Flash baffles me.

I have been taking photos with a 20D for a while now. I love using natural light, but I am very interested in learning about the challenges of flash photography. What confuses me most is remote flash and firing remote flashes. I have been looking at pocket wizards, but the theory totally escapes me. Do I need a transmitter for each flash or just for the camera and a receiver for each flash?

Also, how do you get off camera flash...is there a cord and if so where do you get one? I have a 20D and 550ex flash.

Lastly...is there a benefit of running the pocket wizard over the st-e2 transmitter?

Thanks,
Rob

since you have 2 550ex's, why not use one as a master and just trigger the other one wirelessly?

I have done that and it works well, but I am just days away from getting my alien bees and I am trying to figure out how to use all of this gear together. It seems a lot of people are going to the pocket wizard, but I still cant figure out the major benefit of it.

It is impossible to use the Speedlites in automatic exposure modes (ETTL and its variations) along with studio lights. You can use one Speedlite - connected to the camera - in full manual mode (the Speedlite AND the camera in manual modes) to trigger the studio lights' optical slaves, but you cannot effectively use the Speedlites with optical slaves.

Most folks testing Speedlites with optical slave attachments find that the Speedlite needs to be power cycled to get a second flash.

My recommendation is to separate the systems. Use Speedlites for portable applications and use the studio lights all by themselves whenever it is practical to use them.