With the upgraded release of Pixelmator 2.0, its time to update my pre­vious Pixelmator For Photographers? article.

When I wrote that article, I thought there were a few key things missing for photographers:

Version 2.0 has closed the gap some­what by adding:

And as extras, we now have:

Different than some pho­tog­ra­phers, my style of flash pho­tog­raphy ben­e­fits from TTL con­trol of the off camera flashes. I know many stick to manual con­trol, but TTL works for what I do. And so I want a TTL based system that does not depend on line-of-sight or the “right” ambient light conditions.

I am using the RadioPopper PX system with my Nikon speed­lights (SB-900s) and used them, before my switch to Nikon, with Canon speedlites (580 EXs). They work very well and pro­vide all of the native Nikon (i-TTL) or Canon (E-TTL) system fea­tures because they work by inter­cepting the pre-flash signals, translating them into radio signals, transmitting those sig­nals to the receiver and then decoding the radio sig­nals back into light. Here is a past article of mine about the RapioPopper PX system for Canon.

The main reason I chose the RadioPopper PX system for my Canon flashes was due to the RF inter­fer­ence prob­lems the PocketWizard ControlTL system has with Canon flash (which is not true of their PocketWizard Plus II or MultiMAX sys­tems). Now that I’m using Nikon flashes, the PocketWizard ControlTL system is again an option as there is no such inter­fer­ence problem. So I wanted to doc­u­ment my research com­paring the two sys­tems for Nikon flashes. I don’t have the PocketWizards, so that infor­ma­tion is based on online research.

A key dif­fer­ence in the sys­tems is that the PocketWizards use their own flash con­trol “lan­guage” called ControlTL (Control The Light). They work by taking the camera’s TLL signal from the camera’s hot shoe and con­verting that to ControlTL, trans­mit­ting that to the receiver and then sending com­mands to the flash through the flash’s hot shoe. Either a MiniTT1 or a FlexTT5 can be the trans­mitter while only the FlexTT5 can be a receiver.

As best I can tell, there are no radio inter­fer­ence prob­lems with the Nikon flashes. That’s good because, for me, that was the no-go problem with using the PocketWizard system with Canon flashes.

Because PocketWizard uses ControlTL to con­trol the remote flashes, there is not a one-to-one cor­re­spon­dence between Nikon i-TTL com­mands and ControlTL com­mands. In prac­tice that means:

ControlTL Can Do Some Things i-TTL Can’t

• HyperSync—allows studio flash and some hot shoe flashes to sync at faster than x-sync speeds and up to 1/8000 second.
• Simple hot shoe connections—no need for the spe­cial brackets the RadioPoppers use to line up with the flash con­trol sensor on the speedlight.
• Work without an on camera flash controller—no need for an SU-800 or a speedlight.
• Change with firmware revisions—both the MiniTT1 and the FlexTT5 can have firmware updates (to cor­rect bugs or to add fea­tures) made using your com­puter and the USB port on the devices.

i-TTL Can Do Some Things ControlTL Can’t

• Separate expo­sure com­pen­sa­tion and flash expo­sure compensation—Nikon’s i-TTL system let’s you con­trol one sep­a­rately from the other.
• Use the SB-900 light patterns—using the Center or Even light pat­terns avail­able with the SB-900 will casue expo­sure errors using PocketWizards.
• Work in mirror up mode—ControlTL just won’t.
• Allow flash repeat mode—ControlTL just won’t.
• Mix radio and pre-flash—RadioPoppers don’t inter­fere with the pre-flash as PocketWizard does.
• Control flash zones from the camera menu—you’ll need a PocketWizard AC3 Zone Controller for that.
• Future “proof”—PocketWizard firmware may have to be updated for future flash and cameras.

Of course, PocketWizard’s upgrad­able firmware means that its abil­i­ties can expand with revisions.

PocketWizard also offers matching radio con­trols for studio strobes that allow the strobe power to be con­trolled from the camera (although not in TTL):

• AC9 AlienBees Adapter
• PowerST4 for Elinchrom RX
• PowerMC2 for Einstein E640 Flash

So, will I be selling my RadioPopper gear and buying PocketWizard equip­ment? Maybe. But prob­ably not right now. I’d like to see if RadioPopper will make another firmware upgrade to allow more of i-TTL’s fea­tures into ControlTL. Or even surpass them.

My first dig­ital SLR was a Nikon D70 that suf­fered a mishap and had to be replaced. I had done a lot of research into dig­ital SLRs and had decided on the Nikon and I liked it just fine. But when it came time to replace it, I did more research and this time on lenses. At the time only Canon had the EF-S 15–85 IS and EF 70–300 IS lenses—both were rea­son­ably priced and I wanted IS. Plus, I had a friend who shot Canon and was an excel­lent semi-Pro, so I could learn specifics from him and even borrow lenses from time to time.

The first Canon I owned was a 350D and I really didn’t like the con­trols and the small size of the body. Sticking with it, I later upgraded to a Canon 30D which I liked much better. And then came a 50D and finally a 7D (which is a won­derful camera). Along the way came lenses and even the fab­u­lous Canon EF 70–200 f/2.8L IS. So I was pretty deep in the glass and didn’t want to take the mon­e­tary loss in selling and switching.

But all along I remem­bered how the D70 han­dled. And I kept up with the advances in the Nikon world by reading web news and reviews. Once I started get­ting more advanced with my off camera flash work, I learned more about how the Nikon flash system worked (par­tic­u­larly the SB-900) com­pared to the 580EXs I was shooting. Its a highly per­sonal thing, but the Nikon approach to pho­tog­raphy just seems to fit me better.

So the short of it is that I con­tacted Adorama’s used camera depart­ment for a quote on my Canon gear and decided to swallow hard and make the switch. Now in hand is the Nikon D300s with the MB-D10 bat­tery grip, two SB-900s, the AF-S DX 18–200 VRII (a great walk-around lens), the won­derful AF-S 70–200 f/2.8 VRII, the new-ish AF-S 100 VR Micro and the Sigma DC 17–50 f/2.8 OS. As you can see, I still love the IS/VR/OS lenses. And that’s the only reason I did not get the Nikon AF-S DX 17–55 f/2.8.

That’s a pretty big switch. And its not because Canon is a poor system—quite the con­trary, its first class stuff. The auto-focus system of the Canon 7D is tremen­dous and clears Canon of all the bad press and bad reviews of their auto-focus. And what can you say bad about the EF 70–200 f/2.8L IS? So why did I do it?

It was a very sub­jec­tive call. For me, the way Nikon uses switches for such things as metering and auto-focus modes just “feels” better than Canon’s button-and-dial approach. Their menu struc­ture makes sense to me. And iTTL makes better flash expo­sures for me (not to men­tion the fact that the redesigned user inter­face on the SB-900 is very easy to use).

There are, of course, tech­nical details that differ. For the most part, its a trade off—the D300s has 51 auto-focus points to the 7D’s 19, but the 7D shoots at 8 fps while the D300s does only 6 (unless you get a spe­cial bat­tery and the bat­tery grip), the D7 has 16 megapixels to the Nikon’s 12, but the D300s has dual memory card slots, and on and on.

You’ll note that none of this has any­thing to do with video. I don’t do video.

Lots of my lighting gear will work with either system, so at least I avoided the costs of changing out some­thing. My RadioPoppers just needed new plastic mounting brackets, but the light stands, Honl light mod­i­fiers, Westcott equip­ment and mis­cel­la­neous hard­ware all still works.

I have my eye on a few more things, once I recover from the ini­tial expense. I’d like another SB-900 and the SU-800 wire­less flash com­mander (which will make my RadioPoppers that much more capable). And I’ll be keeping my eye out to see when, or if, Nikon adds VR to their AF-S DX 17–55 f/2.8.

In the end, the camera does not take the pic­ture, the pho­tog­ra­pher does. Either system will make breath­taking photographs—just scout through 500px and see who shoots what with which system. Or better yet, see if you can guess which system was used to take which pic­ture. Good luck with that!