The art pianos that graced sidewalks, parks, and landmarks around Austin have been taken away. The joy of listening to impromptu piano music in public spaces lives on only in the memories of the thousands of Austinites that enjoyed the street pianos throughout April 2011. But we’ll always be able to remember them in pictures!

I had the pleasure of listening to the mastermind of the Austin street pianos, Johnny Walker (yes that’s his real name), speak about his art project at Pecha Kucha Austin. He said the goal of the project was to have Austinites appreciate their public spaces more and to facilitate interaction among strangers. Well, sir, mission accomplished and Thank You!

Speaking of Pecha Kucha, I had the pleasure of presenting at the 2nd Austin Pecha Kucha – my 20 slides can be found here.

Before you enjoy the pictures from “Play Me, I’m Yours” – a couple of links. First, for those that didn’t know, I posted an earlier set of Austin Street Art piano photos. Also, I enjoyed this photo set of pretty people and pretty pianos by another Austin photographer, Jeremiah Newton.

Enjoy the photos and I hope you enjoyed the pianos as much as I did.

The Long Center piano at Night (features ship themed artwork)

Long Center piano with the halo arch around the building

A somewhat hidden Pfluger Bridge garden piano

People in Austin still like to give George “W” Bush a hard time in public art form.

This piano received an eyeball makeover since the last set of photos I took of it.

Different groups of people interact with the Lamar Pedestrian Bridge piano throughout the day

Keyboard wisdom – If you didn’t know your age, how old would you be?

Skull art and a broken hammer on the 1st street pedestrian bridge piano

Kiss bench at the W Hotel in Austin, Texas

Bright Pink piano in Woolridge Park in Austin, Texas

Duncan Park BMX Art Piano

I have a feeling these stripped keys has something to do with BMX bikes

Blue Cranes – apparently some band here in Austin

Johnny Walker put this piano by the jail and the foreclosure office to bring a little joy to the people that need it the most.

If you’ve been around downtown Austin lately, you have probably noticed pianos on the street in some of Austin’s most popular tourist spots. This public art display is part of the “Play Me, I’m Yours” exhibition, sponsored by the Art Alliance Austin.

These pianos invite passers by to take some time out of their day to play some music to hopefully bring a little joy into the lives of others. The street pianos are on a worldwide tour, and their time in Austin won’t be for long. The pianos are being packed up for their next destination on May 1st, 2011. To read more about the Art Pianos, check out a post about them on the Austin Photo Book blog.

Update 5-6-2011 – For Part 2 of the Austin Piano series, check out the post entitled Goodbye Austin Street Pianos.

Pastel Art Piano at the W Hotel in Downtown Austin

Another photo of the W Hotel Art Piano in Austin, Texas

Orange City Hall Street Piano Art at Austin City Hall

Shadow, Light, and an orange art piano under the Austin City Hall canopy

I Love You Piano at Lou Neff Point in Austin, Texas – this reminds me of the I Love You So Much graffiti just a mile away from this spot

Austin StreetArt Piano on top of Doug Sahm Hill. This one has Godzilla art on the bottom near the foot pedals

The same piano on Doug Sahm Hill – Love!

Play Me I’m Yours – Austin Art Piano under the Auditorium Shores Pavilion

Mimi the Austin Pets Alive Dog at Lou Neff Point

Austin Cupcake StreetArt on the piano at Lou Neff Point

Piano Man on the Pfluger / Lamar Pedestrian Bridge on Town Lake – Austin, TX

I Heart Music Piano – Austin, Texas

When you thought of off camera flash \ strobe triggers, there used to really only be one game in town, namely the Pocket Wizard Plus II triggers \ transceivers which are the gold standard of non TTL flash triggers.

Starting a few years back though, a lot of other companies started getting in the game. There were the Skyports, CyberSyncs, Radio Poppers, etc. They operated on the transmitter – receiver model where you would typically buy one transmitter and a bunch of recievers to fire all of your external flashes.

A few months ago, when the Chinese company Aputure asked me if I wanted to beta test their new Trigmaster Plus system, which is very similar to the Pocket Wizard Plus II transceivers in that each unit can serve as either a transmitter or a receiver, I thought it would be interesting to see how the Chinese triggers compared to the Pocket Wizards.

I also found their system to be interesting because each unit, like the Pocket Wizards can do a few things like trip the camera shutter, trigger the strobes, or serve as a radio receiver. Unlike the Pocket Wizards though, these units are about 1/3rd the price (I saw some units on Ebay for $55 with free shipping) and they also come with all the cables you could want for free (Pocket Wizard charges a lot for cables). That makes these units at least 3 times cheaper than the Pocket Wizard IIs with the same functionality enabled by default (you have to buy the extra cables for the PW).

The cables that come with the Trigmaster Plus include:

The other big difference is the fact that you can mount your flashes directly on top of the transceivers on the on-board hotshoe. This eliminates the need to use a sync cord from the transceiver to the flash, although you can still do that if you want to or trigger a second flash from one transceiver via a PC-sync cord as shown in the picture below:

The other cool thing about having transceivers that come with the shutter release cable for free, is that if you have 3 transceivers like me, you have 2 identical shutter release remotes, which is awesome for photo booth fun. I threw a party a month ago and left 2 remotes in the booth, allowing whoever to set of the camera, whenever. The result was a lot of really funny pics.

How well do they work? When you have the flashes mounted directly on the transceivers they work very reliably b/c no cables are involved (that could go loose or have a poor connection). There are a lot of switches and ports on the transceivers! It takes a while to get used to setting them to perform each task, but after reading through the short manual a couple times you will probably get the hang of it.

One thing that confused me a bit was the fact that the big button on the transceiver is only for shutter release, it’s not a test button. You need to mount the transceiver on the camera to trigger any flashes – you can’t trigger them by simply pressing the button.

Cables, for the most part are of high quality, except for the PC sync cord, which is of the standard variety you can buy on eBay. I’ve found that pc sync cords are the weak point in any wireless flash system, as the connections tend to go bad rather quickly. I’ve had many sync cables exactly like the ones that come with the Trigmaster go bad on the Paul C Buff CyberSync system.

You probably won’t be using the PC sync cable that much though, as the transceivers are designed to connect to the camera and flash via a hotshoe mount. This is an improvement over the Pocket Wizards, which again don’t have the flash to hotshoe mount option. With the Trigmaster Plus, you will only have to use the PC cables if you plan on connecting a transceiver to a flash via PC-sync cord or if you want to use a flash on camera at the same time.

The other two cables have a coiled cord much like the old school telephone cord and they are of great quality. I’m very happy with those and did not have any trouble with them when testing them. I have a feeling that the ability for the cord to stretch will prevent breakage over the long term.

A few final notes – The transceivers can operate on 6 channels and changing a channel is as easy as pressing a button. Sometimes changing the channel is a bit too easy though and you might bump the button by accident. Also, you can’t really see it in my pictures, but the transceivers have a standard tripod screw mount on the bottom so they can easily attach to a lightstand or tripod – this might take some getting used to type mount if you are used to attaching your flashes to a cold shoe mount. The Trigmaster Plus system takes standard AAA batteries, which is good because you can always find replacements at any convenience store or supermarket.

Overall, so far, so good – there are some minor complaints but at this price you can’t expect everything to be perfect. I haven’t played with these triggers enough or taken them to enough extremes to give a final verdict on range or reliability, but I will probably try them out on an upcoming photo shoot soon.

UPDATE 04/12/2011
I did some extreme distance testing in the open lot behind my condo and I was able to get Trigmaster Plus units to trigger a flash reliably up to 300ft, or the same as the 100m advertised by Aputure. By reliably I mean 3 successful triggers back to back while in burst mode on my Canon 5dmkII

In terms of distance, my estimate is based on Google maps. As you can tell from the pictures below, you probably won’t ever have to trigger from that far away. To test, I placed my flash at the fence on the edge of my condo, and walked out to the end of a field, triggering along the way. My maximum distance was from the end of the fence of my condo out to underneath a tree, far away.

In my test I used both the Paul C Buff Cybersyncs and the Aputure Trigmaster Plus units, and they were both able to trigger out to 100m. I did notice that when I got the transmitter / transceiver units of the different flash triggering systems too close to each other, there was some radio interference leading to reliability problems, so those carrying around multiple sets of triggers should be aware of this.

One interesting thing to note is that my slave flashes are Nikon SB-26 units and I am using the Aputure Trigmaste Plus units for Canon. I have also gotten the Trigmaster Plus transceivers to trigger an older Sigma for Canon flash that I have as well.

Has anyone else used the Trigmaster Plus? What do you think? Let me know in the comments!