You can do a lot of cool photographic tricks with wireless radio flash triggers. I’ll show you some that I did with the new
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Phottix Atlas, an awesome gadget.
Tags:Phottix Atlas Wireless Flash Trigger Review,flash trigger review,Michael Zelbel,photo making,photography advice,photography tips,taking photos with the atlas wireless flash trigg
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Phottix Atlas Wireless Flash Trigger Review and Tips
Hey fellow photographer, how is it going? I’m Michael Zelbel and today I would like to show you some tricks you can do with some affordable and see to use radio remote triggers and of course with the speed lights.
Today, I’m going to shoot a bunch of my photos of my dear wife Emily just for fun and in order to try out our latest toy it’s this, you see a Phottix Atlas Radio remote trigger. I haven’t used them before but I guess by the end of the day we will all see what you can do with them. What you cannot do with them, what rocks and what sucks.
Now wouldn’t it would be wonderful if the sun would break through the trees and room light all model’s head. For strong beam of light into her dark hair and that would be great. It’s just one problem. There is no sun but no problem. We could put the speed light there so I put it at 580 EX, the old model way up into one of the trees and after such a remote attached to it so I can remote control it from over here. I hope you can see that on video if I laid it fresh here.
So, it’s now breaking through the trees and hitting the model from the back. I first headed on 1/8 of the power that was a little bit weak. Now I dialed it up to ½ of its power and now it’s really strong. And it should quite a few, quite a couple of photos and I have to say I always use the zoom speed of a 200’s of a second and that worked really well.
Now, we are going to use the Atlas transceiver in the WRS mode. What that means is I can remote control the shutter of camera so it will trigger the shutter and at the same time it will trigger an external flash and the two actions are sent now so I can illuminate a photo viewer flash and at the same time have a remote shutter. And for that I attach my camera to this boom, so that I can hold it over my subject and position that which is usually is not reachable and then use the Atlas too as your guide. So when I trigger the Atlas, the out of focus will find a focus and the Atlas will trigger the flash that can be twosome or let’s say unusual photos. Have a look.
Here outside on our veranda, we have one wall which is -- it’s not the nicest wall and I was just too lazy to paint over it for let’s say one or two years and we thought this could be an interesting background and Emily just wanted to enjoy an ice cream so we did shoot a couple of photos of her at the wall eating ice cream.
What I’m going to do now is turning this whole setup with the dirty wall in the background into a sort of studio setup with a clean white background and just have a one flash over there is which is hiring on half of its power. So much light into the background and it’s completely blowing out. I light my subject with too short for umbrellas, two flashes both on 116, both are connected via PC ports to one Atlas unit over here. So this unit triggers all flashes which is possible due to the fact that it’s identical flashes and I’m using identical of PC ports so that should work well.
So, we went down to the harbor of this lot to make a little distance test and here how it is going to work. We don’t have any light for with us, but we have this white shopping bag and I can simply put the speed light into the shopping bag over here. This makes for -- we have to put it upwards. Now it’s making for an ice soft box and I will use this radio remote to trigger this soft box.
We can hang somewhere over here. Emily is standing close to it and I will go along this bridge to the other side of the harbor and shoot her from the other side of the harbor which is roughly 100 meter, 300 feet away and I should see her illuminated brightly while the rest will sink into the darkness. Let’s try it out.
So now you can really see it on video but when I capture her, she’s just a little tiny white spot over here but like this currently shooting with 300 mm. It’s a longest lens I’ve got with me but I think it can really see the light is hitting her hard while the rest is sinking into the dark.
So now the really hot sun already vanished a bit. It’s getting a little bit darker and we thought now it’s time to water the burnt grass over here and we thought that might be a nice idea if we take some photos of Emily jumping through the water which is a spring flower over there which have on the grass. For that, I would like to give light for my speed lights from two sides. I got one speed light in this corner. Now, the speed light far out over there between the trees. Both on the lights, stand both on 116th of a power and I’m shooting very fast here because I really can’t control how is the water is in exactly the second when I shoot. So I will go like this and always shoot series when she’s jumping through the water and hope that I capture the really right moment.
My question is, is it really cool? The coolness factor, is that really cool and to try that out I will slip one small 430 EX tool on to the Atlas. I want to touch a gear because I want this really bluish light from the flash coming out of the fridge. It’s a perfect threat for other people who might get up during night to reach into the fridge. So let’s try it out how cool it is.
So that wraps the shoot for today. It’s getting dark now and with a truth a lot of photos and tested these babies very importantly and up to it let’s say the Phottix Atlas is really good, rocks on it, very versatile, very handy. The only thing that it’s missing for me is it doesn’t transmit E-TTL or high TTL signals and it doesn’t work in high passing commode, hyper speed and commode but I have to say I haven’t seen any radio remotes which do that and which are working anywhere near reliable and then which are fun to work with.
So, I think this is one of the best radio triggers that I have seen so far and I highly recommend it. In fact, I will post an affiliate link below this video and if you are thinking about getting used some this maybe instead of getting the next speed lights, you want to have three or something. Then please go beyond my affiliate link and check them out over there and one comment about the comment. Please comment if you find these videos useful, comment below the video and last week I got the very nice comment from David H, who set he’s left that I will not post every Thursday. So I will continue with that and I’ll be back next Thursday with some more interesting stuff. Until then I wish you a lot of fun with your photo shoot and good light.
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