Cactus PT-04 RF Triggers
About a month ago, I got some Cactus PT-04 v2s triggers from Gadget Infinity along with fellow blogger and photographer Markku Seguerra. Having played around with them for a while, I’ll say this much – they’re no Pocket Wizards, but for the price, they sure do some magic.
Questions have been raised about their quality, usability, and reliability. I can tell you now that they really don’t look very expensive – but that’s because they really aren’t. They sell for under $50 – what do you expect?
You want to talk about performance? Trigger range right out of the box is pegged at 20 to 30 feet – not exactly very far. On top of this, I tested them and got a 75% trigger rate – a flash would fail to fire once every four or so frames. Suddenly, these little babies seem to have lost some of their magic.
With some minor modification though, the triggers act like they’ve got a fresh sprinkling of fairy dust. With a new antenna, range has gone up tenfold to over 300 feet, and that’s not the only improvement. With the mod, trigger rates are now well above 90% – not bad at all.
No, the Cactus PT-04 triggers might not look like much, but who cares? I want triggers that work, and these babies work pretty damn well.
• Luis • 2 November 2007 •
[...] Strobists out there, I used a 430EX triggered by my Cactus PT-04 RF Trigger. I alternated between shooting it through an umbrella and bouncing it on a wall or ceiling. [...]
What exactly did you do for the antenna mod? What brand/type did you use and exactly how did you do it?
For the most part, I simply followed the instructions I found here. The things I changed are the following:
- I used some solid copper insulated electric wire I found around the house to make my antenna – nothing really special about it. It was what I had on hand.
- I soldered a hole on the side of the case instead of on top. This way, I could remove the top cover without disconnecting the antenna.
[...] almost ready to give away my Poverty Wizards, and I’m not even looking at Pocket Wizards. I want to get my hands on some RadioPoppers. [...]
Hey, is it available here? Where? Kano?
Randy: I ordered mine off the Gadget Infinity website.
[...] Last month, I got an invitation to participate in Photonovice’s project on blog statistics. It involved discussing “shocking, funny, awakening or otherwise special search term or list of terms you noticed in your blog statistics.” Unfortunately, I didn’t find any interesting search terms to share. Back then, “cactus pt-04” and “pt-04 trigger,” were my top search terms. There was nothing surprising there, especially since one of my first posts was about Cactus PT-04 RF Triggers. [...]