So far we (and others before us) came up with four ways of transfering flash trigger from camera to remote flashes
- Wires connecting camera and flash
- IR pulses
- RF wireless
- ultra sound
- wires are tedious (think of wedding photographers)
- IR is patented, unreliable, easily shaded off by gobo/umbrella/light box/IR photo diode on flash pointing in wrong direction/photographer too far away
- wireless is complicated, patented, needs FCC approval, not all that reliable unless done well (see cactus vs. pocketwizards).
- ultra sound needs big transmitters and is not fast enough for communicating anything but flash triggers in the given time frame. Certainly no support for anything TTL like.
Polymer fibers are cheap, can be easily cut to size and attached close to the IR photo diode of the flash, the other end can be pointed anywhere or could go around walls if needed. Since the fiber just transports the flash light of the master flash, it would transparently support automatic flash exposure protocols like E-TTL, iTTL and whatever-TTL ... the camera pointing end of the fiber doesn't have to be attached to the master flash directly (unless we want 100 m range), it may suffice to have it point at the master from 1-2 m away.
I guess I'll order some and try it out next week ...