ATTN: Canon Wireless Flash Firmware!

FoolyCooly · Dec 6, 2007

I guess Canon isn't making enough money off of bodies and big white lenses. They also need my $209.95 for the ST-E2...

Olympus and Nikon have both added wireless flash through firmware. I think it is your turn.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0712/07120602oly560firm.asp

Steve Galle · Dec 6, 2007

Have you thought to think that maybe just because the hardware on one camera allows a manufacturer to do this doesn't mean it's possible to do with all cameras?

They were able to do this because the Oly utilizes an infrared focus assist lamp. Since the wireless flash system operates via infrared comunication, so they reprogrammed the camera to be able to talk to the flashes through the af assist beam Clever. Unfortunately there's not IR AF assist on the 40D, so this isn't really something Canon can do.

--
Steve

Julio · Dec 6, 2007

I don't use an ST-E2. I use a 550 to slave a 420 and unlike the ST-E2, the 550EX uses the main flash tube to send the appropriate metering and trigger signal to the slaves. This is actually disconcerting at first if you set the 550 to not fire since it appears to do it anyway...just not bright enough to affect the shot unless it's really close to the subject and you're metering to use ambient light.

There may be other technical issues that make our on-board flashes unable to do what the Nikon and Oly do, but need for IR is not it.
--
http://www.pbase.com/j_trujillo

NickMJr · Dec 6, 2007

Julio said:
I don't use an ST-E2. I use a 550 to slave a 420 and unlike the
ST-E2, the 550EX uses the main flash tube to send the appropriate
metering and trigger signal to the slaves. This is actually
disconcerting at first if you set the 550 to not fire since it
appears to do it anyway...just not bright enough to affect the shot
unless it's really close to the subject and you're metering to use
ambient light.

There may be other technical issues that make our on-board flashes
unable to do what the Nikon and Oly do, but need for IR is not it.
--

Thats not correct, Nikon is not communicating wirelessly with the Remote flashes with IR beams. Instead they use the Pre-flashes to communicate with the Remote Flashes. While your correct that you can use a 550 to tigger a 420, you have to have the 550 mounted and the 420 remotely. With Nikon system if you have 2 flashes you can set both up remotely, plus the onboard can also contribute. The original poster is correct they are inherently charging you for options the Nikon and now Oyls have.

http://nickmjr.smugmug.com/
Nick M

Julio · Dec 6, 2007

NickMJr said:
Julio said:

I don't use an ST-E2. I use a 550 to slave a 420 and unlike the
ST-E2, the 550EX uses the main flash tube to send the appropriate
metering and trigger signal to the slaves. This is actually
disconcerting at first if you set the 550 to not fire since it
appears to do it anyway...just not bright enough to affect the shot
unless it's really close to the subject and you're metering to use
ambient light.

There may be other technical issues that make our on-board flashes
unable to do what the Nikon and Oly do, but need for IR is not it.
--

Click to expand...

Thats not correct, Nikon is not communicating wirelessly with the
Remote flashes with IR beams. Instead they use the Pre-flashes to
communicate with the Remote Flashes. While your correct that you can
use a 550 to tigger a 420, you have to have the 550 mounted and the
420 remotely. With Nikon system if you have 2 flashes you can set
both up remotely, plus the onboard can also contribute. The original
poster is correct they are inherently charging you for options the
Nikon and now Oyls have.

I defer to your knowledge of how Nikon does it.

My post was directed at the previous poster who basically said that Canon flashes need IR for remote triggering and that this is why Canon can't do it. I merely pointed out that this is not so since the 550 when used as a master uses visible light to control the slave.

At any rate...I've also always been annoyed that our built-in flashes don't do this.
http://www.pbase.com/j_trujillo

Boissez · Dec 6, 2007

Nikon, Olympus, Sony/KM, Pentax,... Having a built-in wireless flash control is becoming an industry standard - hopefully Canon will get with the programme soon...

FoolyCooly · Dec 6, 2007

When is the question and how much are they going to suck out of our pockets for it? I'm guessing it will be on the next xxD incremental upgrade. Dam shame because I like everything else about my 40D.

NickMJr · Dec 6, 2007

FoolyCooly said:
When is the question and how much are they going to suck out of our
pockets for it? I'm guessing it will be on the next xxD incremental
upgrade. Dam shame because I like everything else about my 40D.

Canon is also lagging in giving spot metering to all there camera lines. Even when they did put it on the 30D, 5D and 40D its only in the center. Even Nikon's $500 D40 includes spotmetering in all its AF points.
http://nickmjr.smugmug.com/
Nick M

Warden · Dec 7, 2007

--
i capture the feeling not just the image

saynomore · Dec 7, 2007

I've posted a lot about this recently, but I'll say it once more. The silliest thing to me is that you can ONLY do spot metering with flash exposure lock, and yet with ETTL pre-flash you can ONLY do either evaluative or average metering. What's up with that? Why not have the three options for both FEL and ETTL pre-flash, which are basically the same thing?

NickMJr said:
FoolyCooly said:

When is the question and how much are they going to suck out of our
pockets for it? I'm guessing it will be on the next xxD incremental
upgrade. Dam shame because I like everything else about my 40D.

Click to expand...

Canon is also lagging in giving spot metering to all there camera
lines. Even when they did put it on the 30D, 5D and 40D its only in
the center. Even Nikon's $500 D40 includes spotmetering in all its AF
points.

bwigg · Dec 7, 2007

Canon better be glad it has a good sensor. Because Nikon beats the heck out them in most other areas, such as flash. I sometimes regret switching to Canon.

Don't get me wrong, Canon has a good product. But if Nikon had a Canon's better high ISO I would drop Canon real quick and never look back. I still may in the future after I see what the new D300 does in Phil's review.

akromatik · Dec 7, 2007

infared is wack anyway, pocketwizards are the way to go.

JimH · Dec 7, 2007

I thought Pocket Wizards only provided sync and not the ETTL control.

--
Jim H.

FoolyCooly · Dec 7, 2007

Never thought Nikon CLS was "wack" when I was using it. CLS can be triggered with preflash or IR. Now Canon's wireless flash system is definitely wack. I had it fail on the very first outing. Now I'm looking at PWs or Skyports.

akromatik said:
infared is wack anyway, pocketwizards are the way to go.

nickleback · Dec 7, 2007

Steve Galle said:
Have you thought to think that maybe just because the hardware on one
camera allows a manufacturer to do this doesn't mean it's possible to
do with all cameras?

Sure. It just doesn't appear to be the case.

Steve Galle said:
They were able to do this because the Oly utilizes an infrared focus
assist lamp.

No they don't, read the article.

Steve Galle said:
Since the wireless flash system operates via infrared
comunication

or visible, just like everybody else.

Steve Galle said:
so they reprogrammed the camera to be able to talk to
the flashes through the af assist beam

No, they didn't.

Steve Galle said:
Unfortunately there's
not IR AF assist on the 40D, so this isn't really something Canon can
do.

You've never shot wireless E-TTL with a 550EX, 580EX or 580EX II as master, have you? It's all visible light with the flash tube. I'd hazard a guess that there's a flash tube behind the red plastic on the ST-E2 as well.

Nikon, Pentax, Olympus, Sigma, and even Sony have wireless remote through the built-in flash. And now Olympus has it in a digicam.

--
Seen in a fortune cookie:
Fear is the darkroom where negatives are developed

Julio · Dec 7, 2007

JimH said:
I thought Pocket Wizards only provided sync and not the ETTL control.

Pocket wizards are tempting because they do many other things but you can only use the 550 or 580 in manual mode with it.

--
http://www.pbase.com/j_trujillo

saynomore · Dec 7, 2007

JimH said:
I thought Pocket Wizards only provided sync and not the ETTL control.

http://radiopopper.com/

Someone else pointed me to this page. The product looks just what many of us have been looking for (notwithstanding the super expensive Quantum radio flash system solution). It will convert IR to full-ETTL radio signals and then back to IR to the flash. I'm very interested to see how it does in practice. The price is not bad either.

--
Andy.

FoolyCooly · Dec 7, 2007

Radiopopper looks very nice but I wonder if it is real. They don't have an product images on their website. Looks like it could be voporware at this point. I'll buy one if it is real.

saynomore said:
JimH said:

I thought Pocket Wizards only provided sync and not the ETTL control.

Click to expand...

http://radiopopper.com/

Someone else pointed me to this page. The product looks just what
many of us have been looking for (notwithstanding the super expensive
Quantum radio flash system solution). It will convert IR to full-ETTL
radio signals and then back to IR to the flash. I'm very interested
to see how it does in practice. The price is not bad either.

--
Andy.

saynomore · Dec 7, 2007

FoolyCooly said:
Never thought Nikon CLS was "wack" when I was using it. CLS can be
triggered with preflash or IR. Now Canon's wireless flash system is
definitely wack. I had it fail on the very first outing. Now I'm
looking at PWs or Skyports.

I wonder what's better about Nikon's flash. I really wonder, I'm not trying to be antagonistic. Is it their take on "evaluative" metering (or whatever they call it)? I can't figure how they can improve on straightforward flash metering like spot or average. If you mean AF-linked spot, well, that's not something that Canon can't do.

Canon's system is not bad to me, it's just some functions are very unintuitive, and there's nothing in the manuals of either the camera or the flash that tells you that. For instance, how the camera will only do spot or partial metering when using FEL, regardless of selecting evaluative or average in the camera's C.F. for ETTL (which the pre-flash obeys all right).

--
Andy.

saynomore · Dec 7, 2007

FoolyCooly said:
Radiopopper looks very nice but I wonder if it is real. They don't
have an product images on their website. Looks like it could be
voporware at this point. I'll buy one if it is real.

Yeah, I know there's some reason to be skeptical, but there's no reason not to be interested at least. It seems pretty feasible, and I wonder why it took so long for someone to take the idea and put it to use. Maybe it was too expensive before, I guess.

--
Andy.

ATTN: Canon Wireless Flash Firmware!

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