Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

Greetings.... just received my new lighting equipment and set up for some test shoots this evening.... I am having an issue that is troublesome....

First, I am using two Einsteins with the MC2s, the PW MiniTT1 and the AC3 on a Nikon D3.

The issue is that the first shot in a sequence doesn't fire the strobes. This happens both when I power on the system and if I take a break in shooting.... have not been able to quantify the time before something goes to sleep.... but it is repeatable, and aggravating.... first shot is an important one (I work with a lot of exotic animals in a studio environment)....

Any help/insights would be appreciated. All firmware on the PW equipment is updated and current....

Thanks in advance,

Michael

I use Einstein's and pw's MC2 and have found that you have to give the radio's time to talk to each other especially if you are using the Control TL mode. So if you are firing that first shot very quickly they might not have time to communicate properly. When I need speed with all my shots I set my camera to stay on ( I shoot Canon so I turn of the auto off mode in the menu) and I use standard trigger mode even then sometimes the first shot does not fire the strobe in perfect sync. When shooting in Control TL I find that I need to press the shutter button halfway wait a bit then take the shot and I then get an almost 100% success rate. Good luck

Others are welcome to comment, however the Pocket Wizard products are Pocket Wizard products, and we cannot really make any statements as to why they do what they do (good or bad), as we are not familiar with everything in thier line up, and we don't want to give you bad information.