Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Hi,

I've begun to experiment more with using lights. After taking some recent photos, I noticed what appears to be a small "band" at the top of my landscape photos and on the left side when taking portrait orientated photos. Not all the time, just some times.

The settings I uses were f/8, 1/125, ISO 200. I was using a tripod with a 24-105L lens (IS turned off).

I used a PocketWizard MiniTT1 transmitter on the camera and PocketWizard PowerMC2 receivers on the Einstein lights.

Any ideas on what may be causing this?

Is this a lower settings while the flash duration is shorter? The Einsteins have a pretty quick flash duration at lower power and can make a near-synced shutter more noticeable.

1/125 seems pretty slow to still be seeing this behavior.
For years with both the Chinese and Elinchrom radio triggers, I've had to shoot at 1/125 to eliminate banding even with slower flashes.
Oddly, with Einsteins and their CyberSync triggers, I can sync at full speed (a lowly 1/180 for my camera, but still better than 1/125)

Is this new behavior with Einsteins v.s. other strobe brands? Or are you new to using strobes and this is something that is "just happening" now that you're using them?

I don't know enough about the 5D2, but I would think it should sync well over 1/125.
Also, you are not using the MiniTT1's in TTL mode are you?
Could that cause them to sync differently? Perhaps more slowly as they are expecting pre-flash? (They are not available for my brand camera so I don't much about those either).

It's the slow mechanical shutter on your 5D interacting w/ some weird programmed timing on the TT probably. 1/125 should be plenty to compensate for the slowish 5D shutter (Zack Arias mentions the same issue as do a few folks on the POTN forums).

Talk to the PW TT folks to see which timing parameter to muck is what I'd do...

Use a standard sync cord, and look for the same thing. If it is still present, then it is a camera issue. If it goes away, then it is an issue introduced by the remotes, either propogation delay, or timing.