is the Pocket wizard Flex & Mini that bad?

I just tested mine in the field this past weekend. Mine worked reliably well for most of the evening (wedding). However I was never more than about 25 feet away from it. I got the Flex's mainly because I love ETTL flash and I needed my flashes to go off in bright sunlight which I couldn't with the ST-E2.

I find that 580EXIIs work well, 430EX II's are the best as pocket wizard states. My buddy's 580 EXI's were doing OK, but much more inconsistent (in exposure) than my EXII's.

At one point, I had a mini on top of my 1D, an 580EXII on top of the mini. 1 430EXII on a stand to the left and one 580EXII to the right and everything poped for some very nice fill. That made me smile.

So far with 3 TT5's and a 580exII and 430exII I have not had one misfire/missed shot. I am using manual mode mostly at the moment and indoors. I will be out doors soon, then ill move onto trying ETTL.

thanks for all the tipps, especially k_strecker with the extensive help. I have gone through all this. and i can assure you, that the problem is not caused by not yet ready flashes. I have tested with assistants at all remote flashes, they signed once all flashes were ready. in some rarely situations all 3 triggered (but one started to fail soon enough), sometimes 2, sometimes 1. sometimes they suddenly stop triggering. then sometimes it helps to turn off everything, sometimes it does not help. it's just hopeless.
I agree, that there is a learning curve and that some "user-caused-errors" do occur. but certainly this does not mean, that if some owners have these issues, that it is not the radio's problem.

Then the answer is simple, call PW for replacements for your defective units.

http://www.pocketwizar​d.com/support/repair/

I have found that when using them as "dumb triggers" to fire the AlienBees, the first shot is ALWAYS out of sync with the shutter ( half black frame )....then all subsequent shots are sync'd correctly.
Also, in the two or so months I've had them, I am now on my third battery in the mini. Last night I found a place on amazon dot com that has the battery for the mini ( the 2450 button battery ) as a 6 pack for US$12.99 with free shipping. I will admit, I keep forgetting to turn it off when I leave the camera room, but actually, it goes to sleep automatically, so it shouldn't run the battery down, I would not think. Having said that, I've been using them quite a bit, so maybe this is just going to be the life of the batts.

My 430EX, which is one of the "noisy" flashes works okay with the flex as long as I keep them seperated by about a foot with the OC cord.

The mini only goes to sleep when not in Basic Trigger mode.

Though, I think they still take a calibration shot, which is why the first frame's half-black.

My mini is pushing 6500 triggers, most of them ETTL . . . and still showing 40% in PW utility and not blinking amber at me yet . . .

picturecrazy wrote in post #8681778
You gotta use the PW software and attach it to your computer. You set a hypersync offset that do trial-and-error tests with it until you find an offset that works best. Then when you shoot above 1/250 you go into hypersync mode. I turn off high speed sync completely because I don't use it.

Thank you for your advice. I'm going to have to try this out.

I've had some interest in these, but if Lloyd can't figure them out, I'd stand no chance whatsoever.

me

Today I learned a new trick with them.

You can put a flex on-camera, use the CM-N3-ACC cord to remotely trigger that camera.

You can trigger it using a standard channel, for maximum range. Then it will auto-relay to another Flex with a canon flash on it. Then you have a remote camera, which in turn has a remote TTL flash.

Why do this you ask?!?

One-Man remote TTL painting with light!!!! that's why.

I can walk around, with the flash-on-flex in one hand and the trigger in the other. Trigger fires camera, camera fires flex, TTL painting with light.

Stack the layers in Lighten blending mode. No more running around like a madman during a 30 second exposure and using TTL with the remote flash gets rid of the exposure trial-n-error . . .

At first I was quite unhappy with the two, I got them as soon as they were out and played with them but I just did not get what I was expecting... Yesterday I did an FW update and I thought I'd play with them a bit and I must say that I am starting to like them... I don't know if it was the FW or not but it responded much better to all of what I wanted.

tunin wrote in post #8702557
At first I was quite unhappy with the two, I got them as soon as they were out and played with them but I just did not get what I was expecting... Yesterday I did an FW update and I thought I'd play with them a bit and I must say that I am starting to like them... I don't know if it was the FW or not but it responded much better to all of what I wanted.

Why such a long wait to upgrade the FW?

When I first got them, I was disappointed so I just left them in the storage and forgot about them until the other day.

k_strecker wrote in post #8702633
Why such a long wait to upgrade the FW?

When I first got mine, they were so erratic that I could not use them. Just on a chance, I reloaded the firmware and everything started working. I was not upgrading the FW, I was just reloading the FW that was already on them.

PW have replaced my original set.

That's great service, however, my early prognosis is not encouraging.