RadioPopper
radiopopper units
I just got a new toy. A set of RadioPoppers. If you don’t know what they are, read on. This isn’t a review, I haven’t really used them yet (I just got them yesterday). It’s more of a first impression.
Short Explanation: RadioPoppers lets you control off camera wireless flashes using radio frequency (RF) instead the infrared light that the flashes natively use.
Long Explanation (you’ll probably need to be photographer and maybe a geek to understand some of the terms):
I’m a Nikon user and all the current Nikon flashes use an infrared optical system to allow you to wirelessly control off camera flashes. It’s a very cool system that gives you full TTL metering, manual control and everything in between with up to 3 groups of flashes. All the settings are adjusted on the master flash that’s on the camera so you don’t have to walk over to the remote flashes to change anything. All in all a great system and I’ve been using it for a while, but there are some drawbacks due to the optical nature of the system.
Like any optical system the remote flashes do for the most part require direct line of sight with the master flash to work. When you’re indoors, sometimes the control signal from the master flash can be bounced of walls to reach remotes around the corner, but when you’re outdoors that doesn’t work. In fact one time I turn the camera to shoot vertically, and the camera and lens together was enough to block the master signal from reaching the remote. Also sunlight contains a lot of IR light and can interfere with the operation of the system, especially if it happens to be shining on the IR sensor of the remote flash. Finally the range of optical systems even under ideal conditions is not that great.
What RadioPoppers do is they convert the optical communications system to RF. A transmitter on the master flash reads the IR control signal, convert it to RF and sends it to a receiver on the remote flash, which converts it back to IR and sends that directly into the IR sensor window of the remote flash. This of course pretty much eliminates all the problems that the optical system presented. RF can have interference too, but with 16 channels to choose from that’s a lot less likely. And you get much improved range too. In one review I saw, the reviewer said that he was able to reliably control his flash from over 600ft! As a bonus, RF also go through walls. Overall I think its a pretty ingenious system. Since the RadioPoppers don’t change how the flashes actually function and just acts as a silent middleman, the system should be pretty future proof. As long as Nikon continues to use an optical system the RadioPoppers should keep working.
As I mentioned above I just received them yesterday, but I have played around with them a bit. First thing I noticed is that mounting the units on the flashes correctly is crucial. That’s obvious with the remote receiver units, since the little IR transmitter window on the bottom of the unit has to be aligned with the IR sensor window on the flash. What surprised me was that the transmitter is a bit sensitive to it’s placement on top of the master flash. Let me explain. The transmitter doesn’t actually directly read the light from the master flash. It reads the electromagnetic field (EMF) generated by flash when it flashes. EMF is omnidirectional, so I thought transmitter placement wouldn’t be that crucial, but I guess this is to eliminate the chance of a false reading.
Once everything is setup correctly, it works as advertised. I took a bunch of shots and it worked every time, no matter where I was in relation to remote flash. I even put the remote in another room and closed a door between it and I to make sure no light from the master would reach the remote. and it still worked perfectly. I can’t wait to try it out at a wedding. It should allow me to do shots I couldn’t before.
Here’s RadioPopper’s website: http://www.radiopopper.com/
I doubt I’ll do a full review since there’s already a much more in depth review out there than I would ever be able to do. You can find that on RadioPopper’s site.
Oh, the RadioPopper units work with both Canon and Nikon flash systems. Canon’s wireless system uses optically signalling just like Nikon’s.
