Vivitar 285HV and Wein Digital Peanut Arrived

I received several shipments on Friday and they included the Vivitar 285HV flash and Wein Digital Peanut microslave. The flash is a very interesting throw-back to manual days. It is a fantastic deal for $100 or less. It will be part of my lighting kit and I am planning on ordering another one or two soon.

The Vivitar 285HV flash seems to be very versatile while it is very simple. It only has manual settings for full power, 1/2 power, 1/4 power, and 1/16 power. As well, it also has four automatic modes which I will not be using. There is no TTL support of any kind in this flash which is just fine by me. I am going to use this flash as an off-camera strobe for lighting scenes. I also ordered some PocketWizard Plus II units to control the Vivitar 285HV. You can order the Vivitar 285HV, PocketWizard to Vivitar cable, and PocketWizard Plus II units in the sidebar.

The Wein Digital Peanut microslave worked great initially at the office but when I brought it home, it stopped working. I am going to test it further but I am not very impressed. I was hoping they might work well for some situations but it is obvious that PocketWizards are the way to go.