The line drive at 1/400 = blurry seeds flying everywhere.

GANG LIGHT – Part 2: Just how fast a shutter speed do you need to freeze the seeds flying from a pumpkin that your teenage son is trying to drive over the left field fence? Also, how do you create beautiful light on a dreary, flat light afternoon in a way that let’s you shoot at a really fast shutter speed?

Fortunately, I had a dozen Canon 580EX II Speedlites and an arsenal of RadioPoppers (all on loan from their manufacturers) so that I could try to answer these important questions. As you’ll see below, the answer to the shutter speed question is “really, really fast.” The lighting question takes a bit longer to answer. [Read more →]

GANG LIGHT - Part 1: Shooter with crazy red hair, plays with 12 Canon 580 EX II Speedlites and 8-feet of red oak to build a high-powered “ring” light, then fires it with a dozen RadioPoppers in high-speed sync mode at a best-selling Photoshop author.

I shot Ben Willmore on the street in broad daylight today. There were several innocent bystanders watching. The sun was high in the sky and coming in straight over Ben’s shoulders. I centered my favorite lens right on his eye and BANG! I had him in 1/8000 of a second.

Shortly before the “incident”, Ben and I met up in San Luis Obispo on day 3 of Joe McNally’s location lighting workshop at The Lepp Institute. Joe was kind (or crazy) enough to ask me to come down for a quick talk to the 16 students in his workshop about my experiences with RadioPoppers. [Read more →]

I had the great fortune to catch up with Kevin King - the inventor of the RadioPopper - over the Thanksgiving holiday. If you’re a PixSylarian, you know that I’m a huge fan of the Poppers. Kevin is an amazing guy who was naive enough not to believe the negativity of a legion of engineers. The story of the development of the original Popper is proof that sometimes it’s more important to be creative than to have a head full of knowledge. More on that later…

Kevin gave me a sneak peak at the new generation of RadioPoppers. They are, in a word, amazing. This is not a one-generation step. It’s at least a double-jump. The fiber-optic is gone! The design is compact and elegant. The new system will fire TTL-flash and non-TTL (like studio strobes) simultaneously. Every Popper complaint, workaround and mod will become obsolete with the new generation.

Click here, right now, to read the details of what’s been going on in Popperland. Then, mark your calendars for Friday, December 12, 3:00pm Pacific. That’s when the new models will be unveiled on RadioPopper.com.

The new RadioPoppers will ship in early January. Fear not if you need Poppers for holiday shoots. You can order the original P1 now and get 100% of your purchase price applied towards the new models. Yes, for a month or so, you’ll still have to jury-rig the fiber-optic with black Gaffer tape. Do so with a smile knowing that the future of wireless-TTL is close at hand and very bright indeed.

^ RadioPoppers enable full TTL flash control for Canon and Nikon strobes. Unlike traditional wireless TTL, which relies upon a finicky line-of-sight connection between the Master and the Remote - RadioPoppers can transmit this TTL control through walls, in bright sunlight and over extended distances.

Off-Camera + TTL = Better Flash Photography

The number one opportunity to improve your flash photography is to unbolt your Speedlite from the top of your camera and move it… anywhere. If you rely on your camera to calculate the proper flash exposure or if you want to dial the flash exposure up/down independently of the ambient exposure from your camera, you have to shoot TTL (”Through-The-Lens”) flash. So, how to you combine getting your Speedlite off your camera and still maintain a communication link for TTL-flash? That’s the journey that led me to discover the incredible RadioPoppers.

[Read more →]

High-speed sync enables daylight flash at wide apertures by changing the way the flash fires.

According to the 1931 song, only “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun.” Thanks to high-speed sync, flash photographers can now be added to the list. High-speed sync enables shutter speeds way beyond the norm for flash photography. It also opens up a new realm of creative opportunity.  Many shooters are intimidated by high-speed sync. In reality, it’s really easy to use if you [Read more →]

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.

[Read more →]