Elinchrom skyport or pocket wizards

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testbloke

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Having just bought a couple of Elinchrom heads, to get started I will be using my RF603's but when upgrading, as cost is roughly comparative, cannot decide between the skyport or pocket wizard.
Skyport look nice but to be honest with only two or three lights and a pretty standard event setup, do I really need to use remote / iPad / laptop to change settings, record setups etc.
Advantage of pocket wizards are I can use them for off camera flash for my other photography and even TTL for quick OCF.
Does anyone have experience of both systems that would care to compare, primarily looking at the studio heads. For example, will the PW's give full 1/250th ?
 
treeman said:
You can use the Skyports for other flashes too, just need the correct cable and then just the same as any trigger.
Click to expand...



... I know but the pocket wizards give TTL
For my speedlight work would definately have the pocket wizards but if I use them for studio instead of the skyports, what am I actually losing ?
Skyport rx is self powered
Adjust light and model lamp from transmitter etc.
 
treeman said:
If you want TTL its a no brainer, PW's all the way :thumbs:
Click to expand...

TTL can be handy for weddings and off :-)
Being a tech junkie I find it hard to convince myself I can walk ten feet to change the light setting rather than use an iPad, lol.
 
What heads have you got?

Remote power control is something I would never give up.

Yes, it is worth it. You might be able to walk ten feet to change it, but what if its on a boom up high, what if its a hair light, what if the light is in any inaccessible location, what if the sun is going down rapidly, what if your model is bored s***less and you are still fiddling, what if you are knackered after a long day and are on your belly taking a pic of kid?

If you want ttl, go with the Yongnuo YN622s and save yourself £400. There are some unique advantages of the PW flex, but not enough to justify the difference. I have used them both, and prefer the YNs. The PW are not without their problems either.
 
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Kris said:
What heads have you got?

Remote power control is something I would never give up.

Yes, it is worth it. You might be able to walk ten feet to change it, but what if its on a boom up high, what if its a hair light, what if the light is in any inaccessible location, what if the sun is going down rapidly, what if your model is bored s***less and you are still fiddling, what if you are knackered after a long day and are on your belly taking a pic of kid?

If you want ttl, go with the Yongnuo YN622s and save yourself £400. There are some unique advantages of the PW flex, but not enough to justify the difference. I have used them both, and prefer the YNs. The PW are not without their problems either.
Click to expand...

Heads are Elinchrom RX300's.
Valid points made, especially regarding shooting kids lying on the floor. 622's no good to me, canon only ! Till now I have used pop up flash to control off with TTL but sync speed limited to 1/80th.
First thing is best solution for studio, TTL for off is lazy but can be gandy half way through a first dance when they suddenly change the ambient !
 
testbloke said:
Heads are Elinchrom RX300's.
Valid points made, especially regarding shooting kids lying on the floor. 622's no good to me, canon only ! Till now I have used pop up flash to control off with TTL but sync speed limited to 1/80th.
First thing is best solution for studio, TTL for off is lazy but can be gandy half way through a first dance when they suddenly change the ambient !
Click to expand...

Try it once and you wont go back. Have a telly without a remote?

You are wasting one of the key professional features of your guns for the sake of an 80 quid trigger??? Really?

1/80th only?

What are you using?

My pop ups give me full synch speed on the 60d. Used to use master 580exII for first dance with ambient, until I stopped using them in favour of the 622s that is. Still saving for a 600exrt kit though.

Yeah, pity no Nikon 622s, but I bet they are working on it!
 
1/80th was using pop up flash to trigger, need to revisit that one as it would not sync beyond the flash sync speed set in menu, but stick it back on the hotshoe and it can go to 1/320th. Weird.

With regards the £80 transmitter, the rx heads do not have built in recievers so that is another £80 per head.
 
Okay, so if I go down the Elinchrom skyport route, can someone please help with what I need, there stuff is so confusing.

1) ELS-Transmitter speed. Definately need one of these for the hot shoe and need this one not the ECO to allow adjustment of the light and modelling lamp output from the transmitter.
2) EL-Skyport transceiver RX. One of these in each head to receive. But, looking at the blurb ...
"NOTE - The new Speed Sync feature is ony available for the Transceiver RX module via the Skyport Software 3.0 and requires the USB Transceiver RX."

Does this mean you can only use speed mode if you have a laptop and USB transceiver ? I hope not as that would really suck !
 
I just looked it up and that is what they are saying.
Which means you need to order the Skyport Speed RX USB Computer set.
- That should be everything you need.

I'm guessing that once you've set them to speed mode, they will stay there
until you change them back, so you won't normally need the USB model and PC for shoots.

I would contact The Flash Center and ask the experts..

The kit is here:

http://www.theflashcentre.com/skyport-remote-system-c264.html

so you can check prices, etc.
 
testbloke said:
Having just bought a couple of Elinchrom heads, to get started I will be using my RF603's but when upgrading, as cost is roughly comparative, cannot decide between the skyport or pocket wizard.
Skyport look nice but to be honest with only two or three lights and a pretty standard event setup, do I really need to use remote / iPad / laptop to change settings, record setups etc.
Advantage of pocket wizards are I can use them for off camera flash for my other photography and even TTL for quick OCF.
Does anyone have experience of both systems that would care to compare, primarily looking at the studio heads. For example, will the PW's give full 1/250th ?
Click to expand...

IMO it boils down to this. Both Skyport and PW Mini/Flex will trigger the flashes very efficiently, the difference is the Skyports are part of a sophisticated studio-based RC system, and the PW's are primarily outdoor oriented and apart from E-TTL stuff they also have some unique features of great benefit to hot-shoe users, ie hypersync, enhanced HSS and optimised second-curtain sync etc.

If all you want is basic triggering, then almost any cheap radio jobbie will and you'll get 1/250sec with most of them (I like Phottix Stratto II, also has an E-TTL pass-through).

Only caveat to 1/250sec might be the flash heads themselves. Studio strobes, and hot-shoe guns at full power, take a mo to ramp up to full brightness and at 1/250sec you might just get some very minorshading at the bottom of the frame. It's not a black band, and what you get depends on the camera and trigger, but I sometimes notice it (then ignore it!) :D
 
Stoptime said:
I just looked it up and that is what they are saying.
Which means you need to order the Skyport Speed RX USB Computer set.
- That should be everything you need.

I'm guessing that once you've set them to speed mode, they will stay there
until you change them back, so you won't normally need the USB model and PC for shoots.

I would contact The Flash Center and ask the experts..

The kit is here:

http://www.theflashcentre.com/skyport-remote-system-c264.html

so you can check prices, etc.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the link, I was hoping too that this is a one time setup, will check with TFC and will update this thread.
£175 just to use your iPhone / iPad as a remote control ! ... but it does look fab :-)
 
HoppyUK said:
IMO it boils down to this. Both Skyport and PW Mini/Flex will trigger the flashes very efficiently, the difference is the Skyports are part of a sophisticated studio-based RC system, and the PW's are primarily outdoor oriented and apart from E-TTL stuff they also have some unique features of great benefit to hot-shoe users, ie hypersync, enhanced HSS and optimised second-curtain sync etc.

If all you want is basic triggering, then almost any cheap radio jobbie will and you'll get 1/250sec with most of them (I like Phottix Stratto II, also has an E-TTL pass-through).

Only caveat to 1/250sec might be the flash heads themselves. Studio strobes, and hot-shoe guns at full power, take a mo to ramp up to full brightness and at 1/250sec you might just get some very minorshading at the bottom of the frame. It's not a black band, and what you get depends on the camera and trigger, but I sometimes notice it (then ignore it!) :D
Click to expand...

Up to now I have always got by with Yungnao, pixel king etc. to be honest I have frequently shot with the RF603 at 1/200th.
I would really like the skyport receivers as they plug directly into the heads and look neat, less cables and less batteries to worry about.
But then I did start wondering if I could kill two birds with one stone, which, in my twisted head, helps justify spending hundreds more pounds that I don't have !
I am not obsessed with the 1/250th and hopefully in most indoor locations there will not be so much ambient to deal with but at the price of these triggers I would expect them to work when needed.
I understand the huge debates that can begin about triggers, probably because none do everything and there is such variance in price.
Was even worse as a Pentax user, one of the reasons I switched to the big two after trying to reverse engineer a Canon 603 to work on Pentax.

Oh well, a brace of skyports with a brace of PW's later seems to be the ideal solution !
 
Update, phoned the flash centre.
This ..."NOTE - The new Speed Sync feature is ony available for the Transceiver RX module via the Skyport Software 3.0 and requires the USB Transceiver RX." ... was news to them but they did confirm it and you DO need the laptop / Mac in place whenever you want to use them in speed mode as the receivers are not speed receivers !
But, there are new "Elinchrom Skyport RX Speed Transceiver" just out that will, according to TFC allow you to use speed mose without the laptop / mac.
Although they look identical, they also tell me they are different to the receivers in the "Elinchrom Skyport RX Speed Set" which are not speed receivers.
Confused ... aye !
 
Kev,

If you want remote power control on the heads, the Power ST4's will also fit the RX Heads.

Here is the link. http://www.pocketwizard.com/products/transmitter_receiver/powerst4/

For the setup that Paul does, the standard PW'S will work perfectly well with the RX heads...as will lots of other triggers.

The head has 4 ways to be triggered, Optical Slaves, 2 different size jack sockets to plug triggers into and then the Larger standard Elinchrom socket. Then there is the socket that the ST4's plug into...
 
The ST4 is a bit overkill for me ....I think for what you are doing, then the old fashioned mandrollic option would be more cost effective for you. !!!!
 
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