As flashmasters Joe McNally and David Hobby have proven again and again, the first step to getting an amazing photo with your strobe is to uncouple it from your camera and move it to the side/back/top/bottom of your subject. Combine a unique flash angle with TTL flash control and you have a dynamic duo.

TTL (Through-The-Lens) metering of flash is one of the amazing windfalls of digital photography. Not only can your DSLR figure out where to focus and what shutter/aperture combo to use, it can tell your flash when to fire and for how long. Wireless TTL works by sending a series of pre-flash light pulses from the controlling unit atop the camera to the remote unit(s). Both Nikon’s i-TTL and Canon’s E-TTL provide wireless solutions that enable the camera to maintain control of the strobe(s) if… if there’s nothing between the camera and the strobe, if the strobe is not too far from the camera, if there’s not too much sunlight, if it’s not raining, if… Enter RadioPopper, destroyer of the IFs.

RadioPopper is that (likely-to-be-a) multi-million dollar idea that’s causing a whole legion of TTL shooters to chant “why didn’t I think of that”. (Kudos to inventor Kevin King for having the vision, guts and persistence to make RadioPopper a reality.) The RadioPopper P1 captures the pre-flash communication pulses on the commander/master unit, converts the message to a radio signal, sends it to the receiver(s) which then converts it back to a series of pulses that the remote strobe(s) can see. The fact that there’s a concrete wall between you and your strobe(s) is no longer a TTL-issue. Check out all the details on the RadioPopper site.

What Others Are Saying About RadioPoppers

PixSylated, the brother site to Photo-Resources.org, will soon be putting a team of Poppers to the test. If you can’t wait for that review, check out:

the blog of Thomas Graves, a Baltimore wedding photographer

quick impressions by the Strobist himself, David Hobby

the blog of Nathan Welton, a vagabond wedding photojournalist

the blog of Ed Pingol, a San Francisco shooter

the blog of Nick Carver, a Southern California nature / portrait shooter