In all cases or certainly most cases, when additional light is needed the photographer will want the dominant lighting to be off camera.   There are many reasons for this.  With strobe directly in line with the lens (on the camera), there is always a risk of the terrible red eye which is the result of light bouncing from the back of the person’s eye (retina) and the lighting is very flat (both sides of the face are exposed equally).  To provide for more directional lighting that provides for dimensionality to a person’s face and adds interest to the picture, off camera lighting is used.  

There are several strategies to move the light off the camera.

1. First, and the one which I use frequently is the black foamy thing which blocks light from the strobe but allows the photographer to bounce the light off an appropriate ceiling or wall.  For a description of the black foamy thing, see the blog of Neil Van Niekerk.  Below is an example of a picture using the black foamy thing and as you can see it generates wonderfully soft directional light.  My SB900 with its black foamy thing was pointed over my left shoulder.  Camera settings were ISO 200, f6.3, 1/125 which I chose to balance the exposure outside of the cottage with the inside, using the strobe to add light inside.  

2. A second approach is to use the Nikon built in optical signaling system to control a slave strobe with a master strobe on the camera.  This system works very well in small spaces and there are several other significant limitations:

       a. typically the slave strobe needs to be between the master strobe and the subject

       b. ambient light should not be too bright

       c. the distance between the slave and master is limited

       d. and the optical sensor on the slave must be pointed toward the master strobe except in well defined situations

On obvious solution for the limitations of optical signaling is to use radio frequency (RF) that does not suffer from any of those limitation mentioned above.  It is such an obvious solution it has baffled me as to why camera manufacturers have not incorporated RF into their camera and strobes.

In response to this obvious void, two players have appeared: Radiopoppers and PocketWizard.   Their respective solutions appear to be different.  Radiopoppers capture the optical signaling output, convert it to RF and then appear to signal the slave by converting the RF back to optical.  Pocket Wizard appears to capture the camera output, converts it to RF and sends a controlling RF signal to the slave without conversion back to an optical signal to drive the slave strobe.  For me the Pocket Wizard solution seemed cleaner.  While the PW devices have been available for Canon cameras for a while, there was no PW solution for Nikon cameras.   

But last fall, PocketWizard announced their miniTT1, AC3 and FlexTT5 for Nikon.  I never like being the first player with new technology so I waited until June to purchase this technology.  The MiniTT1 is a pure transmitter and it can be controlled with either a strobe on top of it (I use an SB900, but you can use SB800 and probably use others as well) or if one does not need the camera strobe they can use the AC3 that allows both TTL and manual control of the slave strobe.  For the slave strobe, one needs the FlexTT5 (this can function as either a transmitter or receiver, although they are about twice as large as the MiniTT1/AC3 solution)  The user can control three different zones (A, B, or C) and there are two different transmission channels  to provide additional control.  

I am sort of a vanilla photographer.  I am modestly interesting in the hypersync capabilities of the new system, but I as a portrait and wedding photographer keenly interested in consistency and predictability in performance in TTL or manual mode.  When I purchased one MiniTT1, one AC3 and 2 FlexTT5, they came with firmware version 2.100 and with the PocketWizard Utility I verified that was the latest version of firmware although there was a beta version 2.146 available.

This story has a happy ending, but I think my experience has some lessons in it.  Shortly after purchase during use and more formal testing, I discovered that the SB900/FlexTT5 seemed very reliable (although on one occasion it quit working for inexplicable reasons) but the SB800/FlexTT5 had either an appropriate amount of power or clearly not enough power.  In discussions with technical support they suggested two things:  reset my SB800 and upgrade my firmware.  

I did reset my SB800, but was not able to figure out how to upgrade to the beta vesion 2.146.  Since firmware 2.1 was considered the most current, I decided it should work just fine.  This was not the case, and I continued to have performance problems with my SB800/FlexTT5 combination.

Sort of in desperation, I decided to videotape the SB800/FlexTT5 to try to figure out what was going on.   In doing so, I discovered that the FlexTT5 was receiving a signal from the MiniTT1 even though the SB800 output was either ok or way to low.  This led me to one of two conclusions.  In the event of low SB800 output, either it was a pre-flash that I was seeing or it was a full output that was seriously out of sync with the shutter.

I called PocketWizard support again and explained to them all of the testing that I had done.  They had two recommendations:  try upgrading to the beta version 2.146 and/or call the development engineers (they provided a name and telephone number).  This time I had the presence of mind to ask for guidance as to how to download beta version 2.146 and I downloaded and installed beta version 2.146 on all three devices.

THAT WORKED.  I have shot a couple of portrait sessions and weddings and the only failures seem to be related to user problems.  In these cases, the devices appear to have worked perfectly or nearly so.  I will be keeping this product and using it regularly.

 UPDATE: VERSION 3.003 of firmware is the most current version and the problems I experienced should no longer be present today.

If I had a wish list, it would contain the following:

a. Ability to use rechargeable batteries (PW advises against using rechargeable batteries)

b. An indicator of how much battery life was left

c. A power source for the MiniTT1 different than the 2450 (a very special battery)