Marsu42 said:
neuroanatomist said:
Marsu42 said:
I'd be surprised if there wouldn't be a new flash lineup with ettl3 (remote zoom & 2nd curtain remote) down the road to expand on the existing system.
What does E-TTL flash metering have to do with remote zoom or remote 2nd curtain sync? I suspect Canon could have implemented those in the -RT protocol had they wanted to do so.
I was taking of "ettl3" in the sense of a new camera-flash protocol, not in terms of different metering - so it could also be called "rt2" if you like that better, though they might want to have remote zoom & 2nd curtain remote for optical link, too.
I don't know if it would have been possible to implement this over the current rt protocol just like that, if so, I really wonder why they didn't at least allow for remote zoom that doesn't have timing problems like 2nd curtain sync might. The argument "the zoom is there to match the lens' focal length" doesn't quite cut it for me, I suspect a lot of people use the zoom for directed lighting instead of "light everything from the hotshoe".
Got it.
Personally, I've never found a need for changing the head zoom setting remotely, but I can see where some might find it useful. I have tested different zoom settings with a variety of modifiers, and I find that each modifier has an optimal zoom setting. That setting certainly differs by modifier, from snoots to grids to softboxes, and even within modifier type (length of snoot, fineness of grid, etc.), but doesn't change for a given modifier. So it's set-it-and-forget-it, e.g. 135mm zoom for my 1/8" speed grid, it goes up on the boom, done. Or, with bare flash I'm bouncing off a ceiling, and again the zoom is set based on the bounce distance, which is fixed. I change the power, of course, but that's by RT remote. If I shot with off-camera direct bare flash, maybe I'd find remote zoom useful – but the point of getting flashes off camera is to shape the light, and that generally means a modifier.
Thinking further, I do see some future-proofing in excluding remote zoom. The 600 zooms to 200mm, if they come out with a 4x0EX-RT, it likely won't zoom to 200mm. How do you fully control zoom on both if they're in the same group? (Yes, the 600 could be capped at less in that case, but that's a kludge).