Ok I bought these bad boys a couple months ago cause I am a poor photographer and cannot afford the “industry-standard” Poverty Wizards … (I mean Pocket Wizards). I wanted to use them for a while before writing a definitive review on them. So here I go:

SUMMARY:
Get them. Get them NOW!. They work. They’re reliable. They’re cheap.

You can get two Skyports for the price of one Pocket Wizard … HERE

DESIGN:
They’re designed really well but there are both a positives and a negatives. They’re smaller and lighter then the Pocket Wizards (PW). I can fit 3 of them of them in my bag and they take up no more room than a small 50mm F1.8 lens. Try fitting 3 PWs in your bag. Unfortunately they are smaller because they use built in lithium-ion batteries and not AAs. This is bad because you never know how much batter is in them and if you run out of batteries on an assignment you’re SOL. Fortunately the battery life lasts forever and I have never ever run out after flashing 500+ times. I usually just charge them up once every couple assignments but generally I am never worried.

Then Skyports are just so tiny and it doesn’t take up too much space on your camera or your flash. I find it funny whenever I see photographers shooting with PW and they have this gigantic antenna coming out of their cameras which just looks pretty funny. With the Skyports you have the option of extending the antenna or keeping it tucked in. Normally I keep it tucked in as this will hopefully avoid it snagging on something and breaking. I feel the antenna is probably the weakest part of this design but I still think it is durable enough as the antenna sorta bends so it will probably not be ripped out of its socket.

Because they’re so small and almost weightless I think they’re pretty durable. I have dropped them on occasion but they just keep on ticket. They literally are almost weightless. One thing I hate about the Skyport transmitter (the one that goes on top of your camera) design is that it is held on top of your camera’s hotshoe only by friction. It does not have a hotshoe lock of any kind and I have often found myself accidentally knocking it slightly ajar and getting “misfires” because of loss of hotshoe contact or just dropping it randomly.

PERFORMANCE:
They work as you expect. They fire flashes from a great distance away! Has a long range and works really well through walls but I have yet to do any formal distance calculations. I probably would not feel safe leaving a bunch of flashes 300m from me anyways. It would probably get stolen before I could run the 300m and catch up to the thief anyways!

What’s really neat about the Skyports are that it has 2^3 = 8 main channels plus 4 subchannels. This means that the Skyports have effectively 8×4 = 32 possible channels! The $200 EACH Pocket Wizards only support 4 channels so you are getting a steal here. A really sweet future is to set different lights on different subchannels so you can control the firing of different lights. This is VERY useful when wanting to see how the light output from each light effects your scene.

I personally have never used the Pocket Wizards but I have used the eBay “Gadget Infinity” triggers and for $30 for the set it is a great example of .. “You get what you paid for”. They’re unreliable, don’t always fire, and their sync speeds rely on the current battery charge. With the Skyports I can get 1/1000s flash sync speed with my Nikon D1x and boy does that open up some sweet creative shooting possibilities.

I enjoy shooting portraiture and fashion, so I don’t really get a chance to try out the super long range limits of the Skyports. I usually use them within a single room. I have tested them from over a 50 meters and they fire through several large concrete rooms without problem. I am sure range increases drastically with better operating conditions such as a wide open field. Here are some photos of the Skyports in action.

CONCLUSION:
I honestly don’t know what to say but you should go buy them now. There are newer alternatives that have recently come out like the TTL enabled RadioPoppers, but you need to buy a Nikon based IR-transmitter either a $300 SB800 or a $300 SU-800 which sorta makes it pointless? Plus manual is still the way to go. My friend Justin once told me when I was just starting out that TTL is unreliable and that Manual flash photography is the way to go. I never believed him till I personally started doing a lot of Manual stuff myself. Now I am a believer. I leave you with a few photos of the Skyports in action!

INTRO

The Nikon D200 camera was introduced at the end of 2005. Why am I reviewing this camera now three years (which is forever in terms of camera technology) after its release? Well for starters I just purchased this camera last year from a friend and have finally used it enough to provide useful insight on it. Also the D300 was recently released so many people who previously shot with D200’s are unloading them like hotcakes on www.craigslist.toronto.ca or www.ebay.ca. Hopefully this review along with the dozens on the internet will help people who are interested in the D200 finally make the $900-1000 (used price) plunge!

WHO/WHAT IS THIS CAMERA FOR?

The D200 is a semi professional body made to take day to day abuse (although my rubber grip is starting to peel off). It feels like a metal baseball bat and probably could be used as one (I take no responsibility if you break your D200 using it as a baseball bat). It’s 10.2 Megapixels allows for much more cropping space allowing me to be lazy and just crop for composition when I take portraits of people.

Did I mention this baby is fast? You can quickly turn this sucker on and shoot at 5FPS in a blink of an eye. Also with a HUGE buffer I can take 21 RAW photos (or almost limitless JPEGs) before it becomes full and needs to write to a card. The only thing that knocks the camera down is AF focus points, although it has 11 AF points on 1 (the middle point is the good one. This compared to the D300, with its 51 point AF and 13 cross point sensors. So focusing on fast, moving, objects is iffy for me in low light situations.

Recommended for:

• General photography
• Studio work
• Portrait photography
• Some sports (low light fast focusing is the killer though)

HANDLING/EASE OF USE

This camera feels so good to hold and is made with a metal body and rubber skin that just screams expensive when you hold it. I love it. Compared to my old D70s and my friends’ D80 and Canon XT, which both feel like plastic toys, this camera feels likely to last longer in rugged use. Supposedly its also weather sealed but I don’t trust it too much. Who wants to risk $$$ photographing in the rain?

All the buttons are easy to use coming from a Nikon and the menu system of the D200 has a tremendously useful “?” (help) feature which basically allowed me to learn everything single setting on the camera without consulting the manual. Truly a very useful feature if you are caught in the field trying to figure out what Setting X does for your camera.

There are lots of cool extras that I find on my D200 that I can’t find on lower end entry level cameras:

• Illuminated exposure/settings screen on the top which tells you aperture, shutter speed, ISO.
• SPOT METER! Useful for scenes with contrasting light.
• 5 FPS! Never miss a shot.
• Gorgeous 2.5″ LCD screen that is so high in resolution that it’s easy to check sharpness.
• Wireless Commander Mode that enables control of 3 Groups of unlimited number of off camera flashes.

IMAGE QUALITY

Images out of this camera have the potential to look fantastic. I find the JPEGs look just average but this is normal for a prosumer camera. I tend to use RAW much more and with proper post processing the images look amazing. Resolution wise it is great. It’s 10 Megapixels is clearly resolves details better than my old D70s.Details captured by this camera are also sharper than photos taken with my father’s 12 Megapixel (interpolated) Fuji S2.

The only thing I can knock the D200 on is image noise. In JPEG I love the look from ISO 100-400. Details start to get lost at ISO 800 but I would still never fear using it. At 1600 it is clearly a hit or miss and exposure and white balance must be hit dead on or ugly noise starts to rear its head! In RAW, which is what I prefer to shoot, image noise is much much worse but I guess that is the nature of RAW and it requires a lot of post processing to get good images and then only at lower ISO values. For actual important studio shoots I would not want to go over ISO 400 in RAW. The RAW noise looks terrible and appears like little small worms all over the picture. But Noise Ninja clears most of that up in post.

CONCLUSION

If you haven’t noticed already from all the photos on this website, I AM IN LOVE with the D200. It is just so fast and speedy at everything that it does (ie. image capture, image review, menus, shutter lag, focusing) that I cannot imagine using any other camera. With the recent release of the Nikon D300 I am tempted but will definitely stay with my beloved D200. I do not think I will upgrade it until it completely falls apart.

One thing to remember is that the camera is but a tool for the photographer. It is like a paint brush used by an artist to help create his artwork. So if you can’t afford the D200/D300 get whatever camera you CAN afford and go out to take photos! It is not up to the camera but to the photographer.