Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

I'd be happy w/ this for landscape shots too...less need for ND filters to get blurred water... :)

It is pretty funny how many people want the HSS hack but don't really understand how it works w/ the ultra low power pulses...

Actually, I disagree with tech a bit here. Using a silver PLM in the brightest of sun can easily out blast the sun. So if you are in a situation where the sun.flash combination is giving you too high an f stop for the desired depth of field and you can't lower shorten the shutter speed or lower the ISO enough, an ND filter will effectively lower the ISO by 1, 2, 3, 4 f stops, allowing you to open your aperture to shallow the depth of field.

I would personally much prefer this approach to the various HSS schemes.

But ND filters can be less than wonderful in color purity. Then again, HSS hacks can be worse in color accuracy.

3x PowerMC2 arrived this afternoon. Very, very cool.

Couple of things:
Like the Mini and the Flex, the instructions ask that you look to see if there is an update to the firmware update. While the PW Utility shows the MC2 firmware is 2.1 the update shows 2.075.

The PW utility will not open the "Configuration" tab. This is important place you need to be. I'll give Buff and/or PW a call tomorrow.
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Even without access to the Config tab the defaults are just where you need them. I'm still playing around, but this is going to be good. E640 power is adjusted through the FEC or AC3 zone controller. On a D700 the FEC will go to +/- 5.0 so you have the full range of power on the E640.

update:
after playing w/ the MC2 I believe the Config tab is simply not needed. It may be there for future updates/features/functions.


Ziv

Hello Paul,
this is Christian, the annoying french photographer who a few years ago asked you about "sport flash" to replace my Balcar Monobloc 3.

I agree with you about sync-speed of CCD camera. people alway ask me why i still use my 4mp eos 1d MK1 when i have a 5d mkII and a MKiv in my bag? because with pocket wizard TT5 this camera actually sync up to 1/1000s wich is very useful to get sharp picture of a fast moving subject. i rather ave a correctly exposed 4 megs sharp raw file than a blurry smooth 21 megapixel file...

Other than that I'm very happy with the Einstein, the V2 works really good (and i have very high standard when i say that :i'm shooting by -20°c to 45°C in snow or in dust)

so my question is : is your igtb on the einstein able to actually lenght the flash pulse?
I made a try with my very old and slow hasselblad D40 flash (i believe it is something like a 1/175s duration pulse with a very flat curve) an manage to get a correctly exposed frame at 1/500s on the 5D MK2.

it may sound stupid, but actually it make sense on normal sync you want the fastest flash duration possible, but on hyper sync you need the pulse to last the whole "1rst and 2nd curtain trip" witch i believe is around 1/125 more or less.

If there was a "Hypersync mode" that could turn the einstein pulse as long as 1/125s we might be able to make the camera act as if it was just continuous light.

after all the HSS just mimics what HMI pulse light do.

Possible, but requires a lot of research and programming work, and I'm already working 14 hours a day and can't hie good enough engineering people to help much.

I agree about the 4MP CCD vs 20MP CMOS cameras, How about a little development work from the camera companies. 1/1600 to 1/2000 with a Nikon D40 is easy as pie without having to use HSS tricks.

I have an idea how you could incorporate a 1x teleconverter with a leafshutter allowing you syncing at "any" speed. The loss in IQ will be as much as a ND filter probably. But still why isn't something like this made already?

Dial on the adapter for shutterspeed and cable to x-sync, or built in.

If you run the einstein at full power, it'll be the same as a B1600's pulse length so it'd probably work ok w/ that HSS hack...