Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Wireless Flash solution #2

So my shoot with the YN 560 III was sort of a disaster. I did get some nice shots out, but somehow I pressed the wrong thing on the flashes and they stopped working mid-shoot. So I raced home to get the old flash system and was a little late for the next shoot. 
You can "feel" the flash providing some back light for this behind the scenes shot.
and masquerading as the sun on this outdoor shot.


After some research it appears that a combination of something that you can accidentally can press could disable the radio on the flashes.
Also, my A99 is still being repaired so I haven't shot since that last shoot :( Instead I went back to working on video projects, doing editing and motion graphics work for a living.
Other then that the flashes worked great. For some reason, by default, they make a totally annoying sound which you can disable quite easily. I am getting my A99 back this week, so I guess, more testing will follow.
That said, I am truly sorry that I didn't get the flashes made by Godox.
They do everything my new flashes do but work with batteries similar to those of cellphones, instead of the AAs which I hate so much. Seriously, I cannot stress how much I hate AAs. They constantly get lost, and take a while to change during a shoot.
I still think that Wifi is a better technology to invest in than radio, so that you could, for example, configure remote flashes using an app on your camera or phone. Imagine that you have you are holding your A99II, impressing your client with the biggest and best camera around, but also have a discrete QX smart lens hidden somewhere for the wide shot or alternative angle, all using same flashes on the same wi-fi network.
This seems to me a technology much easier to implement for Sony than some of the other amazing things that their cameras now do, like in shoot in nearly absolute darkness and provide 5-axis stabilization, do let's hope that they are reading my blog :)

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