Pocket Wizards- Overpriced and Badly Built?
July 22, 2010
At Garage we use Pocket Wizard Plus 11 for all our triggering studio needs. In terms of effectiveness of the individual units, they are the most reliable that we have used so far, but why is their build quality so appalling? The radio technology inside the unit is, I would imagine very cheap to put together, so what is the extortionate cost price spent on, it doesn’t appear to be the manufacturing.
If, as we are led to believe by the pro’s and the magazines, Pocket Wizards are the industry standard then why do they have a hot-shoe connector made of very flimsy plastic, with an often badly sealed join over the hot shoe pin. Through normal everyday use we have now had 2 of these hot shoe plates snap in half- the cheap plastic and spring contraption inside didn’t exactly inspire confidence in build quality.
Why is the body such cheap quality, and why at a unit price of approx £180 does the receiver require what is essentially a 50p Maplins/Radio Shack connector to plug into the back of the studio flash head? Surely a sealed one piece connector supplied with the unit wouldn’t raise the cost price and would provide a far more reliable system. A cable into a larger Jack cable is not an efficient system of firing, especially as when hanging from the Studio Light it often pulls the connector apart. Gaffer-taping the trigger to the Flash unit is not a good enough solution for a radio trigger in cheap plastic that retails at this price. It wouldn’t take much work to have a base station or similar, like say an ipod dock, that the receiver fits into which would then plug directly into the Studio Light jack.
Its about time that PW really thought about how there products are used, and dropped the price and also created a much more sturdy unit- that can deal robustly with adverse weather conditions when outside, and has the build quality that a studio in constant use requires.
Has anyone else had issues with these units in general , or have any better value alternatives? We’d love to know. I never want to miss a shot again due to a dodgy cable, or a unit sending itself to sleep at the wrong time…
