RadioPopper P1 vs. RadioPopper Jr.

Village_Idiot wrote in post #5582247
And the P1 is extremely limited. As far as I recall, it only works with TTL strobes, which would currently only be Canon's and Nikon's at the moment...

Extremely limited? It works for Canon and Nikon--the two companies with the greatest market share, who combined completely dominate the market. Yeah there are folks out there shooting other brands, as well as using Metz or Sunpak flashes with their Canon/Nikon cameras, but I doubt they even come close to the numbers of Canon/Nikon speedlite shooters.

Well, if I understand RP right, the best you could hope for is remote firing of your studio strobes. This is fine & all, for the price. The Ebay triggers are pretty spotty, and if I could get the reliability of Gouge-Wizards for half the price, cool. All I really need is a 100% reliable wireless trigger with a range of 50 feet. Maybe the P1 will provide that.

Yohan Pamudji wrote in post #5586343
Extremely limited? It works for Canon and Nikon--the two companies with the greatest market share, who combined completely dominate the market. Yeah there are folks out there shooting other brands, as well as using Metz or Sunpak flashes with their Canon/Nikon cameras, but I doubt they even come close to the numbers of Canon/Nikon speedlite shooters.

I have one Canon flash. I have two Vivitars and I'm buying two Alien Bees.

When I was at a shoot the night before Don Gianatti's (sp?) workshop, only two users had ETTL strobes, besides David Hobby who stopped out with a set of Radio Poppers to play with. They were both Nikon users as you can control them with the camera and you don't need a seperate module. The rest of the people were using PW's. Radio Poppers wouldn't have fired the white lightnings we were shooting with. We also fired one Canon 580EX II and three Vivitar 285HV's for a shot. Radio Poppers wouldn't have done that.

Most of the people I know that use off camera flash use cheaper manual flashes, even with their Canon and Nikon cameras.

Most of the people that shoot in the studio don't use Canon and Nikon speed lights and use Pocket Wizards.

We could also poll this site and I'm pretty sure that you'll find most user don't have multiple Canon speed lights.

Not to mention that they end up being more expensive than pretty much any other option out there, even PW's as with PW's, you can fire any flash, even a Vivitar 283 that you can find on e-bay for $30.

Village_Idiot wrote in post #5590875
I have one Canon flash. I have two Vivitars and I'm buying two Alien Bees.

When I was at a shoot the night before Don Gianatti's (sp?) workshop, only two users had ETTL strobes, besides David Hobby who stopped out with a set of Radio Poppers to play with. They were both Nikon users as you can control them with the camera and you don't need a seperate module. The rest of the people were using PW's. Radio Poppers wouldn't have fired the white lightnings we were shooting with. We also fired one Canon 580EX II and three Vivitar 285HV's for a shot. Radio Poppers wouldn't have done that.

Because they're not designed to. Radio Poppers (P1) are a completely different market to PW. If you just want manual flash exposure then you don't need RPs anyway, as the RPs address the specific need for TTL metered flash. They've created a completely new market with this product, or at least made a product to fill a need that nobody else had filled until they did.

That's not to say that they couldn't have designed it to also support manual flash, but that would mean yet another dangling cord. It's a bit of a mess as it is; another point of failure is the last thing it needs. Plus it would've increased cost. They wisely designed it to not be the be-all-end-all of flash triggers.

PWs cover manual flash exposure just fine and pretty much own that market. Now these RP "Jr" triggers will be direct competition for PW, and if they're as reliable as they claim they'll be (and if they can sort out all the connectivity mess it sounds like they're dealing with to keep costs low) we might have a decent competitor to the PWs.

IMO, PWs are really overpriced for what they do and for the build quality they offer. After all, these are not very complicated devices. All they have to do is trigger flash and do so reliably, and for that privilege we get to pay almost $200 for a cheap-feeling plastic case of a device with a hotshoe mount that looks like it could snap off if somebody lightly bumped the PW. I know, I know--if you need it you pay for it and deal with it. But I expect more out of a device at this price, and hopefully the RP Jrs can deliver similar reliability at a cheaper price. I wouldn't have a problem with PWs if they cost, say, under $100. That's just me.

Yohan Pamudji wrote in post #5591032
Because they're not designed to. Radio Poppers (P1) are a completely different market to PW. If you just want manual flash exposure then you don't need RPs anyway, as the RPs address the specific need for TTL metered flash. They've created a completely new market with this product, or at least made a product to fill a need that nobody else had filled until they did.

That's not to say that they couldn't have designed it to also support manual flash, but that would mean yet another dangling cord. It's a bit of a mess as it is; another point of failure is the last thing it needs. Plus it would've increased cost. They wisely designed it to not be the be-all-end-all of flash triggers.

PWs cover manual flash exposure just fine and pretty much own that market. Now these RP "Jr" triggers will be direct competition for PW, and if they're as reliable as they claim they'll be (and if they can sort out all the connectivity mess it sounds like they're dealing with to keep costs low) we might have a decent competitor to the PWs.

IMO, PWs are really overpriced for what they do and for the build quality they offer. After all, these are not very complicated devices. All they have to do is trigger flash and do so reliably, and for that privilege we get to pay almost $200 for a cheap-feeling plastic case of a device with a hotshoe mount that looks like it could snap off if somebody lightly bumped the PW. I know, I know--if you need it you pay for it and deal with it. But I expect more out of a device at this price, and hopefully the RP Jrs can deliver similar reliability at a cheaper price. I wouldn't have a problem with PWs if they cost, say, under $100. That's just me.

Tell me something I don't know.

But it still stands. The RP's are extremely limited. You can use them with probably < 5% of the flashes on the market. Other radio triggers you can use with pretty much any flash.

Village_Idiot wrote in post #5591782
The RP's are extremely limited. You can use them with probably < 5% of the flashes on the market. Other radio triggers you can use with pretty much any flash.

RadioPopper P1s are not radio triggers! They are full two-way radio relay devices for ETTL and iTTL devices. They seems to work with every ETTL and iTTL device in the world, and some other proprietary two-way intelligent communications systems out there.

Radio triggers are one thing. ETTL/iTTL communications devices are another.

Radio triggers simply will not do what I require, as I am usually shooting outdoors in highly-dynamic, uncontrollable, 3 seconds to get shot, circumstances.

Surely the argument is "ETTL not required = radio triggers; ETTL required = RadioPoppers".

The Jr's can only be used with Canon or Nikon??? That's very disappointing in my opinion.

lowcrust wrote in post #5681462
The Jr's can only be used with Canon or Nikon??? That's very disappointing in my opinion.

The RadioPopper Jnrs will work with the flash units that other triggers work with. It is after all just a matter of momentarily closing a circuit.

The P1s will work with Canon and Nikon, and with some other brands also apparently functional, but this is neither fully tested or guaranteed.

Also, Jnrs will not work with P1s - different radio frequencies for one thing. But the Jnrs will have performance well above others of that type already on the market.

So Village Idiot is comparing the non-Jr poppers to PW's then? That makes no sense.

lowcrust wrote in post #5681806
So Village Idiot is comparing the non-Jr poppers to PW's then? That makes no sense.

If you would read the first half of the thread it would. People are talking about both types of Radio Poppers and not just the jr's.

Yeah but why would you buy a set of normal RadioPoopers to fire your manual flashes? That's not what they're about so any comparison between PocketWizards and R-poopers should be with the Jr version (which claims to do what the PW does only cheaper).

lowcrust wrote in post #5704156
Yeah but why would you buy a set of normal RadioPoopers to fire your manual flashes? That's not what they're about so any comparison between PocketWizards and R-poopers should be with the Jr version (which claims to do what the PW does only cheaper).

I just said that the RP P1's were extremely limited in what they could do.

Well, true that.

But so are the PW's of course. I mean they're nothing more than a remote on/off switch. People still seem to like them.

Village_Idiot wrote in post #5705240
I just said that the RP P1's were extremely limited in what they could do.

So are brain surgeons, but they're great at the top end (or so I've always found)!

lowcrust wrote in post #5707381
Well, true that.

But so are the PW's of course. I mean they're nothing more than a remote on/off switch. People still seem to like them.

Village_Idiot wrote in post #5590875
I have one Canon flash. I have two Vivitars and I'm buying two Alien Bees.

When I was at a shoot the night before Don Gianatti's (sp?) workshop, only two users had ETTL strobes, besides David Hobby who stopped out with a set of Radio Poppers to play with. They were both Nikon users as you can control them with the camera and you don't need a seperate module. The rest of the people were using PW's. Radio Poppers wouldn't have fired the white lightnings we were shooting with. We also fired one Canon 580EX II and three Vivitar 285HV's for a shot. Radio Poppers wouldn't have done that.

Most of the people I know that use off camera flash use cheaper manual flashes, even with their Canon and Nikon cameras.

Most of the people that shoot in the studio don't use Canon and Nikon speed lights and use Pocket Wizards.

We could also poll this site and I'm pretty sure that you'll find most user don't have multiple Canon speed lights.

Not to mention that they end up being more expensive than pretty much any other option out there, even PW's as with PW's, you can fire any flash, even a Vivitar 283 that you can find on e-bay for $30.

I'll just quote myself from earlier so I don't have to type it again.