# VISICO VT-300P



## Naz (May 28, 2014)

Hey guys, did anyone try the Visico VT-300P AC/DC? Whats the highest sync speed? 
Im looking for a cheap stobe I can use outdoors while shooting on a shutter speed around 1/1250.


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## tirediron (May 28, 2014)

The highest sync speed will be your camera's native sync speed; 1/250 or less for 99% of cameras out there today.  If you want to use high-speed sync, then you're going to need either a speedlight from your  camera maker, or one of a very limited number of third party units.


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## Naz (May 28, 2014)

tirediron said:


> The highest sync speed will be your camera's native sync speed; 1/250 or less for 99% of cameras out there today.  If you want to use high-speed sync, then you're going to need either a speedlight from your  camera maker, or one of a very limited number of third party units.



Im using canon 60D. Do you mean I should use a third party like pocket wizard to get HSS?
If so, then I would need two of the pocket wizard FlexTT5, one on the camera and the other on the flash. Is that right?
What other triggers similar to the pocket wizard FlexTT5 with a less price.


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## TCampbell (May 28, 2014)

When cameras take photos at high shutter speed, they don't actually completely open the shutter.  The focal plane shutter has two doors and they slide apart to create a gap.  That gap "sweeps" across the sensor to expose the image.  The speed that the doors move never changes... only the delay between the time door #1 starts opening and when door #2 starts to follow will change. 

The flash "sync" speed is the fastest speed at which there is enough time for door #1 to open completely without door #2 needing to close.  At that point -- with the sensor completely exposed -- the flash can fire and every pixel on the sensor will get the benefit of the flash.

In "high speed sync" mode, the flash has to pulse while the doors are sweeping across the sensor so that every point on the image sensor will have received the same amount of light.  But the down-side to this is that means the flash cannot fire all of it's stored energy in just one burst... it has to save enough up enough energy to fire all the required bursts without needing to recycle the capacitors.  This means you don't get to use as much light when you use high-speed sync.  You can compensate by clustering groups of flashes together (they actually make flash mounts that are designed to allow you to cluster 3 or 6 flashes on one mount so they can all fire at the same time.)

With PocketWizard, you need a minimum of two components.  The "Flex" (and these are made for both Canon E-TTL and Nikon iTTL so you have to make sure you get the right model for your camera) can be EITHER a transmitter or a receiver.  You'd put one on camera and the other would be remote with the flash.  But PocketWizard also makes a slightly smaller transmitter-only unit called the "Mini".  You can use a MiniTT1 and FlexTT5 together instead of two FlexTT5's.  While there are lots of radio-controlled trigger systems, very few support E-TTL ... but the PocketWizard Mini & Flex system does (well the Canon version does... the Nikon version supports iTTL).   The downside is... these things don't come cheap.

I had planned to buy the PocketWizard Mini/Flex system when Canon introduced their radio technology flash system.  I found that I could buy a Canon ST-E3-RT (that's the on-camera controller) and Speedlite 600EX-RT (I own a few of these) for not much more than the native 580EX II speedlites that I was using combined with the cost of PocketWizards and there were some integration benefits for using the Canon system.  I opted for the Canon system.


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## Scatterbrained (May 28, 2014)

If you want to use a superfast shutter speed with a studio strobe, you need to look into "hypersync".     Hypersync basically uses the "tail" of the flash duration for the exposure.  You lose a lot of power, but gain a very fast shutter speed.  Triggers like the Phottix Odins and PocketWizard will let you achieve this via programmable delays.  Granted Hypersync® is a trademarked term, so when you search for it you'll get a lot of PocketWizard links.    Phottix refers to it as OverDrive.


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## Naz (May 29, 2014)

The Visico VT-300P has a flash duration of 1/800 to 1/1200s, does that mean I can't go above 1/1200 even when using the pocketwizard flexTT5?


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