[inkista]

Originally Posted by stflood

I recently purchased a canon 430ex II for my canon t1i. i know nothing about flash photography really, but i would like to be able to use my 430 wirlessly. how can i do that? Also, what is a pocket wizard for? Do i need one of them to use the 430 wirelessly? thanks for the help!

There are actually three methods to using your flash wirelessly off-camera. As natek313 mentions, radio triggers such as the Cactus V4s or the Yongnuo RF-602s are probably your best bet. But for the sake of completeness, here are the other two methods:

1. Optical slave

Optical slaves are problematic with the 430EX, first of all because it has no PC port, and secondly because a lot of optical slaves don't work with the Canon speedlights. But this could be your lowest-cost option, if you have another manual speedlight to use on the hotshoe as your master. An optical slave will cost about $15, a hotshoe-to-PC adapter so you can connect the optical slave will cost maybe $10. The only problem is that an e-TTL preflash can trigger these things early, so you have to use a manual flash to master them, or have the power set low enough on the flash that it can recycle in time between the preflash and the main flash burst. Problem with the pop-up flash on the digital rebels is that you can't turn the preflash off. But this would be how you'd use an off-camera flash with a point-and-shoot camera.

2. Canon proprietary signalling

Canon builds wireless functionality into its flashes. But unlike Nikon, Canon has only put this wireless capability into one pop-up flash on a camera body--the 7D's. So if you're not shooting with a 7D, you'll need another speedlight unit to use this built-in wireless function, and it'll have to be a master-capable unit. That means you'd also have to buy a 580EXII, 580EX, 550EX, or ST-E2 to use on the camera's hotshoe to pop your 430EX off-camera.

Furthermore, it's infrared-based, like a TV remote, so you need line-of-sight (i.e., the sensor on the flash has to "see" the master signal), and your range is relatively limited. This is why radio triggers (which don't have either of these limitations) are often preferred.

However, this proprietary signalling system lets you use a lot more of your flash's features because the camera can talk to the flash more than just ordering it to fire. Radio triggers (except for the Radiopopper PX and TTL-capable PocketWizard units) can only tell the flash when to fire. They do not let you control the power level from the camera back, allow you to use high-speed sync, or use eTTL II--i.e., you have to set the power level on the flash manually with radio triggers--the camera can't set it for you automatically based on metering.

This is why the PocketWizard FlexTT5/MiniTT1 and RadioPopper PXs are so desirable and so expensive--they give you the proprietary signalling function, but over radio so you have better distance and reliability.

I do also want to mention that PocketWizard also makes non-TTL capable units, that are also "fire-signal-only": the MultiMax and PlusII. The main difference between these PocketWizards and other radio triggering devices is that they are transceiver units. They can be at either end of the radio connection as transmitter or receiver, and the range is much larger than other units. Most of the other radio units come in Tx/Rx (transmitter/receiver) sets, where each unit can only be used either on the camera or on the flash. If your transmitter fails, your receivers become useless.

With the TTL PocketWizards, the FlexTT5 is a transceiver. The MiniTT1 is a transmitter-only. Also, unlike the MultiMax and Plus IIs, they are hotshoe-specific and currently only come in Canon and Nikon flavors.