I just got the AB triggers a couple of weeks ago and (apart from some
testing) Memorial Day was the first usage. I used them outdoors with
the AB B800s along with my home rigged inverter for power. I have also
tested them with a T32 and Canon 540EZ with Paramount Cords hot shoe
cables made for use with Pocket Wizards. The AB triggers have the same
mono plug sockets as the Pocket Wizards so it's a natural fit.
I finally gave up on the cheap Chinese triggers. For reasons I don't
understand they have slowly been losing range and becoming unreliable.
When what used to fire at 45-150 feet (with the wind blowing in the
right direction) no longer reliably fires at 10-15 feet it's time to
move on. I had also bought some newer 16 channel versions to replace
the 4 channel ones but the new ones were worse than the old ones. I had
also tried modifying the antenna on one unit (using a real 433 MHz
antenna) but it didn't help it one bit.
The ABs don't reach their advertised 400 foot maximum but do get to
(IIRC) about 270 feet outdoors. They will also fire indoors at 70 feet
through two wood panel doors and two plaster partition walls. They
wouldn't work any more when I added another partition wall and the
ceramic tile of the shower in the master bath. :-) Anyhow that was more
than I needed. If you do need more you can get it by putting one in
relay mode. It will fire it's own attached flash and also relay the
trigger signal to another flash that's farther away.
It cost me $200 + shipping but I'm happy again and no longer worrying
whether the lights will fire. I had friends who had Pocket Wizards who
always seemed to be having continuity problems with the transmitter's
on/off switch... constantly rapping on the things to get them to turn
on. The AB transmitter has no power switch.
Chuck Norcutt
Jeff Keller wrote:
> Thank you Chuck. I skimmed through 7000 emails after my ISP said my account
> was at 90% of capacity. I got the impression you converted from the cheap RF
> flash triggers to Alien Bees' own triggers. I converted from cheap optical
> triggers, which couldn't reliably do what I needed, to Quantum a long time
> back but my impression was that the cheap RF triggers were reliable but
> lacked some of the convenience/utility. In fact I think you were the one
> that tested the range of several. Do you use the Alien Bees triggers with
> your other strobes or just your A-B monolights?
>
> Jeff Keller
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chuck Norcutt [mailto:chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 3:31 AM
> To: Olympus Camera Discussion
> Subject: Re: [OM] ( OM ) Missed a nice lens :-((
>
> Long time no see (I think). Welcome back.
>
> Chuck Norcutt
>
>
--
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