Re: Pixel King Pro - 3rd Generation
I received a King Pro and two King X yesterday. I've spend most of yesterday and today photographing osprey so I've only spend a very brief time with my new triggers.
Overall, I like them. They are plastic but decent plastic. Not too far below Canons plastic. Pixel advertises a metal frame but this is only the case for the King Pro - it's probably needed on the Pro to compensate for the LCD opening in the plastic box. There is a rubber seal over the USB and Sync sockets. This may lead you to think that these triggers are somehow environment sealed. I wouldn't say that's the case. The LCD is fine and easier to read than the Canon LCD (which I had trouble reading).
One major problem though: One of the X's I received was DOA ! I had to go through 5 7D's before I found one that (I believe) was fully functional. Maybe this is just my luck. I assume that I will get a replacement for the dead X. But it seems that Pixel may have an unhandled Q/A issue. A minor snag: I have 600EX's and I can not manually set zoom above 105mm with the King Pro/X. I assume this is something that Pixel can fix in a firmware update.
I started out with the 600EX's because I wanted to use Canons new radio trigger. Turned out though that I couldn't use Canons trigger because of a (for me) fatal design flaw in the system: Flash recycle is reported to the camera instantaneously (which is fine) while recycle-done is reported with at delay (which is a major bummer). The 600EX is able to follow the 7D at 8 fps at 1/8 power. But the occasionally the high-voltage briefly drops below the recycle threshold when I shoot this way. Result: Two or three well exposed frames followed by 4-5 black frames when I use Canons radio trigger. Rubbish ! I spend a lot of time trying to report this to Canon as a bug and they acknowledged that this is the way the system works but they have refused to fix it. The King Pro / King X does not have this problem. My longest series thus far has been 10 frames with no black frames. It was my decision to stop after 10 frames. I could probably have continued until the 600EX thermal protection kicked in.
I own an old 380EX. I didn't expect the King Pro/X to be able to control it and it couldn't. It can fire it though. I think it fires at its lowest power.
I haven't yet done a complete functional test of the King Pro/X, but apart for the two above mentioned issues I'm very happy thus far. The set is less than half the Phottix Odin and less than 1/4 the Canon system - and much more functional.
Hope this helps.