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Radiopopper Review

Zeke Kamm — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:40:35 +0000

It’s like candy for your workflow.

These are my first reactions to the Radiopopper flash communication extender accessory thing-a-ma-jig. I plan to do an updated review in a few months after I’ve beat them up prison style and made ‘m my flash slaves. The comments are based on my use for just these two separate photo shoots with a total of about 300 exposures.The two images here were taken with the aid of the Radiopopper.

As you may have seen in this video, I received my Radio Poppers last Thursday. First, first impression: Nice and tiny. It came with industrial Velcro and even a slab of gaffers tape. I can just see Kevin (I don’t actually know what he looks like, but I can imagine) sitting there staring through his coke bottle glasses surrounded by tech stolen from area 52, scratching his six-pack abs, pushing his albino dreads back over his horribly super-sized cranium, swearing off food or drink, mumbling to his concerned followers, “No, I’ve still got 3,268 more squares of gaffers tape to cut.” Well, with what these little critters do, I’m afraid you’re going to be cutting lots more of that sticky black stuff.

Bottom line: Radiopopper – it does exactly what it’s supposed to. Maybe you don’t know or understand what that is. So briefly… it makes your Canon or Nikon flashes do what you probably thought they did when you first bought them, talk to each other so you didn’t have to do all the talking. If that doesn’t make sense, go to the radiopopper site and you’ll see what I mean.

They work. Oh, I already said that. I know, it’s frustrating that you have to buy yet another camera accessory to make what you already bought do what it should already have done, but once you get over that passionate anger at Canon and Nikon, you’ll probably want to send candy hearts to the Radiopopper folk.

Now, just to make it clear, I don’t use TTL, ETTL, or ROTFL, I like to shoot manual. So why bother with radiopoppers? Well, now I can put a flash in the shower, in another room, on another floor, in a car, wherever and not have to run over and unpack it to adjust the brightness. I can dial it in all from the 580ex flash on my camera. This saves me a massive amount of creative energy. I can stay focused on getting what I want out of the images and not on running around making slight power adjustments.

Any Popper Problems? Nothing serious. I did notice when I walked with the transmitter on the camera in front of one of the flashes with a receiver, the flash would sometimes drip out a little flash pop. Not a problem, but weird. It was never a bright flash, just an itty bitty one. Every time I wanted the flash to fire, it did. Well, except for once. On one shoot I did find that if I laid the flash on the floor (to shoot under a bed in a room down the hall from the room I was shooting in) the flash would not always fire. It had a blinky link light so popper was warning me that I had found some sort of Bermuda Triangle of a radio vacuum. As soon as the flash was a foot off the ground I got a steady link light. And just to check, the same flash on the floor in another room worked fine. That’s it? No other problems? Well not with reliability. However…

I really, I mean really don’t like that you have to unscrew the cute little bugger every time you want to change the battery. I know, they sip juice like it’s bathwater, but it still makes me coo-coo bananas. Fortunately this is an easy fix. At some point hopefully RP will offer a replacement back cover with a slip off battery cover (PLEASE!). I’m also not a fan of the “Tape It To My Flash” idea. You Velcro the receiver to the flash, but you tape the light transmitting doodad (to use a technical term) over the flash sensor. Uh, you do? Yep. I don’t like it. It works great, but I don’t want to put tape on my flash and worse, every time I want to pack up my flash I have to untape it. That’s not how I do things. UPDATE: I have come up with a SUPER easy mod to fix this issue. You can read how to do it on the Radiopopper Mod Post.

Hopefully this is another thing that will get ironed out soon. Perhaps a little suction cup that mounts the doo-dad to the flash so I can quickly set up and tear down. If they don’t offer one, I’ll have to DIY it.

There’s no way I’m going to finish a gig and watch Suzanne Somers, Gordon Sumner, and Sumner Redstone chatting away about what a brilliant photographer I am, finishing off the apple pie and ice cream in the hot tub with my assistant while I’m pealing gaffers tape off of my flashes. Never again!

I have to give Radiopopper a HUGE “way to go”. They did what suckers said can’t be done. I’ll still use my Pocket Wizards for my studio strobes, but I can’t imagine ever using them with my 580ex flashes again. And I haven’t even started using the high speed sync! More on that in the update. Nice.

Update: Strobist has mentioned this article. And the Radiopopper site now has a page where they are listing reviews of the poppers including this one. Thanks guys!

Frankly Scarlet – The best pocket digital camera ever.

Zeke Kamm — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:16:39 +0000

I do give a damn.

Red Digital Cinema, makers of the impressive Red One ultra High Def movie camera have announced the more than double high def UNCOMPRESSED movie camera that could fit in your pocket… if you pocket is HUGE. It looks like it’s bigger than a DSLR especailly once you put the extra handles and bits on it, but it’s still a very small package for what you get.

The most important part for me? It’s uncompressed video. What does that mean? It’s like the difference between RAW and JPEG (or film vs. prints). I want to have the most control and the highest quality when I sit down to edit. Don’t you? Capturing uncompressed video is the only way to do it.

SPECIFICATIONS:

NEW 2/3″ MYSTERIUM X SENSOR
1-120 FPS (180FPS BURST)
UP TO 100 MB/SEC REDCODE RAW AND RGB RECORDING TO DUAL COMPACT FLASH
4.8″ LCD
8X T2.8 RED ZOOM LENS
FULL AUTO OR FULL MANUAL SHOOTING MODES
HDMI and HD-SDI
FIREWIRE 800 and USB2
STILL MODE
COMPATIBLE WITH MANY RED ONE ACCESSORIES
WI-FI CONTROL

They’re saying it will come out early 2009. So sad. I want it now. The happy news is it’s supposed to come out for under $3000. Sounds good to me.

Now we wait.

Are we there yet?

Perfect Bag For Bogen Compact Lightstand or Ticket To Your Funeral?

Zeke Kamm — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 06:43:08 +0000

Giottos makes a padded tripod case that measures 7″ x 22″ and sells for a cool twenty dollar bill. Must be crap, right? Well about two years ago I bought it figuring, “What’s the worst that could happen?” Well, let me warn you right now: DO NOT EAT THIS BAG!

This tripod bag come light stand bag was just a month old when it watched me marry my lovely wife (sorry ladies). I whisked my wife off to Hawaii the next day for the honeymoon. Long story short, the amount of gear that came with us was a compromise that all parties negotiated to a fair and equitable volume. So 5D, 24-105 L, 580ex, and the things they needed to work took up all the space alloted. Since we were supposed to be on a honeymoon and not a photo excursion, the only other thing I insisted on bringing was one compact light stand and umbrella.

Guess where they slept every night: right, inside the Giottos tripod bag.

Well, Hawaii is Hawaii and volcanoes it turns out are volcanoes. And for some reason it’s a very long walk to see an actual lava flow up close. Very long. Like 9 miles each way long. A 9 mile WALK along 20 foot high frozen waves of glass shards they call volcanic rock. To make an 18 mile romantic stroll more horrifying, by the time we got to the lava it turned out we would be walking the 9 miles back along the rolling death mounds in PITCH BLACK. Yes, night had fallen. We hadn’t eaten in hours. Our mortal coils were in real live danger of being extinguised and picked apart by lizards under a trail of moonlight. Why do I mention all this? Well, despite a lack of drinking water (we had brought two small bottles, but they evaporated down our throats in the first hour), or even a raisin to eat, I did have my camera gear along with my lovely Giottos bag. So, should you ever find yourself in this situation, I hope you’ll recall this camera gear review.

So, how do I feel about this tripod bag?

This bag tastes terrible. I couldn’t chew through the rugged ballistic-type nylon exterior. The over sized zipper is big enough to choke on! There is a place on the outside to stick your personal information under a clear vinyl window in case another foolish hiker should stumble over your picked clean, sun bleached bones and need to identify the body. So that’s nice. There is also a zippered pocket on the inside for small accessories (pc cords, AA’s etc.) just teasing your taste buds to dive in. RESIST!

This bag is sized as close to perfect as you can get to hold the strobist-made-famous combination of light stand (the 6′ retractable), umbrella holder, and collapsible westcott umbrella. I even manage to get a 5 lb. Boa Bag in there for those less than fresh days. But don’t let the apparently waterproof seams fool you, dipping it in a puddle of your own sweat will not improve the flavor. There is an adequate handle in the middle of the bag that hasn’t given me any trouble and a simple shoulder strap that is good enough, but if you load your bag down, you may find yourself adding a padded strap down the road. That is if you don’t starve to death first!

If you’re looking for an attractive, rugged padded bag that doesn’t add length or girth to your compact cool-guy lifestyle, and you’ve got a sawbuck to spare, this could be the sling for your thing. If, however, you find yourself lost on the razor sharp rocks of Mt. Kilauea with a starving wife and nothing but half truths keeping you from giving up all hope of survival, you might be better served wrapping your light stand with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and one of those water bladder things because you can’t drink the bag either.

Available through Amazon for $19.95 or through Adorama for the same price.