Wireles remote and sync speed on K10D?

regarding range.....
just out in my yard....
I haven't measured it, but my yard is pretty big (one acre actually).
in length it is almost one city block. (I have a four bedroom house and you could easily fit five more like it). I was able to reach corner to corner diagnally across it.

will get out measure the max range this week if I can.

Not much to add but thought this might be interesting/helpful to some...

I'm still having the same issues. Short range, inability to sync above 1/125 (barely in range - I think I still see some darkness!)

Anyway, I've been calling Elinchrom technical support. The dealer from which I bought the remotes has been calling technical support.
We've both contacted the sales rep.

Two, going on three weeks now...
[crickets chirping...]

A few days before I bought the remote triggers, I had two of my new Elinchrom strobes die in under 50 shots due to faulty hardware.
Known issue with capacitors from one of their vendors. Elinchrom simply chose to not tell any registers owners and hope they would just not notice.

If this is the type of service and quality that Elinchrom is giving to the customers, I won't be buying any more of their equipment in the future.

They got me twice. Just thought I'd share.
Any potential buyers out there, beware...

my bet is the radio trigger is introducing a slight delay before the flash actually fires. The Pentax flashes probably respond faster and in any event the whole system has been designed with them in mind so any delay would have been accounted for.

It's even possible (although seems less likely) that the flash you're using is actually faster than the Pentax ones and is going off before the shutter fully opens.

Some studio flash do have a longer duration flash than the Pentax flashes and the curtain will start to close before the flash itself has finished "lighting" the subject, so in those situation, you have to use longer shutter speed to avoid the dark part of the frame. I don'dt know what flash you are using, but maybe with a remote release, the time for the radio signal to reach the flash and process the signal just "pushes" the flash timing a little bit and make it look like a longer lasting flash.

The Dlites have a flash duration of 1/800s.
The AF360&540FGZ have various flash durations, generally as slow as 1/1000 and possible to go much faster.
I have a third off camera dumb (non-PTTL) flash. No idea on its flash duration is but reasonably fast.

All work fine in X-Sync with cables.
The Pentax PTTL flashes work fine wired, and in PTTL wireless.
All flashes work well if slaved off a dumb flash in the hotshoe.
All up to the camera's sync speed of 1/180 without problems.

It is only when the Skyport remotes are introduced that I can barely reach 1/125s.


FYI, I've called Elinchrom several more times, as has my dealer.
Still no word after 20+ days!!

For the reputation they have, they will not be getting my business again.
I suppose to them, I mean nothing. Heck, they already have my money, eh?


Word of warning to anyone who doesn't yet own Elnchrom equipment...
think twice. If it works, great. If not, who you gonna talk to about it?

Oh, by the way, the dark area is at the bottom of the frame. So that is the top of th sensor. Does the shutter open top to bottom (of the camera) or bottom up?
In other words, with the dark area at the bottom of the image, is that an indication of the flash starting too slowly, or the flash finishing to quickly?


I suspect the Skyport just introduces far more delay than advertised, and the flash goes off too late.
I would think if it was a problem with shutter delay, that I would have the same issue with the dumb flash in the hotshoe, or perhaps even worse since there is no delay to flash at all.

Just thought I'd add a bit of info from Bogen/Elinchrom...
The main contact at Bogen had been out with some family stuff. 20 days seems like a long time to not have calls handed off to another person, but so be it... I was soon helped emphatically by three people with apologies all around... for about a day.

With several days between responses, and trying to explain myself multiple times, I got a final response:

"Today's Skyports will never flash your Pentex camera at 1/250th, or it seems like at 1/180 of a second. Since this is not a defect, getting a new one won't fix the problem. ...
I'm sorry that Skyports don't meet your needs so you might want to take your dealer up on their offer to get a refund."


I tried to explain myself one last time, and again that I am only expecting 1/180 sync speed. It has been another week and all I hear is the screaming in my head.

Bogen/Elinchrom is obviously unwilling to work with their customer to resolve any issues. I had still been trying to explain that I feel the problem could be on my end and was hoping to find some way to determine that for sure. Yet they are only interested in dumping me off.

I have no intention of giving up photography or of ever buying more lighting equipment, but when the time comes to buy again it will certainly not be with Bogen/Elinchrom!

OK, so this all started in April, and I finally have an answer from Bogen/Elinchrom!

The support staff has been blowing steam up my arse for nearly the past five months and not answering questions.... finally I guess I hit the right nerve (got the right executives, perhaps??) and got answers to my questions.

Apparently the guy made mistakes with his initial statements of how these things work. They did not sound right to me and I verified them, but Bogen/Elinchrom being the omnipotent bunch they are, re-stated their "facts". The main mis-statement was that the Skyports induce a delay of only four millionths of a second.

The next five months was spent trying to find why they didn't work properly with my camera. There is no way 4/1000000 could possible affect 1/180s shuter speed!

Well, finally they have a quote from an actual technical person, and the delay is roughly 2/1000 to 4/1000 plus or minus some in camera delays.

I'm still not sure how a 1/250 second delay can affect 1/180 shutter speed, but the timing is close enough that I could see any lack of tolerance in Pentax hardware to be an issue.

In the end, I am quite irate about how Bogen/Elinchrom treats their customers and the lack of information and lack of attention given when a clear problem is brought forth.

Just a warning... if you buy something from Bogen/Eleinchrom, don't expect much in the way of support. With everything being made with more and more electronics, and the plans they have for the Skyports and the types of devices they plan to connect them to, there are going to be issues that canot be solved by replacing a cord or bulb. It is going to take some technical knowledge which they are just incapable of handling.

Sorry for rambling, but I've been talking to a wall for five months and the answer was with the exact question I had verified in their first response. Any atention to my request would have solved the issue immediately. Argh!!

interesting thread - going to try my skyports with my new K10d tonight (bit concenred now!!) - I know they worked superbly with my DS.

Any evidence of this happening with pocket wizards?

I have none available to test but I'd be very interested in hearing how Pocket Wizards work out. I'll tell ya, I'd spend the extra money if they had the advertised range and worked at the camera's sync speed (as slow as it is).

Heck, I'd spend the extra money if they failed miserable, but the support personnel were simply able to understand trivial questions and respond in a reasonable time frame!!

Honestly, I am happy with the Skyports for 75% of what I want to do, but for that, I could have stayed with $30 eBay remotes.

Anyway, I'd be interested in hearing what you find with your K10D.

just a thought, I know the skyports were incompatable with vivitar 285HV (something to do with the length of the triggering pulse being too shoert to fire them) and a work around of soldering a cap into the pc cable (between reviever and flash) seemed to solve this problem).

Linky with more detail here:http://www.flickr.com/groups/strobist/discuss/72157602387229670/?search=skyport+...

Wonder if what you are seeing with the pentax flashes is similar.
Will try mine out and compare the AZ360 I got with the K10 to the response of some others (have various Nikon SBs and a couple of older vivtars).
Will get back to you.

Personally I dont want to go back to the cactus triggers - too unreliable in many ways - but dont want to go to the expense of PWs

Maybe something like the radiopopper Jrs or the Alien Bee triggers might work nicely (or even the radio poppers to trigger ttl)

Radiopoppers sound really nice. Although i haven't followed them closely. Do they work with any PTTL style communication or do you need special version for each manufacturer? I thought they just passed on the pre flashes so I might have to see how those are doing. I am just not that happy with PTTL to begin with and I end up with using manual anyway.

I'll have to check out the link. Although I believe the problem is with too long of a delay rather than too short. The shutter is already closing by the time the skyport triggers the flash.
I get the same results whether the skyport is connected to the 360, the 540, an old dumb flash or to the Elnchrom DLites. And, of course I get full x-sync speed with wired flash, PTTL, or via dumb flash sync methods.

My first choice was Alien bees, but I trusted my local camera shop and went with Elinchrom. Other than them being sold with bad capacitors rendering them useless in under 50 shots, the DLites are quite nice. If that was the only problem I'd be happy. But every day I now wish I would have gone with the Bees and never touche an Elinchrom/Bogen product.
No idea how well the AB remotes work, but they cannot be any worse than Skyports.

Just tried my skyports out with a Nikon Sb28 and the K10. Syncs perfectly up to 1/180th sec - no sign of any dark band (curtain) in the shot (have sometimes witnessed this with Cactus triggers on my DS, so I know what it looks like). Will try thh AZ360, just as soon as I have charged some batteries up.