Okay Guys...Or Second-Guessing The Market

I'm not in the loop of CE management as far as what gets purchased. And I'm not in the loop of CE management about what gets sold, either. Frankly I'm grateful that they still let me in the front door and I get the occasional cup of coffee...

Which means I was delighted to see the presence of an official CE coffee machine at the new Murray/Queen St. shop. Note the We Love Photography mugs.

In my first visit to the new shop I noted carefully the choices that had been made regarding some lines of equipment. Of course you will always get the big players - the Nikon, Leica, Sony, Fujifilm, Canon, Olympus, Pentax, etc - but it is the choices of what to stock for the other bits that is interesting. I looked at what was there and tried to see into the minds of the management - why was something chosen for the shelf?

a. Tripods. You'll see from the quick shot that we have essentially three shelves of tripods and monopods. I see Gitzo, Manfrotto, and one Velbon. The Gitzos are the high-priced ones, the Manfrotto more economical and the Velbon the low end. They are ALL not big tripods - in fact three of them would qualify as traveller tripoids. There is a sprinkling of video gear there, including one video moonopod. Here's how I read it:

The shop caters to pros as well as amateurs - and some of the pros need big things like that video monopod. They can get that at Stirling Street but they might need it at a time when Stirling St. is closed - hence it is wise to keep one unit in the city. The Gitzo gear is expensive traveller or high-end customer...and some of these may work all hours on St. Georges Tce. and can't get out to Stirling St.

Manfrotto tripods are a standard of the industry as far as design so nearly everyone else from tourists to city workers can be accommodated with one model or the other. Manfrotto are a no-question sale.

And the little plastic one at the bottom? Well, you never can tell when a traveller's luggage will disappear and if their tripod goes with it they need a fast, cheap replacement here in Perth.  That could well be the emergency pack for photographers right there.

b. Bags. I see the in two divisions - style and utility. The various hanging leather and canvas ones in the first photograph are intended to look good as well as protect the cameras - in some circumstances the appearance of the camera case is more important that the gear it contains - people have been judged on externals more than you'd think.

The Lowepro bags in the second shot are the workhorses of transport - people can load a whole holiday's worth of equipment in them and haul it through the world with some hope of geting it home in one piece. I know - I've got a ratty old Lowepro Nova1 that did just that and it was precisely the right blue nylon choice for the job. It looked like exactly what it was but it rounded the world twice.

c. The Hahnel rack. When you want to control flashes or cameras remotely and you need to do it with radio signals rather than light pulses, Hahnel should be one of the first brands you look at. The designs are sturdy, use standard AA batteries, and do not depend on you having WiFi, apps, passwords, or strange computer commands. They are a simple as they can be and they work every time. Good choice for the trigger market.

Okay, so far I think the management has thought it all out well. You may agree, but then you may have also different needs. I didn't get to see all of the shelves - perhaps you should pop in there one day this coming week and see for yourself. I'm going back when they have a bag of coffee beans.

The new Murray St store is now open at 2/324 Murray St, Perth.
The Stirling St store remains open at 230 Stirling St, Perth.
For opening hours, see here

Captur Has A New Product

I always follow what the Hahnel company put out as accessories for digital cameras as they frequently hit the exact spot that other manufacturers miss. That, and the fact that they are a recognised brand that has a base outside of Asia for marketing. Don't get me wrong - I use lots of Asian-branded accessories and they do mostly fine - but I know that there are odd brands that have no real store backup like Hahnel. If they break the only option is a bin.

Well, Hahnel are different. They not only develop useful gear but they listen to feedback and improve the design as they go along. The Captur range of camera and flash controllers are a case in point.

I've not explored their options of time-lapse and motion, light, and sound detectors but I have used the Captur remote flash or camera trigger and can attest that it does the job brilliantly. No time delays and no balky behaviour from the transmitter or receiver.

I put it down to the fact  that they finally got smart and included a simple source of electricity for the two units - AA batteries. These and AAA make up the bulk of what can be bought readily on supermarket and servo shelves and any equipment that use them has a better chance of of being in operation. I curse the designers who decide on some twee little Bolivian-standard battery for their units and then expect you to write back to La Paz when your flash unit or accessory dies.

This set is for Fujifilm cameras and will either fire the camera or fire the flash, deluding on how you set it up. You can get extra receivers to allow a multiple-flash setup. Not TTL, mind. It is ideal for weddings or photo booths. Or you can hold a wedding in a photo booth...

As usual, you can order them online or you'll find them on the Hahnel rack at the shop.

Orange Is the New Batt

Sorry for the pun. Not repentant - just sorry it wasn't a better pun...

Not sorry to bring you news of a new battery on the racks - the Hahnel Extreme Li- Ion battery - the HLX - EL 15.

Not surprisingly, it is intended as a replacement for the Nikon EL-EN 15 battery, which is common for a number of current Nikon products. It is rated at 1700 mAh and 7.0 volts.

The package information says that it is intended for use in extreme conditions*. It apparently has a high energy density ratio and is capable of over 500 charge and discharge cycles.

The details state that each battery is injected with silicone giving them a very tough shock absorbing construction.

I've found other Hahnel accessories to be of good quality and I use their Captur remote flash trigger frequently.

* Note you still cannot use your DSLR as a hammer for horseshoes, despite what you might read on the internet.

Final note for readers of this weblog column: have a look at the little blue and white  symbol on the heading image. It indicates that the product has passed the Uncle Dick test; it is in stock and I could find it on the shelf. Henceforth only goods that actually exist in Perth and can be poked and prodded will get this symbol. No air-ware, beta samples, mock-ups, or artist's conceptions. There is far too much of that on rumour sites. I ain't in the business of passing rumours - I show either marvellous or horrible realities.

Your Christmas Present Was A Speed Light - Here's The Rest Of It

If you are new to photography we want to let you into a secret - there is always more. If you thought that one purchase would equip you for a lifetime of pleasure you are either going to have thin pleasure or a short lifetime. To keep achieving, you're going to need to add more stuff.

Don't feel bad. We've all had to buy more accessories for what we use and in most cases it has actually expanded our minds and our abilities. Sometimes the extras turn out to be so simple...

For the person who has just bought or got a speed light flash for the top of their camera - hopefully from us - we say " Go out and go mad.". Take as many flash shots in all sorts of lighting conditions and of all sorts of subjects. It is the only way to find out what an electronic flash can actually do. Sometimes it does not do quite what you thought it was going to do, but with the TTL controls on most cameras it will at least do something recognisable. Keep doing this until you can be sure what will happen.

Then - think how your pictures may differ from those of the professionals in photo books and a magazines. The differences are not generally in the cameras that take the picture - they are in the light that plays round the subjects. Here is where some accessories can put you closer to that pro look.

Hahnel - famous for their chargers and flash sets - have an accessory set for all speed lights.

The various bits fit on different maker's flashes by means of an elastic band around the heads. This has one part of a velcro pad - the accessories have the other part. You can literally stick the whole thing together.

Some of the accessories spread the light - like the collapsible soft box or the diffusion card.

Some concentrate it. Just like the honeycomb grids that go on the front of studio strobes this little fellow doesn't allow any light to ride out to the side.

Do you need to jazz it up with colour? These gells fit over the front of the tube and it is all Las Vegas after that.

You also get a mounting block that can help you use your speed light on a studio stand or tripod as an umbrella holder- a surprisingly sophisticated studio technique you can use anywhere.

Best of all is the price - the whole set goes for $ 79.

Don't limit yourselves - get a set and start experimenting.

The Electronic Block Head

 You're not going to get Leica SL all week - here's a column about something else entirely.

Today's cameras use a lot of batteries - particularly if the user:

1. Shoots lots of video.

2. Reviews every single image for five seconds.

3. Takes 5000 images when 5 would do.

Take the gentle scolding as you like, but if you are using a lot of Sony or Olympus battery power these days you are doing a lot of charging - and the little battery chargers that you get with the cameras can only deal with one circumstance at a time. Unless you are prepared to get up repeatedly and change batteries, all night, you need help. Here's Hahnel help.

The Pro Cube is a power block that can be configured to charge tow lithium ion batteries at one time. It is 12V DC in or connection to a USB portout. The blocks themselves are interchangeable to allow for the following batteries:

2 Sony NP FW 50
2 Olympus BNL-1
2 Olympus BLS-5
2 Sony NP BX-1
4 rechargeable AA
many mobile phones and smart tablet batteries inside their own casings - that's the USB connection

As you'll see from the open box, there is a pin connector that allows each module to get the proper voltage from the basic electronics inside. You access it with a small pin or paper clip and each rack clips in or out. The AA plate drops onto the top of the cube and sticks there with a couple of samarium magnets.

There's a small LCD screen with a diagram to let you monitor the charge state.

Well-built - metal casing and all, and comes with AC plug as well as a car cigar lighter connection.

Hats off to Hahnel for capitalising upon the need for battery charge - they save more people each year.

STOP SCREEN! The shop now has these Hahnel products that are suitable for Nikon batteries too! Different colour pack but same product. Ask the boys for a look at them.

Note For Fujifilm Users - Hahnel Captur Is the Go.

Those of us who have Rico Pfirstinger's book on the X-Pro1 and the X-E1 ( and by extension the X-E2 ) have read the section on remote control of the camera with confusion - he speaks about a device that can do everything but is never seen here in WA. Presumably somewhere in Europe...

That's all very well, but scientific enquiry this morning revealed that the new Captur equipment from Hahnel will do just as well and we have the stuff right here in the shop.

I hooked up the Canon-compatible version of the basic wireless flash/shutter command system and used the microphone port of the X-E2 as the socket for the cable. The Hahnels now operate on AA cells rather than buttons or AAA types so powering them is easy.

Yes, it works perfectly. Press the transmitter button and the camera focuses and fires properly. This also argues that the sophisticated accessory controllers that Hahnel also make for their Captur system would also work - that's delayed action, time lapse, motion capture, etc.

It's good to have a systemic approach to this sort of thing - watch Hahnel closely in the future.

Off Camera Flash And the Event Photographer

I have never quite decided what an event photographer is. Or what an event photographer does.

An infantry assault over open ground in the face of machine guns is an event - likewise a wedding is an event, similar to the infantry assault, but with the officers up at the front...and generally at a wedding the machine gun fields of fire overlap more...

So what does an event photographer need - besides nerve, a camera, and a hip flask? Well they either need a long lens to stay out of the way or a short lens and a flash to get in amongst it. Those of you given to fits of horror at the thought of flash may be excused - you are artists and we make allowance for you. The rest of you need to see what is actually going on.

Nearly every serious camera has some form of hot-shoe connection on it. This can be the place to put your flash if you want the light to blast straight forward. Good for police mug shots but a bit limiting for some other subjects. That hot-shoe connection is a useful place, however, to base a wireless control for your flash - and then you are as free as the air to place it anywhere that helps.

Hahnel, Promaster, Yongnuo, Pocket Wizard, and a dozen other small manufacturers make wireless flash triggers that do the job. The expensive versions have TTL connection between the flash and the camera while the economical models just send a "fire now" signal to the flash gun and you have to do all the power setting on the flash yourself.

This is not onerous on some flashes - you can lock Nikon, Fujifilm, or Canon flashes into "manual" mode and then use the button or dial control on the flash to go from 1/1 power down to 1/64 power. You get a quick feedback from the LCD screen and soon recognise how much power you need.

The greatest joy of this unleashed approach is that you can operate a light camera with one hand and then hold the flash in peculiar and particular positions to punch light into the scene. You can even abandon it to point in out of reach - as long as you can prop up the rig.
No-end of scenes benefit from fill flash - in some cases even to the extent that the fill becomes the dominant light.

If you free yourself from the top of the camera you can light anything!

New Captur For New Capture - Hahnel Forges On

Ooh, while I think about it - "FORGED" magazine has just been delivered to my home. I subscribed to it as soon as it started publication. Excellent WA car magazine. Buy it at the news stand and see if you don't agree...

Back to cameras.

Here is the new Hahnel equipment for remote control of cameras and flashes. We've been selling their equipment for years and it has proved to be a good economical way of doing off-camera flash and remote camera control - especially for people who own cameras that are not catered for by the native manufacturer.

Their Giga-T and other products have been used in many set - ups.

Now they have released the CAPTUR range of accessories - it is a redesign of the originals to provide sturdier bodies and larger battery supplies. They have sensibly opted for AA batteries for both transmitters and receivers. There is also a range of expansion  gear that allows you to add the following:

1. Motion and wildlife capture.
2. Time lapse capture.
3. High speed photography.
4. Five built-in sensors.
5. Infra-red sensor.

Many people do more with their cameras now for science and novelty and this would seem to be a good cheap way to trigger things.

Note that while you see a Canon outfit in one picture, you can also get sets for Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, and Sony. By natural extension,there will be a number of Pentax and Fujifilm cameras that can make use of the gear.

Thank You Mr. Hahnel - Now I Can Shoot Like The Rest Of Them

Users of the Sony range of following Sony digital cameras can feel happy. They can now use one of the new Hahnel Captur range of remote flash triggers/camera triggers to get off-camera flash shots.

Note that this new range of accessory releases now uses AA batteries for power - useful if you are already carrying spares for your flash gun.

There are two specialised cables included to accommodate the Sony sockets.

Cameras catered for:

A300
A77II
A58
A7s
A7II
HX400
RX100II
RX100III

Note for mirror-less users...your kit bag is getting bigger, isn't it? All these new bits...and it won't stop...

Letter To The Camera Designers - The Wireless Trigger

Dear Camera Designers,

Thank you for the new features on my camera. I appreciate the Automatic setting, the Intelligent Automatic setting, and the Disturbingly Prescient setting. Last night my camera got out of its bag, went down the street, and took a picture of the showers at the Nurse's Quarters all by itself. Tonight I am deadlocking the door.

Thank you also for the smile recognition feature, though I must admit that mine seems to have died - I turned it on at it to the last family picnic and the camera refused to fire.

The little pictogram in the special settings menu is my favourite - the one that has the cocktail glass. I look at it fondly every afternoon about 5:00. I feel you have come to understand me.

Now that we have these ideas realised, I would like to suggest a further improvement in your design - the provision of a small and effective wireless flash trigger in the accessory battery grips of your DSLR and mirrorless cameras.

Already one manufacturer has pursued this in red-and-white terms for one model of their DSLR. They have provided a wireless link to their high-end speed light - thus leapfrogging aftermarket units stuck onto the top of the hit shoe. I would like all of you to consider the next step - come to an industry agreement with one of the professional flash system manufacturers: Bow---s, Elin----m, Pro---o, or whoever - and put a transmitter for their STUDIO flash into a handgrip that bolts under the camera.

This is a good place - you can combine it with a spare battery if there is enough room, but if not you can at least link it to a shutter button and fire the studio strobes in synch - without having a big 'ol box and a rubber antenna waggling away on top of the pentaprism. Doesn't have to broadcast far in a studio and shouldn't take more power than a wifi connection.

Come to think of it...would a little firmware fiddling with the wifi do it? If there was a receiver module that you could plug into the studio strobe dedicated to your camera's wifi signal and just go with that? Wish I knew...but as camera designers and masters of electronics, I am sure you will consider it favourably.

Yours sincerely,

 Uncle Dick

The Deserted World - Ten Stops Of Solitude

We all remember that famous picture of the Parisian boulevard taken at the start of the photographic era - wide, clean, deserted, with only a disembodied leg propped up on a box on one sidewalk...eery...

It wasn't an 1840's  zombie apocalypse - it was the extremely slow speed of the first photographic plates that required such a long exposure that every moving object failed to imprint upon it. The buildings and pavement did not move and so eventually made their mark.

 The detached leg belonged to a man who was getting his boots shined on the street. He had the foot on the bootblack's box long enough for it to be the first record of a person on a street. I daresay he went to his grave all those years ago without ever knowing his fame.

Nowadays it is also fashionable to stretch exposures to the breaking point - though modern digital cameras and film emulsions can not go down to the low sensitivity of those first metal plates. We need extremely dark filters to allow the technique to work.

The Lee company make them - so do the Kenko and the B+W companies. 8, 9, and 10-stop neutral density filters that you screw or slide onto the front of your lens to dramatically reduce the light falling on the sensor. If you camera will keep the shutter open for as long as you wish - and many of them will - you can experiment with cleaning the people out of the world.

You can't focus through these filters, and neither can your AF mechanism. Focus with the manual focus setting on your lens before you attach the filter.

You can't hold your camera steady for 20 minutes - zombie apocalypse aside - so put it on a good tripod. I use a Cullmann Concept.

You can't keep your finger on the button for that long either, so use a remote release with a locking mechanism or the "T" setting if you camera has one. Cable remote releases are most reliable. Mr. Hahnel is your friend.

Now this long exposure technique will soften water, clean out skies, and make trees into fantasy cotton wool balls. Waterfalls become veils of mist. Consult any amateur photography magazine of the last two years to see these effects...

And when all else fails, pick your time and place carefully....and you don't need a filter. Just put the camera on a tripod, make the panorama shots, and then hold hands and try to contact the living...

* Maylands on Saturday morning. They hope the water will stay there rather than seep back into the land they built those big houses on...

Sun On A Stick - Lastolite, Hahnel, Fujifilm, Ford

Why do we buy those glossy photo books from Amherst press that purport to tell us how to take fabulous pictures? The ones entitled " Boudoir Macro Photography Made Me A Millionaire " or " How To Pose Prawns and Shrimp"...

Because they are colourful and about 6 mm thick and cost just under $ 50 and promise to teach us something that we need to know. The horrid realisation comes to us later as we round the last corner of the book and come into the index: we knew the stuff already, all the book had was some pretty pictures, and our $ 50 is gone.

Thus my own emotions upon finishing a book that promised to unveil the secrets of attaching a speedlight to an extendable pole and synching it to a hand-held camera. The secret I really wanted to know was how the author got the idea past the publisher. 

But all was not lost - it encouraged me to go out into the front yard last night with a Lastolight extendable pole, a coiled TTL cord with two terminal blocks, the Fujifilm EF42 flash and the Fujifilm X-Pro 1 camera. The subject was the daughter's old Ford hunched in the dark.

A note before starting - me flashing speedlights in the front yard after dark has ceased to surprise the neighbours and they take no alarm from the discharges. Should you wish to do the same you may have to alert your own neighbours or at least come over my house to experiment. Bring beer.

Coiled cords are not featherweight devices - long enough to reach out to a fair distance for an angled fill or main light means there is a fair mass swinging between the camera and the top of the pole. You sway and lurch and if you were trying to do it in a crowd you would whack someone with the thing for sure.

If your speedlight uses an external battery you can run the cord up the pole but the link will need to be cordless.

Some cameras achieve this easily with a slave mode for the flash and a command mode for an on-camera flash. The Fujifilm X-Pro 1 has no in-built flash so you need to think about this. Ideally one might use two of the new Nissin i40 flashes to command and obey but then ideally one might wait for the promised Fujifilm new flash.

A smarter idea for me will be to pop a Hahnel Combi TL transmitter on the top of the camera and have the receiver sit under the EF 42 out at the top of the pole. The Hahnel items are pretty reliable and very lightweight. As they are rated out to 100 metres, they should have no trouble with a 2 metre distance.

It means there will be no TTL but a few test shots should sort that out. And it means that the EF 42 can fire into the lovely little Lastolite soft box for good skin tones. It won't do a thing for the Ford, but.

Wireless Connections VS Connectionless Wires - Hahnel et al.

A general rule of military operations is to keep things as simple as possible - if there is less to go wrong less will go wrong. It will still go wrong, mind, but the area that you'll need to fix will be smaller.

For years I have suggested this to people who want to fire flash guns somewhere other than on the hot shoe of the camera. The choices have been:

1. PC cable from the camera to the flash gun. PC Socket or hit shoe adapter.
2. Infrared transmitter on the top of the camera and infrared receiver in the flash gun.
3. Infrared code from the on-camera flash and infrared receiver in the flash gun.
4. Radio transmitter on top of the camera and radio receiver into which the flash gun plugs.
5. Radio transmitter built into the camera and radio receiver built into the flash gun.

Old hands will recognise the proprietary system their camera operates on - some Nikon cameras  will work with No.3 and the Canon EOS 5D Mk III will do the No.5 with the appropriate flash gun. These people are catered for so they can go to the coffee shop now and wait.

The rest of us have to choose a system that will be simplest and most reliable for our circumstances:

1. If you are in a studio that has fixed lights and camera - and there are such things - and you can route a PC cord to all the lights, then do so. As long as you are not going to clothesline yourself with the wire you have a foolproof hard-wired connection.

2. If you are always moving about your studio in the half-dark and the lights are also being shifted, opt for an IR or radio trigger and make your life easier and safer.

3. If you are going to shoot outside with the flash gun at variable distances and positions choose a radio system. The IR might work but might be blinded and/or intermittent in bright sunshine.

4. If you are faced with the choice of using a system that gives a go/no go signal to the flash gun or one that has a radio frequency TTL conversation going on between the camera and the flash gun, consider whether TTL is going to be absolutely necessary.

The price you pay for it is extra complexity and increased battery usage - but sometimes the extra control that you can exercise from the camera position is worth it.

It will be larger and pricier than the go/no go wireless version.

Note: for any of the electrical systems take note of the battery requirements - opt for the ones that use commonly-available batteries. ALWAYS carry spare batteries - reliability of these systems is fine if there is enough voltage.

If you can do what you want to do without flash or with a folding reflector then you have eliminated one more complexity. Mind you, ask the photo assistant who is tasked with holding a 5' x 6' reflector at the beach when the sea breeze picks up what they think of your decision....

It Happens To Everybody Eventually - Hahnel

Death and taxes are becoming optional - particularly if you are connected with merchant banking or the ownership of resource mines...but there is one thing sure in life; you are going to lose the charger for your digital camera.

You may leave it behind at the hotel when you check out - that is where hotel concierges get their supplies - or you may leave it in the drawer at home. That is the same drawer that makes your car keys and glasses vanish. Wherever it was, it isn't now, and will never be again.

Solve the problem by getting a Hahnel Unipal universal charger. It has input from the mains, from a cigar lighter in the car, and from a USB port. It outputs to any number of batteries - there are two movable blades to supply the positive and negative to whatever battery you slide in there. You can even charge up the AA and AAA types of battery as well.

To monitor the progress of the charge, there is a tiny little LCD screen with a diagram of percentages - the charger will analyse how much is in the battery to begin with then report as it fills up.

We use them ourselves here in the shop to cope with the multitude of batteries of different sizes from all the cameras. For $ 69,95 you are saved.

Note: it will not recover your car keys, glasses, or the matching sock that you need. You're still in trouble...

Getting A Good Signal - Flash Triggers For Right Now

I'm proud to say that I was using a radio-link flash trigger in my studio 20 years ago. Prior to that I was using a black cable strung between the Elinchrom lights and the camera stand - I was using it to clothesline myself in the dark.

I never managed to pull over an entire light or camera stand with this but I did manage to wrench a PC socket loose from a DSLR. There was language...

The radio link I purchased to prevent this sort of thing happening is fairly big and crude. It takes two different sets of batteries and is large enough to obscure the shutter speed dial of my mirror-less camera when plugged onto the hot shoe. Last Sunday it served me notice that the time had come to think of a new one. The sequence of events was interesting - see if this sort of thing happens to you - you might be in the same boat as I.

Shooting away... after about 15 minutes, the shutter fired but the flash didn't. The open flash button on the radio sender lit up but nothing else happened. Then it would come good for a couple of shots.

Then one shot came along had a perfectly exposed top with a dark black bottom, and the following shot had even more dark further up the frame. Finally one frame was entirely black, even though the flash had fired...

At this point of time I had to wonder if the camera synch had packed up. I wound back the shutter speed to 1/4 second, fired, and got good exposure. Advancing up the shutter speeds toward the nominal top synch speed of 1/180 sec was fine until I got to 1/180 - the blackness crept back... to a different extent.

Out with the hot-shoe block and the dreaded old wire synch cord. Everything synched perfectly from 1 sec on up to 1/180 sec as per normal. The conclusion I drew is that the twenty-year old radio trigger set is developing intermittent flaws in both timing and contact. It is time to look at a Pocketwizard, Promaster, Hahnel, or Elinchrom radio trigger set. They work pretty well, and are a darn sight smaller than the current devices.

I don't think I could face the PC cord again. Not with my face...

Fill A Bag - Lots of Little Bits For Sony

Sometimes we forget that some manufacturers do it differently. Anyone who has ever tried to fire a Swedish military rifle will know what I mean...

In the camera business Sony make the vital component for many cameras by many different makers - the sensor. They incorporate this in their own cameras, too. They also have a number of their own ideas - like the lens mount, the electronic cable release socket and the flash hotshoe - that are unique. A lot of the standard accessories don't fit.

Fortunately the manufacturers of aftermarket bits have realised this and made some specials - here are a number of them.

From JJC, a flash hot shoe to PC socket block for the top of the Sony DSLRs. Now you can fire a studio flash.

From Kenko, a two-tube set of extension tubes for E mount. Gets insanely unusably close when you use two of them on an A6000 but if you use only one you can do good macro.

Hahnel contributes one of their reliable cable release sets - with a 2 mtr extension cable.

Promaster makes the humble body cap. if you have a humble body this is for you.

Sony user, no longer do you have to feel left out when photo shop browsing. You too can fill your gadget bag with equipment rather than sandwiches.

I Lost My Heart...

In San Francisco. Tony Bennett found it, but won't send it back. Bummer, dude...

I also lost my charger, download cable, and flash stand for my Canon 430 EX II, 600 RT. Nikon Sb700, and 910 flashes. That's a lotta losing, but I am careless when I go out to do strobist shooting.

Fortunately Promaster have come to the rescue - they have just sent us a supply of the multi-mount flash stands. These have thee shoe positions with locking holes for the standard flash hot-shoe and a 1/4" threaded hole in the underside for the light stand or tripod. it is a proper brass threaded socket too - good and tough.

Now the loss of the charger is also solvable with a Hahnel universal charger and the cable can be safely dispensed with now that I have a Hoodman RAW STEEL USB 3.0 card reader.

But it still leaves the problem of Tony Bennett...

Curse You Western Australia - Curse You For Your Fine Weather

Did goe to the parke yesterday and was greatley amused.

The Vauxhall Owners Club was having their annual " Show and Shine " display. The venue was a local riverside park and the area was coated with picnickers, little dogs, and aged British tin. It was also coated with the bane of the photographer - bright noontime sunshine.

Perth does not have the advantages that Melbourne has - if you are a photographer there and you find that the light conditions are unfavourable for your subject, you can go have a cheap cappuchino and come back in a half hour and it will have changed. We get neither the cheap coffee nor the convenient scrim of cloud. We have intense bright sun blasting down on us.

Witness the shadows on the Vauxhall cars - I've softened them up a little with photoshop Elements but they are still black as an ironmonger's heart. As the sun was overhead - it WILL do that at noontime, despite repeated requests - it makes for some pretty unflattering lighting. Had I included scantily-clad models with the cars it would have been worse - dark eye sockets and shadows under all the prominent features. Ick.

If I was using the Nikon D300 outfit with the the SB700 flash on-board or at the end of a coiled cord I could have directed light into the undersides of the cars and all would have been well. The Little Fuji X-10 I used has a small fill tube but it would never have done anything outside.  It did improve interior shots for one of the Vauxhall drophead coupés but that is close range stuff.

Answer in the future? And an answer that you might like to pursue for your own field photography...a Hahnel Combi-TF set. The radio signal from the transmitter on the Fuji would go to the receiver with one of the Nikon SB700's. Putting this onto a small Manfrotto studio stand would allow me to step away and have the fill come from wherever I wanted. It is not going to be a TTL connection, but a quick test for the power level should sort that out.

A little more gear to take with me, but a pretty good way to cope with Old Sol.

Wireless, Cordless, Or Radio? Olympus Owners Take Note.

If you are fussy about it you can call it wireless - if you are easier call it radio. The thing will be the same in any case - control of your Olympus camera at a distance, with no cord in between.

If you are using an E-P3 or E-P4 or the OM-D you might need to shoot from a concealed position or away from the camera while it is on a tripod. Both the Hahnel Giga T Pro and the Hahnel Combi T will do this - they quote a range of 100 metres on the packaging. Attach the receiver to the hot shoe, plug the control cable from it to the side of the camera, and press the go button.

Why two different controllers? The blue box contains the one to use if you want the additional facility of firing a flash gun at a distance. You reverse the connection - transmitter on the camera and receiver under the flash and away you go.

The yellow packaging has the clever timer and interval controller in the trigger - but it doesn't do the flash thing. Use this one if you are going to do star trail photos or speeded up pictures of flowers blooming.

If you are going to insist on using the Nikon, Canon, or Pentax systems you can also get these products. But this posting is just for Olympus users and we won't mention that, okay?

Wired or Weird or Wobbly

Now that the new legislation has gone through and photographers in Australia are legally able to take star trail pictures, waterfalls, and other long exposure subjects - with the appropriate license of course - more people will be heading out with their tripods and cameras.

The problem of triggering the thing off without shaking it will still exist, however. The day of the old cable release has largely died - only the Fuji and the Leica enthusiasts will need the old mechanical type - but some form of electrical release is still needed by everyone else.

You can do it with a simple switch - Hahnel make perfectly good wired releases, as do Nikon and Canon. The advantage of these is certainty of action and freedom from battery power. The downside is that some people tug on them or forget where they are in the dark...and pull the whole camera crashing to the ground in a pile of fragments. This is rarely a good thing.

Wireless remotes that run on IR impulses are sweet little things, about the size of cockroaches. You point them at the appropriate spot on an IR-equipped camera and press the button. You can't expect them to work at too great a distance, however, and you need to remember that you will lose them due to their small size. If you can't find it in the camera bag, look down the couch cushions...

Radio remotes are the go - Hahnel and Promaster make quite a range of these. They say they'll work out to 10o metres, but the transmitter is really tiny so maybe a little less range would be safe. In any case, you escape the wire trap, they work around corners and in bright sunlight, and they don't cost the earth. if you want to do timed exposures or interval work, there are even fancier versions with this sort of thing in-built.

Highly recommended for anyone working with long exposures.