if they were not pre-flashing in [M] Manual mode.
Ok, to wrap this up for now; I’ll try to get a few more examples of the Pixel Triggers in the next blog post or two. Oh yeah, keep an eye out for our new look Video Blogs – coming soon to a computer near you!
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