Radio Triggers - Options?

If you want to use the features the Pocket Wizard offers, you have to deal with the noise. There is no way around it....The Canon 580 ex and the 580 ex II generate enough noise in the frequency range of the trigger that Pocket Wizard had to come up with a fix to make it work. The best advice I can offer you is to get one of the solutions offered by Pocket Wizard. I don't own Pocket Wizards, but I would hope they would give you a refund on the AC5 or AC7 if the solution was not acceptable. If you are a DIY person, you could probably make a shield with conductive screen or fabric.

Regards,

110yd

110yd wrote in post #12615377
If you want to use the features the Pocket Wizard offers, you have to deal with the noise. There is no way around it....The Canon 580 ex and the 580 ex II generate enough noise in the frequency range of the trigger that Pocket Wizard had to come up with a fix to make it work. The best advice I can offer you is to get one of the solutions offered by Pocket Wizard. I don't own Pocket Wizards, but I would hope they would give you a refund on the AC5 or AC7 if the solution was not acceptable. If you are a DIY person, you could probably make a shield with conductive screen or fabric.

Regards,

110yd

That's the key. They're not all noisy. Mine apparently isn't. His is.

So if you're not using TTL anyway, would something like the Cactus V5 transceivers be completely out of the question? They operate at 2.4 GHz, and may be immune to the interference. Of course they have the downside of only costing $60 for the pair instead of nearly $400for the PWs.

TheBurningCrown wrote in post #12613809
Sorry - just to clarify: I'm not looking at building a big lighting setup at the moment, I'm just trying to get a reliable wireless solution to use on the go. I have a pelican case put together with all of the (general) gear I would need for a day of shooting, and I don't want to keep using a long PC cable for obvious reasons (clunky, hazardous...). I don't want to omit things to make room for an extra flash simply because the expensive triggering system I bought into doesn't like the one I've got .

Hate to beat the dead horse but I just had a chance and took following setup shots at a birthday party. How do you plan to mount your PWII? Look at my setup and I don't think it's clunky or hazardous. The cable is only 15" long (looked much longer in the first picture) and I was getting reliable firing from 75 feet away. When I say reliable I mean I didn't have single miss vertically or horizontally (off over a dozen shots).

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I don't think you are beating a dead horse. Moving the Rx unit away from the flash can help. I did not mention that in my previous post about noise. There is going to be a well defined RF field around the Flash. The RF shield provided by Pocket wizard weakens the field. Moving the Rx unit away from the flash is going to help. The problem is it becomes hit or miss unless you have the patience (or RF test equipment) to get a clear idea of how the field is shaped.

Regards,

110yd

110yd wrote in post #12615377
The best advice I can offer you is to get one of the solutions offered by Pocket Wizard.

I'm debating between either that or buying into a different system. I'm leaning towards sticking with them at the moment (because, you know, there aren't really any better alternatives...).

peabody2468 wrote in post #12616947
So if you're not using TTL anyway, would something like the Cactus V5 transceivers be completely out of the question?

Planning on adding TTL in the future, so yes they would be out of the question . I've also heard nothing good about the Cactus triggers (except that they're cheap).

dchen99 wrote in post #12617427
Hate to beat the dead horse but I just had a chance and took following setup shots at a birthday party. How do you plan to mount your PWII? Look at my setup and I don't think it's clunky or hazardous. The cable is only 15" long (looked much longer in the first picture) and I was getting reliable firing from 75 feet away. When I say reliable I mean I didn't have single miss vertically or horizontally (off over a dozen shots).

I don't think you're beating a dead horse at all. Sorry if my previous post was confusing: not that mounting the PW with a long cable was clunky and hazardous, but that using a long cable instead of the PW was clunky and hazardous.

I'm hoping on buying a caddy and attaching it to the stand just like yours. I've bought a short mono extension cable (~6') to try as well, with the PW mounted at the bottom of the stand.