Pocket Wizards confusion.

[zacker]

Ok, i know Mike uses them and I think maybe Ross and Sid... Im confused as to what is needed for useing PW's on a two light set up.. anyone care to explain and post some shots of the complete kit? i know you need one for each flash but what goes on your camera to make em work?
thanks guys!

[Orgnoi1]

Not I said the blind man... LOL

[TomNanos]

Each flash gets a receiver, and the camera gets a transmitter. I think the transmitter goes on the hot shoe, and when you fire, it sends out a radio signal to all the receivers on the channel to fire.

[zacker]

thanks Tom.. I just found out that now they have a newer one, its a transciever so you just by three and set to to recieve and one to transmit..lol and also, they are waaay too expensive for me...lol I know Justinl used or uses the ebay radio ones... wonder how they are, i hear allot of bad things but he never said if he likes his or not... Justin?? ya out there?

[zacker]

Not I said the blind man... LOL

really? i could have sworn you had some.. oh well....

[Orgnoi1]

Nope...I just have two 580EXs and a ST-E2

[JustinL]

thanks Tom.. I just found out that now they have a newer one, its a transciever so you just by three and set to to recieve and one to transmit..lol and also, they are waaay too expensive for me...lol I know Justinl used or uses the ebay radio ones... wonder how they are, i hear allot of bad things but he never said if he likes his or not... Justin?? ya out there?

stop bringing up my name foo! i just bought a used Transmitter on FM for cheap, so i went and bought a Transceiver through BH Photo to go with it. Now I have a set of ebay slaves (actually TWO sets) that are taking up space. The ebay slaves are said to work 30 ft in distance from each other and should be good indoors. I'm not sure how well they are outdoors, either it's the slave system or my flash unit (Alien Bee). I remember seeing a thread on FM about a "happy AB unit" that once the PC Sync cable was connected to it, it just flashed like crazy non stop... and that's what happens to one of my units.

Sorry, bottom line, I have some ebay slaves

[zacker]

Ahhhh I see... yes I have heard of the non stop flashing too. I guess the moral is, ya get what ya pay for!!
Thanks Justin!!

[syphoto]

I have been using PWs in my studio for years - love them. The transmitter can be run off of the hot shoe or be cabled to the sync port. I only have one receiver and rely on much cheaper optical slaves to trigger the remaining lights. This also works for me even outside when shooting in the shade.

[convergent]

There are 3 different PW models out there. They are the MultiMax, Plus II, and Plus. The Multimax and Plus II are both transcievers, meaning they can function as transmitter or receiver. The Plus comes in a transmit-only model, and a receive-only model. I have 4 each of the Plus Transmitters and Receivers.

There are various different ways you can use them. I most often use them with Novatron strobes. The Novatrons have a powerpack, and up to four heads... so you only need one receiver for up to four heads. I have not used them with my ABs, but in that scenario you could either put one receiver on each head... OR... you could get a splitter cable to connect the two strobes to one receiver (I think you can do this with RadioShack parts)... OR... you can put one receiver on one AB, and let the other one be an optical slave (this is the default if there is nothing plugged into the sync port. The last scenario will work wonderfully if you have one setup in your studio, and no one else will be using flash while you are shooting. It wouldn't not work for a lot of my shoots, because we have multiple cameras shooting at the same time, and so we use different channels on the PW for each camera.

I have also used the PWs with my 580EXs when mounting them as strobes in a gym. In this mode, they are simply firing the 580EXs in manual mode... no ETTL allowed.

The PW is actually just going to send a trigger pulse, in any scenario you use them. There is no intelligience other than channel. The Multimax has a lot more channels and some other features. If you have ABs, you may want to consider AB's wireless setup. With that, you can completely control your ABs remotely... setting power level and such. This could be handy, depending on your situation.

I have not used the Ebay cheapo wireless slaves, but I've heard lots of people that like them just fine. I bought PWs because I wanted to be able to use the Sekonic light meter that has a built-in PW chip. This is very convenient when using strobes, as you can trigger the strobes to take a light reading without touching any cables or anything. And when I'm working with multiple setups on one location, I can easily go back and forth by just changing the channel before taking a reading. I love this setup.