In my look at the newly announced Phottix Odin ETTL flash trigger last week, towards the end I mentioned compatibility with the Phottix Strato. As pointed out in my update, the guys at Phottix send me a firmware update for it that would upgrade my earlier demo samples to the latest firmware which promised compatibility. Due to teaching a multimedia photography workshop over the weekend, I didn’t have a lot of free time for much testing but was able to quickly put it to the test. All I really needed to find out was whether or not I could trigger the Strato from the Odin. Sure enough, it was possible. Read on after the jump for the details.

My first step was to update the firmware. That was a simple as running a small utility and connecting the Odin TCU and each receiver in turn to a USB cable and letting the utility do its thing. It only took a couple of minutes for me to update the transmitter unit as well as three receivers. When you buy a Phottix Odin set you won’t need to do this as yours will be factory updated but if there are any future updates, I can let you know that it’s a very smooth process.

Due to the lack of spare time I had for the test, I decided to shoot a self portrait rather than arrange a model. I figured it could serve double duty as a new profile photo for Twiiter, Google+ et al as well as allowing me to test the remotes. So here I am wearing an I Shoot RAW shirt designed by Jared Polin of Fro Knows Photo.

Self Portrait

I set up a camera with a 70-200mm lens on a tripod in my kitchen, facing out the door towards the balcony and the trees behind. On the balcony itself, I placed a light stand with a 580EXII attached to an Phottix Odin Receiver set to ETTL. This was shot into a small softbox and was placed 45 degrees to my (as subjects) right. On the left also at 45 degrees I attached a 550EX with a Phottix Strato II Multi to a water pipe using a Justin Clamp. I placed a basic dome diffuser over the head and set the power to 1/8. Here’s the lighting setup.

Self Portrait Lighting Setup

It was a bright day and my background was metered at f8 when keeping within my cameras native sync speed which was a lot more depth of field than I wanted. As I was at ISO100, normally my only option would have been either let the background blow out or wait until the ambient light changed. Due to time constraints this second option wasn’t possible, and I didn’t want to have a background that was a stop or so brighter than the light hitting me. Which makes the Phottix Odin even more of a wonderful tool in that simply sticking it into high speed sync mode meant I could use a shutter speed of 1/400 which allowed me to shoot it at f4 and still keep things in balance, allowing just enough light from my strobes to brighten up the shaded balcony where I was standing. I hit the self-timer on the camera, got in placed and sure enough, both the speedlight being triggered by the Odin and the one being triggered by the Strato fired. Compatibility assured and a successful self portrait shot.

The Phottix Odin is available at the Phottix Store now and should be in retail stores in the coming days if not already.