Friday night (night before Neurodance) I was putting together my camera bag. Discovered that with the AC3 on the Pocketwizard TT1, I would not be able to use the Auto Focus assist tool that I made. Also, with the TT1 between the camera and the AF assist tool, the AF assist tool sits an inch higher then before. This throws off the alignment of the laser beam and the camera center AF point.

And that was just the beginning…Overall, the night just felt awkward. Maybe it was the number of new tools I was trying out, maybe it was my energy level, maybe it was the alignment of the stars.

Aside from not being able to use the AF assist tool at close distances (at longer distances, the beam reached the center AF point), it seems that the PocketWizard TT1 flash trigger affects the functionality of my AF assist tool. The laser bean did not come on every time I pushed the AF-ON button on the camera like before. The behavior seems to be: the beam work for the first photo, and then will not work if the AF-ON button is pushed right away. I need to wait about 5 seconds before pushing the AF-ON (or 1/2 press the shutter button for that matter) before the beam will turn on again. Very annoying if I wanted a sequence of images.

This hindrance alone totally messed up my work flow. I wasn’t used to this limitation in the past. I guess in retrospect I could have put a flash on top of the TT1 and tried using it’s AF assist beam… to try.

Then was the flex arm that I bought the day before. I was expecting it to be a little sturdier. With a Pocketwizard TT5 and a Canon 420ex flash on the end of it, it would droop down if I held the flex arm anywhere further then 2/3 away from the flash. That and the fact that it was hard to hold the 1/2 ish narrow flex arm and keep it from rotating in my hand, made the experience of using the arm much harder. I wonder if the Manfrotto 237HD flex arm is more rigid.