Radio Poppers (Photo Geek Alert)

I got some new toys today, Radio Poppers. The basics: they will work with my “smart” Canon flashes for better off camera lighting reliability, including bright sun light and long distances away from my camera. (hopefully)

After some really rough testing….I love them. Seem to work as advertised. They definitely don’t have the range of Pocket Wizards, but they will work awesome for how I shoot and will be a huge improvement over the IR system that is used by the Canon system. I will have a much more complete review after I use them to shoot a wedding on Friday with about 5 hours of flash shooting, both indoors and outside in the bright sun.

UPDATE:
Quick update after my wedding yesterday. Perfect. I used them for about 120 outdoor in sun shots ranging from 10ft to 50ft without a single misfire, most of it ETTL and Highspeed sync (1000th of a sec or 2000 of sec for most). I used them inside of a building up 100ft of escalator and around a corner, no problem.

Right now I have zero complaints on how they function. The complaints I did/do have are on design and have been fixed by the mods in my blog, or I can live with (battery is a pain to change but they sip juice and lasted for 5 hours of hard shooting yesterday, and I might mod them to fix that problem). I can take them on and off in about 5 secs each. Just Velcro straps.

ALERT – the following will only be interesting to fellow photographers – END ALERT

UPDATE 2:

I had some stress with the hot glue not sticking, so I switched to an over done combo of a bent paper clip and a 2 part 5 min epoxy (I like the kind with the self mixing tip the best).

One of the major complaints I have heard about Radio Poppers is that they are “hacky” and don’t have a good mounting system, so I figured I could improve on it.

(Full disclaimer: I got the idea from here (aka the foam mod) and added my own touches)

My main weapon: 3M brand adhesive backed Velcro Reclosable Fasteners.

There is 2 things I wanted to do with this.

1. Hold the units securely on my flashes, but still have them easy/fast to take on and off.
2. Get rid of the whole “tape it to your flash concept” that makes packing away the flashes a pain.

The first thing I did was to make the velcro straps that hold onto the flash. I cut 1 side of the velcro to 13 inches long and the other side to about 10.5 inches long. Then I suck them together leaving 2.5 inches of adhesive showing to stick the straps to the poppers with.

I also added adhesive rubber bumpers to the back of the poppers so they would not slide around on the flash.

The other mod I made to the receiver was to make a super short tube and hot glue it to the side. This allowed me to strap it right on to the front of my 580EX “version 1” flash.

It did involve some sharp bends of the optic tube and some short cuts, but worked extremely well. The downside is that if I ever need to use this popper receiver with another flash, say when I upgrade to the 580EX II, I will need to cut of the hot glued shot tube and start over with the foam mod. That is where the foam mod I liked to is better, but for my uses, this will work best for me. The good thing is that I can order a replacement Optic Tube for only $5.

Note that I only hot glued the optic tube to the back plate, that way when I need to open it up to change batteries there will not be a problem. Also, the hot glue is only on the bead tube, so it will we be extremely easy to swap out the optic tube if needed.

A note from Kevin King about this style of attachment pulled from the foam mod:

Kevin King, The mastermind behind this great tool, reminded me to make sure the flash head is always pointing away from the radiopopper. There is an EMP spike from the flashhead that could be damaging to the popper being this close. So weather you mount them on the front like this or the back just make sure the head points away from the popper.

One of my favorite parts to these changes is that it allows for super clean and fast packing. No tape to take off of the flash and no Velcro or optic tubes left on the flash. If I want to use the standard line of sight IR system I can just grab the flashes and go.

If you have any questions on what I did or any other thoughts let me know in the comments.