February 18, 2009 - Pocket Wizard has just announced their new Flex TT5, a successor to the MultiMAX. While it’s currently only available for Canon, a Nikon version will be available soon.  Why would a flash trigger be Nikon or Canon specific you ask? That’s because it reads and transmits the camera’s TTL code, and each manufacturer uses slightly different pins on the hotshoe to transmit those codes. This means you can use TTL with off camera flash via radio signal, but it also does something else that is way more important for me, it allows you to pre-trigger the flash. They're calling this HyperSync, and this is their brief description of what it does

“With Pocket Wizard HyperSync™ Technology, the FlexTT5 can precisely advance the timing of your flash trigger so that increased flash sync speeds, up to 1/500th of a second is achievable with many strobes.”

Now while they say 1/500th of a second sync speeds are possible, the reality of it should be far greater. I can currently sync at 1/1000 or even 1/2000 using the now old fashioned MultiMAX’s with just about any camera. Here are a couple of examples shot with my full frame D700.

You may notice that the image shot at 1/2000 only has light on the bike rider and not on the rest of the frame vs the image shot at 1/1000 that has light across almost the entire frame. This is not really a technical issue, I just used a couple of other flashes on the 1/1000 shot to light up the jump. It’s a bit more work to figure out but not technically more difficult. Both images used SB800’s to light the rider, and for the last image of Alex Reveles shot at 1/1000 I used a couple of Quantum T2D’s to light the jump as well. Update - Check out my post about how I sync above 1/250 with the Pocket Wizard MultiMAX here.