[ click on the photo to see a larger image]
Apathy Angel against the backdrop of the Manhattan skyline.
The settings for the image above was 1/2000 @ f1.6 @ 100 ISO, and the reason for the wide aperture was that I wanted to have the skyline appear as that dreamlike haze in the background. The bright light though, forced a very fast shutter speed. In this case 1/2000th would let the background over-expose a little and blow out somewhat, but give me some detail. But to control the lighting on my model more specifically than just the available light, I used flash.
For the lighting here I used a speedlight in a Westcott Halo softbox (B&H) held up on a monopod by an assistant. This would give me directional but soft light on my model, Apathy Angel.
A year ago, to trigger an off-camera flash, you would have to rely on radio transmitters (such as Pocketwizards for example), or wireless TTL control.
With the traditional radio transmitters, there is no intelligence, and the off-camera flash would be in manual .. which has worked very well over the years. A real limitation would be that you’d hit a ceiling with the maximum sync speed. This in turn would force a specific aperture on you unless you started using neutral density filters and such to give a wider aperture in bright light.
Wireless TLL, in conjunction with high sync-speed flash technology would allow you to to go much higher shutter speeds (and hence wider apertures.) This does come at the cost though of reduced power (and therefore reduced range.) One of the big problems with wireless TTL, is that you need line-of-sight to control your other speedlights. This eliminates using the speedlight in an enclosed softbox, or in a position out of sight.
In the past year there has been incredible buzz about a new product, the RadioPoppers, which would allow any speedlight and camera capable of wireless TTL flash, to be controlled even when not in the line of sight of the master speedlight or flash controller on the camera. This is a huge benefit to photographers that need a reliable way of controlling TTL flash without the hassle of staying within a specific range and direction of the slaved speedlights.
The additional benefit is that high sync-speed flash photography can also be used with much greater ease and without the need of line-of-sight control.
That’s the background. Here’s the review … do the RadioPoppers work? Yes, very well!
