Cactus LV5 Review

Competition

This section does not attempt to be exhaustive. Before I tested the LV5 beta, I was completely oblivious to the idea of laser triggers used in photography and since then only conducted a few, limited searches for comparable products.

Trigger Trap

The most prominent competitor has to be the crowd-funded TriggerTrap. It is more versatile than the LV5 because it also supports (ambient) light and sound triggering on top of laser triggering. It furthermore can act as a timer for timelapse photography.

In comparison to the LV5:

Pros

• + more trigger options.
• + LCD display.
• + easier to configure (I reckon, I have not tried one.)
• + based on the open-source Arduino architecture, i.e., user-programmable.

Cons

• - does not include a wireless transmitter.
• - does not come with a laser.
• - making slow cameras trigger, requires changes to the source code.
• - no tripod mount.
• - no laser alignment support.
• - more expensive (at US $199 the TriggerTrap is more than twice as expensive).

I am not claiming that the above comparison is exhaustive or accurate (as the TriggerTrap project is evolving all the time). It seems clear, however, that if you are happy with laser triggering only and want a cheap solution that works out of the box that the LV5 would be the more obvious choice.

Other

There are DIY solutions for those with the respective skills.

I furthermore found a HSF-RT trigger for US $79.90 that even supports a “Delay” configuration (but apparently no “Freeze” configuration, see the “Sneak Preview” section). However, I did not find a review for this device and know too little about it to make a proper comparison.