Tilting and shifting and radio control

A couple of interesting bits of news in the world of photography.

First, PocketWizard have taken the wraps off a very interesting new pair of products which enable wireless E-TTL over the radio waves. Unlike their previous sync-only products, the new ControlTL products let you do automated metering - at least on Canon EOS cameras. Nikon users will have to wait a little longer for an equivalent Nikon-compatible product.

Pretty cool stuff. But what makes this one particularly interesting is that they’ve come up with an ingenious engineering hack they’re calling HyperSync, which enables high speed sync at much higher shutter speeds than you could otherwise. This trick is done by letting the user adjust the flash so that it fires before the shutter normally opens, thus taking advantage of the decay tail of a flash burst. Very clever.

For now the new products are US/Canada-only, though I’m sure they’ll be releasing international versions soon.

Second, Canon have introduced a pair of new tilt-shift lenses to their stable. They’ve replaced the 24mm tilt/shift lens with a new mark II. And they’ve also introduced a crazy-expensive 17mm f/4L tilt-shift.

Like the Hartblei tilt/shift lenses the new Canon lenses let you combine tilt and shift movements, which provides for quite a bit of flexibility. Fascinating, if limited in market if only because of the cost.