Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

My "starter kit" Cyber Commander and pair of CSR+ units arrived Tuesday. This system is far too much fun for us mere mortals, and the more time I spend with it, the more evil-grin astounded I become at the fantastic features packed into the innocent looking little baubles. The most fun is the jaw dropping response from my several die hard "Euro-light" friends when I place the CC in their hands, and let them run through the basics. Then they discover the flash meter function. Then they compare it to either my L-758DR, or their favorite flash meter. Then the evil grin really shows.... Wait until the Einsteins arrive....

Back to the important stuff. If this was covered before, forgive me. I use lots of camera strobes in the field. Mostly Canon 580EX/EXII units, as I can pack six of them in a small bag, add a couple of AB/WL units, and light up a furnished interior of any size or layout to please even the most dour client. As the number of strobes grew, so did the number of Pocket Wizards. I was hoping the CyberSync system would work along side my legacy PW's, and save me from spending money on buying new devices to trigger my non PCB strobes in a mixed environment.

The good news is that they all work together just fine. I can place the Cyber Commander on the camera hot shoe, plug a PW into the sync port on the camera, and trigger both PCB and non PCB flash units without fail. A better setup would be to keep the CC in my hand, and use a CST unit on the camera hot shoe. That will be ordered next week.

The other setup that works very well is to take advantage of the PW dual channel function where the PW is plugged into the motor drive port on the camera, it's foot is plugged into the sync port of the camera with an adapter, and the CC or CST is mounted on the hot shoe of the camera. With that setup, you can remote fire the camera with a hand held PW, or a Sekonic meter with a PW card installed. No matter if you use auto focus, or fixed manual focus, flash sync will occur at exactly the right time for both the CyberSync controlled lights, and any PW controlled lights that might be used in your setup that are listening on the second PW sync channel. You can still remotely control all of your PCB units with the CC, test trip all units, just the PW units, just the PCB units, or selectively test fire individual PCB units.

If you don't already have Pocket Wizards in your kit, save your money, and just buy Cyber Sync receivers for all of your lights, but if, like me, you ended up with a bunch of PW's over time, they can still function in a CyberSync world. It is nice to have just a pair of PW's on hand though if you prefer to fire your camera remotely, even if everything else is running the CyberSync system. Happy shooting!

Voyager

By the way, that new 11" Long Throw Reflector is an absolute KILLER accessory. It's as big as a street lamp reflector, and my test shots show very uniform coverage at extreme distances with the WL X1600. Nice work at the design level!

Thank you for the write up.

I am a PW user that is interested in moving to the Buff wireless gear, its going to be much easier for me to do little by little and mixing controllers.

I am a little nervous to give up my Sekonic and this will will allow me to ease back on my PW's (sell some) and go with the Buff triggers and receivers without having to dump my my meter or own 2 complete systems at once.

The PW on the right is old school, but still has life in the new CyberSync lighting reality. Don't worry for a second that your PW's will become junk as you migrate to the CyberSync system. Even down the road, I'll keep a few on hand just for the ability to remote trip my camera shutter, while the rest still demand a good price on the used market, so there isn't a down side to moving away from the PW system over time.

The Sekonic meter on the left is pure magic, and I simply wouldn't give it up, no matter how infrequently I might end up using it. It's metering functions and accuracy pretty much define the standard for the ultimate light meter, but for set piece flash photography, I almost always rely on it in incident mode, and the fact is that the Cyber Commander tracks the Sekonic in incident flash metering almost perfectly, and since the CC also happens to control every function of my PCB flash units, the Sekonic won't get to play in the studio much anymore.

That palm sized gem with the sweet LCD in the middle of the shot IS the future of studio flash photography as I see it. It delivers most all of my flash photography metering needs that I used to rely on the Sekonic for. It can do most everything that the PW can do, and it's silicon brain empowers it to perform countless other functions that the other two devices could never hope to master. Between the three devices in the pic, the game changing smallest unit of the group is not only cheaper than either of the other two, but is by far the most important tool for studio lighting.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2794/425 ... fe29c8.jpg

Voyager