Review written 3rd April 2012

I was approached by Fottga to review a new product a Wireless remote trigger the Lumox 520 consisting of a wireless transmitter and receiver which can either remotely trigger a camera or a flash unit it also has a pass through TTL hot shoe enabling a flash to be mounted on the transmitter when on camera.

The kit can be used in 2 main ways either as a flash trigger or a shutter remote selectable with the slider switch on the side of the units body.

Flash mode
When in flash mode the receiver can be stand mounted using the 1/4″ thread or cold shoe and you can mount a flash gun directly onto the unit or alternatively connect via a cable which would enable the connection of a studio strobe the unit also has a Flash wake up function.
The transmitter can be mounted onto the hot-shoe of the camera and the hot-shoe on the transmitter features TTL pass through so the mounted flash can fully communicate with the camera, there is also a test button to trigger the receiver when setting up, the transmitter can also be connected via the PC port if available on camera.

Camera Mode
In this mode the transmitter would be hand held and the test button would be used to trigger the camera shutter, the unit has 2 button positions half press to auto focus and full press to take the photo, the receiver is connected via a cable to the remote shutter port on the camera, the camera can also be used as a wired remote by connecting the transmitter by cable to the camera.

Conclusions
I have been playing with the supplied kit now for a couple of weeks.
My initial impressions where that it is nicely packaged and the units look well made and pretty robust the kit arrived with various connectors/cables and batteries and unusual for kit of this type the manual was written in good plain English and was not the poor google translation I have been used to.

After my experience with my old wireless flash trigger that would fire OK 90% of the time the Lumox 520 worked a treat with no misfires and the trigger worked from distances far enough away from kit to get it nicked 🙂 through walls and from the other side of the house so should work fine in a studio and outdoors.

I had a problem using the camera shutter function as there was no N3 plug connection for my 40D but wireless worked fine with a EOS30 and 500N AF, as the kit supplied to me was the Canon version I asked about the missing connector and was informed that there are 2 Canon versions one with the jack plug and another with the 3pin connector.

I had no problem with the camera shutter triggered wireless but the curly connecting cable failed to operate the shutter when used in wired mode although I do think that is a cable issue as with a little fiddle with the cable the shutter worked.

Using the unit in flash mode I had no problems at all and the kit worked flawlessly, I had a play with a single off camera flash and a 550EX mounted on camera on top of the receiver and that worked fine, used in this way the fixed off camera flash can be metered and as it is fixed then will be OK for the session the camera mounted flashguns benefits from the TTL pass through as the flashes position relative to the subject changes all the time and if there was no TTL the flash output would need to be metered by hand to get the correct exposure as flash output depends on the flash distance to subject.

I would give the kit 8/10 because although it is well built and works great as a flash trigger the missing cables prevented me using it as a cabled remote although it worked great in wireless mode and preferable as less chance of pulling the camera over.

One thing I did when playing and dont know if it is useful but in flash mode I mounted my old wireless trigger onto the pass through hotshoe and was able to fire both sets of triggers at the same time………..pointless unless you have 2 bits of kit and the triggers wont all fire from the one transmitter.

The Kit is only available in the USA at the moment and sells for around $40 the manufacturers are currently looking for distributors in the UK.

Would I buy it YES its pretty versatile and a step up from my current wireless flash trigger.

Below is a couple of images taken with flash and only using the cameras metering someone better than I would get better results 🙂

the camera was in manual mode connected by wireless to an off camera flash to light the background and tweaked till I got correct exposure at f11 then cartman was added and the camera aperture altered by one stop so that the flash would blow out the background, the first image is just with the off camera flash and the second with hot-shoe mounted 550EX in TTL mode.

Single off camera flash for the background

With 2 flash guns one off camera and 550ex shoe mounted in TTL mode.

Features:
– 2.4 GHz. frequency
– 16 Channels
– 200 m range
– 1/250 sec. sync speed*
– Flash wake-up functions
– Hot shoe / PC Flash triggering
– Studio strobe triggering
– Wired and wireless shutter release functions
– Pass-through hot shoe on transmitter allows on camera flash to use TTL functions

Technical Specifications
Frequency: 2.4 GHz
Range: 200m
Channels: 16 channels
Batteries: 1x23A (Transmitter) 2 x AAA batteries (Receiver)
Max sync speed: 1/250 sec*
Output: Hot shoe, 2.5 mm ports
Input: 2.5mm PC input port (transmitter)
Attachment: 1/4 tripod lug, cold shoe (Receiver)
Top ports: TTL port on the top of transmitter
Transmitter Dimensions: 70(L) x 32(W) x 20(H)mm
Receiver Dimensions: 75(L) x 35(W) x 28(H)mm
Antenna: Built-in PCB antenna

Website product link http://www.fottga.com/_d271849062.htm