Hi everyone.  A bit of photography news… PocketWizard has realeased two brand new products aimed at photographers who utilize TTL flash systems (i.e. Kaufman Kramer).  So what the heck is that?

TTL flash systems (Nikon calls it their ‘creative lighting system’) is a mechanism by which the camera can communicate through pulses of light with remote / off camera flash units.  The camera sends data via ‘pre-flashes’ of light, and can actually communicate exposure, meter readings, focal length, aperture, and even control lighting ratios of the off camera flash units (i’m sure there is lots more data there, but you get the idea).

The PROBLEM with this type of system has traditionally been that it works based of infrared pulses of light, not a radio signal.  This means that in order to utilize TTL in its current form, you need to maintain line of sight, which can be quite difficult.

Enter the new PocketWizards.  I’m not going into extreme techical detail on the new units, and I’m not going to recycle information thats already posted (http://www.pocketwizard.com/). Basically what these things do is take that TTL infrared pulse of light and convert it to a more robust radio signal.

I am very excited about these new units, and I can’t wait to get my hands on a pair.  They will help us in situations like low light receptions, bright outdoor engagment sessions, and they will free us so we can position a remote flash anywhere we need to, without having to worry about line of sight.

If you’d like to see a larger pic of the new units, head over to Chase Jarvis’ blog. He got to play around with a couple pre-production units, and wrote a great post on his experience.