Pocket Wizards for Your Speedlights

Pocket wizards are the neat little electronic gadgets that allow you to work wirelessly with your:

If you do a lot of photography where you don't want to be tethered to your kit via cables, you will love these little beauties.

In the past, if you wanted to use your flashgun or speedlight off camera there were issues. You either needed a long PC cable or a slave unit both of which had obvious drawbacks. Then camera infra red triggers that allowed you to fire wirelessly which was great but even infra-red had its problems.

Infra red won't fire through walls or static objects or even brollies. Plus they are affected by bright sunlight making them unreliable.

When Pocket Wizards were released, they addressed all of these issues with radio-controlled wireless flash transmission. These allow you to shoot wirelessly and without problems in bright sunlight at distances of up to 300 feet away and more!

Individual Wireless Control

So why else use them other than firing flash wirelessly? Well, I will let you watch the videos below to answer that. As a quick example, let's say you are shooting in a studio with 4 lights suspended high above you. You need them for some, but not all shots. Normally you would have to bring the lights down to turn them on and off as and when they are required.

By using the wizards, you are able to set each light a unique channel number. You can then switch each one on and off wirelessly right from the main control which is in your hand without having to touch the lights. Priceless!

But that is only the start of what these Pocket Wizards are capable of doing. I have two sets and swear by them. Watch the videos below and imagine what these could do for your photography!

Pocket Wizards: PW II