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DPChallenge Forums >> Tips, Tricks, and Q&A >> Pocket wizard or Elinchrom Skyport
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Canon EOS-5D Mark II
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro
 09/22/2010 03:21:27 AM · #1
Hi guys

I can really use some advice. I'm trying to use my Speelight off camera, so I want to go wireless, but I trying to decide if I should buy a set of Pocket wizard or the Universal Elinchrom Skyport, on the last one I'm even getting confused with the models. My speelight is a Canon 580EXII

Thanks in advance.
Canon EOS-1D X
Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L USM
 09/22/2010 04:18:47 AM · #2
Heya,

I had the Elinchrom Skyport "eco", but I found it to be very unreliable: some shots weren't triggering the flashes (even though I was only a couple of meters away), and after a few days, it stopped working completely. Maybe I had a defective product.
I didn't bothered much more than that with it, because its sync is limited to 200ms, and I wanted to be able to use HSS on my Canon speedlights anyway. So I just bought several PocketWizards (3x FlexTT5): they work absolutely great. If money isn't a problem, I would definitely recommend those.
Canon EOS-5D Mark II
Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
 09/22/2010 09:33:53 AM · #3
I've had my PW Flex/Mini combo for a couple of weeks now and I'm loving it. My original speedlight was a sigma 500 so I when I purchased the PW set I decided to get a canon 430exII for TTL. The reason I went with the 430 is because of the radio interference that is supposed to be bad with the 580exII (they come with a sock now that supposed to help with that).

The main reason I went with PW is for the ability to surpass my sync as gyaban says. I have never really shot much TTL (even when I had a Canon 580) so I was concerned about getting the flex/mini combo to work in all manual mode, but it works great. I can fire my 2 SP strobes, sigma 500, and canon 430 flash (in sync) all with 1 receiver at high shutter speeds.

Here are some shots I did the other day as an example (these were done with TTL) ...

200MM @ f3.2 1/400 ISO 200





30MM @ f6.3 1/800 iso 500


300MM @ f4.5 1/800 iso 200


The only times I've had trouble getting the flex to fire has been user error. With TTL the setup seems to be very picky about what sequence you turn the units on (mini -> flex -> flash -> camera). For the TTL shot at 200MM above I had trouble with FEC and I'm guessing it is because the camera just didn't know what my subject was at that distance? (I had FEC all the way down and it was still hot). I ended up having to manually move the flash and it is still pretty hot.

Canon EOS-5D Mark II
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro
 09/22/2010 12:43:36 PM · #4
Thankyou guys for the advice. jasonlprice those pictures are just gorgeous, thanks for including them.
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