Tim I'm glad your HW works but the external design is flawed from the Li-Ion battery to that plastic tube thingy. Hell I've seen 2 of the internal boards die in housings, and they were brand new. Of the 8 HW converters in various guises I've seen, I've seen 4 die. It's a very small sample but that's a high number of failures for one person to witness. Hence my distrust of HW converters. And a few dealers I spoke to also mentioned the reliability issues they had with their HW converters. One told me it was a bad batch, but mine wasn't in that batch.
Don't get me wrong. I think TTL definitely has a place in photography, especially for those quick and dirty shots of behavior that would be missed from having to mess with strobes or settings etc. I even think it even works with WA. The HW solution has its issue. However, it is not the only one with TTL compliance. Seacam has built-in TTL in their strobes that isn't HW derived, if I remember correctly. The eTTL support is much better than HW, and includes rear/2nd curtain support. HW officially said to me they did not support that, although they had firmware that did earlier but phased it out due to issues with certain strobes.
I have nothing against Matthias or Chris or their converter. In fact I hope they work out a better solution for the external converters. I just want to let people know there are certain issues with the Li-Ion battery and reliability overall.
