Pocket Wizards and the World Series

Baseball season once again comes to a close. But as the St. Louis Cardinals win The Series last night, at least one Strobist reader was ogling the photo gear along with the game.

This morning, he asked the following on the Strobist Flicker group discussion board:

"I'm not a baseball fan, but while channel surfing by the World Series I noticed a group of photographers in the background when the TV camera was doing shots of the dugout.

Several of these guys had two pro style cameras, one with a long lenses hanging around their neck plus a mono-pod mounted huge lens. I noticed that the handheld rig had what appeared to be a Pocket Wizard on the hot shoe, but I didn't notice any strobe lighting in view.

Since baseball diamonds are pretty well lit and I guessing that since most pitchers are pretty weird, powerful flash photography from the closest stands would be prohibited.

What were they doing with the Pocket Wizards?

Answer: The Pocket Wizards are being used as remote triggers.

The camera with the long lens is the "everywhere" camera. The camera with the 80-200 is the home plate camera (too close for the long lens.)

So, you mount a remote camera somewhere (or several) in a different location with PW receivers to fire them. Then you place the PW transmitter on your 80-200 camera. Now, when you shoot at home plate, you get simultaneous coverage of home plate from a different angle.

It's so nice of baseball players to always score every run in exactly the same place.