Which Pocketwizards?

From just a bit of research, there are

Pocket Wizard Classic
Pocket Wizard Plus II
Pocket Wizard Multimax

does anybody have the Ultra II or the Multimax and what's the major difference between the two?

I got fed up with the range of my ebay triggers while shooting a basketball game last night.

 

The plus II are all I can really see anyone needing, for normal wireless flash applications. They are transceivers and can be used on either the flash or the camera, and they are the cheapest, yet they work every time.

 

how's the range? I can read specs, but from experience...how is it? Across a basketball court? Farther? How about obstructions? Can something be between the transceivers?

 

1,600 feet line of site, really. In a office building I setup 4 strobes on the roof to fill the spire of the building at night. The PW's and flashes were behind concrete. I triggered them from ground level 11 stories below and about 800 feet from the building face. The strobes all fired every time I triggered them. No complaints on PW's from me.

 

Astounding.

Will these work with my 430EX? The 430EX has problems when hooked up to an Optical trigger or Ebay trigger. Has anyone had experience with the 430EX on a pocketwizard?

 

Good info for me as well. I'm currently shopping around for a set and pretty much have made my mind up on PW's.

 

Thats some good range! When I first found out about the 1600ft range I thought who is ever going to need that. Now I feel stupid.

 

If you have 1600ft of range you're going to figure out a way to use it.

 

Yes, you can and will. I borrowed a cable that lets me trigger my Nikon through the 10 pin connector with a PW. I set the PW in my pocket and on the camera to channel 3. Then set a remote flash to channel 4. From a little over 1,350 feet (measured by rifle range finder) and through light brush fired my camera. The PW on the camera then fired the remote flash. I can't say enough about Pocket Wizards. The same technique is used to fire a remote camera and multiple off-camera strobes above the goals at basketball games. Really sweet.

 

I've pretty much made up my mind on the PW's.

PROBLEM: expensive, real expensive.

I went to the local camera shop today and they showed me the Elinchrom Skyports. They didn't know much about them, but they let me read the instruction book.

After some brief research on the internet, I found a flickr discussion where a whole bunch of people bought them instead of PWs and love them. Basically, it's about $100 per unit, whether a receiver, or a transmitter. So, instead of paying $650 for a pocket wizard setup to fire 2 wireless flashes, it'll only cost me $300 with the Skyports to fire 2 wireless flashes.

Also, Skyports allow "Grouping" where I can assign flash 1 to "group 1" and flash 2 to "Group 2". On the transmitter, I can set it to "Fire group 1", "Fire group 2", or even "Fire All Groups". This seems super handy.

Pro's of Pocketwizards
-Better Built
-Better Range
-Brand will probably be around longer
-Units are transceivers

Pro's of Skyports
-Cheaper (huge huge huge pro, this means I can get them before the basketball tournament)
-allows "grouping"
-Adding units will continue the low-pricedness


The PocketWizards have more pro's, but the price and grouping ability of the Skyports are very appealing.

No question whether Pocketwizards are better...but I'm trying to decide which is right for me... and it seems like the Skyports would be.

HOWEVER, the range... I mean... I really worry that I'll spend the $300 for a skyport setup and then realize the range isn't enough. Now I'm back in boat #1, where I should've bought the Pocket Wizards.

So, how often do you guys use your pocket wizards at a distance of over 150 feet? In what scenarios would you use these at such far distances? I could totally use the extra distance at a race track to light up the dead spots... Dad gum... what am I going to do?