The Fujifilm Flash Comes Of Age

If you are opposed to the use of electronic flash in any form for your photography - for artistic, technical, or cultural reasons, this will be a thin week.

If you are dedicated to a camera system other than Fujifilm, you might also wonder whether you are going to get much on your plate. Have faith - there are a number of good lessons here for you as well that you can apply to the equipment of your choice. The close approximation of some flash systems will let you benefit.

We showed the externals of the Fujifilm EF-X500 flash on the 6th of January this year - the column got a large number of readers. I've added a couple of the images to help illustrate this series but this week is dedicated to what the thing actually does - and did - in my studio.

A quick basic recap for those who don't want to plough through the Jan 6 post: the flash is a classic TTL hot-shoe electonic flash with more power than the previous Fujifilm offerings. It contains provision for commander and slave operation, manual working, and multiple-flash ( high speed ) applications. It has a video light built into it. It is dedicated to the Fujifilm X-series of cameras. And up until this week I had only ever fired it once in the X-system.

Okay. First test was to open the battery compartment and put in four AA cells. Don't laugh - some manufacturers make the battery door so thin and cheap that you hesitate to get your nail in there to prise it open. No such problem with Fujifilm, and they have had the good sense to make the stacking order in the compartment simple - batteries down in the front two wells - batteries up in the back. It means you can change the blessed things in the dark without having to see some little diagram. As well, the design of the casing means the whole flash will lay on it's left side on a flat surface to do this - no juggling act.

Clip it onto the X-camera.? Now we have a metal shoe to do it with and a lever lock for the front pin. Much better than the plastic shoe and wheel of the EF-42.

Can you hold the flash from the front as you use it without impeding the function? Yes, but be aware that there is an LED panel at the top and the communication port for the wireless control down the bottom.

Is the tilt a locking mechanism? Yes. The rubber button pressed in lets it go freely. It locks into horizontal and vertical. The swivel has a firm detent.

Is this a power port? Yes, it is, and apparently they are going to produce an external battery pack to aid the flash. Wedding and event shooters may rejoice. Until it arrives, we are going to use AA lithium cells.

Setup. Well you can specify a great many things that suggest alternative uses for the flash. It will power off in one hour if you want, or you can power off in 8 hours. I think this accommodates the people who are going to be shooting time-lapse sequences. It will sit there as a remote flash for 10 minutes before giving up or you can ask it to stay alert for 60 minutes. It is all a matter of using up battery power. Try asking ME to stay alert for 60 minutes at a wedding...

The actual menus that apportion the flashes when you are in TTL mode can be sent out to 3 groups - normally this is a daunting set of commands to order up from an LCD screen. In this case Fujifilm have made it " almost " intuitive . I think they have benefited by waiting and watching other Japanese makers invent the language of menus. It only foxed me once with a strange use of English.

The weight of the flash is about 120 grammes more than the previous EF-42. As a trade-off, you get a much improved feel of build quality.

The front bezel around the flash tube is held on with two metal detents. Takes a bit of a struggle to get it off, but once done, you can slip on a box diffuser. It does as much as these designs ever do, and if you slip it forward from the detents, you can get a useful spread of light. Still not as broad as a Mag Mod, so you may still want to add this to the setup.

 Tomorrow - first studio shoot. Have I bought the right thing?*

* Yup. I sometimes spend my own money on the things I review. Once you find a good thing - stick to it.

The Little Black Box In The Corner - Canon CS100

Canon users please draw nigh and give attention. We have a good thing for you.

This blog post looked to be difficult for me - I do not use the Canon system cameras and I am somewhat clumsy with modern file storage and transfers. I trembled at the amount of complexity that I feared would be involved.

Then I read the instructions and looked at a YouTube advertisement. It turns out that what looked like an elephant in the room was the little one from Walt Disney and I need not have feared looking like a Dumbo. This Canon hub is as easy as to use.

Think of it as a 1 Terabyte storage device that you can put files into from Canon cameras or various smartphone devices. It connects to your television to let you store videos or see still files. You fill it up and away you go.

Ideally, the connection to your phones and Canon cameras is wirelessly via WiFi or NFC. They realise that some people have older gear so there are ports in for USB connections and you can feed in standard CF and SD card signals.

You can pump out the electricity to your television, computer, monitor, smart phone, or laptop. You c also command PictBridge printers to make inkjet prints wirelessly. Your production desk will no longer resemble a telephone switchboard in 1932.

As an old darkroom printer I appreciate more and more the streamlined business of digital work, and this sort of easy centralisation can only be good. Thank you, Canon.

Pass Right On Through With The New Pocket Wizard IV

Transmitters and receivers for sending signals between cameras and flash units have been legion in the last few years, but few of them have combined all of the features that people wanted - now PocketWizard have released their new Plus IV and it looks as though it redresses the situation.

What it provides:

Radio-frequency command between your camera and your flash out to a long distance.

TTL through-put to a flash mounted on the camera - in other words you can send out a manual signal to outboard units while your TTL flash on camera does the usual measuring and quenching thing.

                                               

   

Control  for 4 separate flash groups.

Control for 32 channels.

Note that you get an orange back-lit panel when you press the Mode button. When you are using flash in dimly-lit venues any on-board illumination is a blessing. Rocket Wizard have decades of experience in the field.

Auto sensing for pairing the transmitter and receiver.

Two-stage remote camera triggering. Just like the shutter button on your camera - half and full-press and then turns off to save battery power.

Receiver will accept and fire up to 14.5 FPS.

Runs on 2 x standard AA batteries or you can put external power in through a Mini-USB port on the PocketWizard IV.

And best of all - they have lain the body of the thing down forward instead of making it stick up like their old units. Much easier to move about with the camera if it lies along the top of the lens. Note that they have been wise enough to make the battery door a hinged fair rather than a slide-off cover that would be lost and trampled on.

 

1/4" screw socket on the bottom and TTL hot shoe on the top. A stand-alone independent outfit.

Find it online or in-store!

The Ins And Outs Of The New Nikon Flash

The new Nikon SB-5000 flash has just been demonstrated at Camera Electronic and there is an example of it in the big yellow cabinet. Here are a few of the external clues to the internal values:

a. There is a new connectivity for standard flash synch - the pc socket at the side of the camera teams that studio users and people with older cameras will be able to trigger this flash in the Automatic and Manual modes.

The advent of the hot shoe was a wonderful advance for on-camera shooters but in some instances means an extra equipment link for the off-camera people. Of course now that the new radio trigger flashes are so efficient, people forget that there are long cables that will do the firing as well. These are particularly valuable in areas that may have high shielding or radio interference. You can't beat good old hard wire.

b. You need more power? You need power for a longer period? You've got a battery pack that clips on your belt? Welcome the new provision for power input on the front of the SB-5000 flash. A dedicated one-way plug is available for this.

c. Would you like to use it as a wireless R/C unit? Yes, it does that, with suitable cameras.  And you don't need a degree in electronics or graphic design to access the controls. that big LCD screen presents all the options as you select them.

d. You need a medium size unit? This is medium size. look at the body shape compared to the SB-700. Just about the same bulk. Look at the flash tubes - here zoomed forward to the widest setting.

We'll be bringing more news of this professional-quality unit for Nikon shooters as the weeks go on - and include some examples of jobs shot with it in the studio and the field. Be sure to come down to Camera Electronic with your Nikon camera to test it out ( that's always a sure-fire chance to see what you get before you get it...) or order one on-line from our online store.

A Fleet With Two Flagships

For some time the photographers who use Nikon cameras have been wondering when the smaller of the DSLR fomats - the DX, APS-C, or 18mm x 24mm sensor, call it what you will - would have a new flagship camera body added to the lineup. They fondly remember the line of development of the D100, D200, D300 and D300s and have been patiently waiting for the next in the series. The wait is over.

Last night an expert photographer and our state representative for Nikon Australia presented a show at Camera Electronic focused around the new Nikon D500 camera. Michael Phillips was able to tell us a great deal of the technical detail of the device while Kingsley Klau let us see what it is capable of on a photo-shooting road trip down south.

The camera is definitely the child of the Nikon D300-D800-D810 styling stable. The shape is unmistakeable if occasionally a detail or line changes slightly. But remember this is a DX camera. Long-time enthusiasts will note that the pop-up flash that has been seen in other models has been left off this camera in favour of more weather sealing. Note also that while the camera bears the note of DX, it can take all of the long FX lenses as well - and therein will lie one of its special charms or selling points.

The really big news is invisible - the performance of the sensor and processor and focusing mechanism is so similar to the bigger flagship - the D5 - that you might think that you are using it with a smaller capture area. The ISO performance is up to the 51200 point and it captures 20.9 megapixels. It also captures 4K video and 10 frames per second. A sports camera indeed.
Kingsley put it through its paces utilising a fast car on a deserted road and showed the extraordinary speed and accuracy of focus on the vehicle. He was even able to emulate this with another 4WD at the first glimmer of dawn through mud puddles.

The people who will be looking at this camera seriously - there were over 35 of them on the night - will be interested in that high-speed capture and the precise line of focus that the camera can take with telephoto lenses. It would be an ideal wildlife or birder's camera. I can also imagine the dedicated night-time shooters of stars and beaches applauding the fact that Nikon have incorporated illuminated control buttons in this body. Folks, when you need to see and can't see it spoils some of the best opportunities in outdoor photography. The theatre shooter will also applaud, during the louder passages of the overture.

Have you noticed that you get a tilting LCD screen at last on a century-series Nikon DSLR? Hooray, it makes quite a difference for studio and field shooting and is even better in being a touch control screen as well.

Finally, I can sort of explain what Michael told us regarding social media sharing with the new feature side the camera - SnapBridge - but only sort of. If you think of it as a wireless sharing feature that will shuffle your pictures over very rapidly to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and whatever other social connection you use, you will not be far wrong. But the delightful thing is that you only have to set up the commands to do this once and the camera will remember that connection and re-establish it ever after.

Other wireless sharing connections require you to start them up, pair them up, press a dozen buttons and enter numerous passwords every blessed time. You eventually get sick of it or forget the special sequences needed. SnapBridge does it for you easily and means that the extremely high quality pictures that issue from this camera will start to measurably improve your images and image in the social scene. Think of it as WiFi for grownups.

Note as well that at sometime in the future the sequence of firmware updates that we all should attempt will be come far easier as the Nikon SnapBridge system allows the Nikon company to automatically update the appropriate equipment as improvements come along.

In short, Nikon is now sailing the DX seas with a very high quality new flagship.

The Cleverer Speed Light Kit - Nissin's Air + Di700A - Tempted?

Progress for the Strobist - power for the Pro.

Nissin has just supplied a very good idea that will please Sony, Nikon, and Canon shooters:

Their new Di700A flash is packaged with a dedicated Air 1 wireless transmitter that does TTL as well as full manual control.

For dedicated speed-light users the two turning points are the TTL and the radio transmission mode. These make it possible to have a truly portable studio flash system that is not in a studio...for times when you are not in a studio.

The Nissin Di700A may seem to be fairly similar to medium-power flashes from other manufacturers - GN of 48-54 at ISO 100 for various focal lengths. The flash zooms for 24mm to 200mm coverage. It has full auto, TTL and manual setting.

The Air 1 command panel on the transmitter shows three groups that can be controlled and the ability to fire off -2 to +2 stops in any of them. If you employ three flashes as a main, fill, and hair light you can change them from the camera position very easily. And the fact that the signal is being borne by radio waves instead of IR pulses means you are going to be able to control more surely in bright conditions or in areas around corners.

The body of the flash has two other important little features hidden under rubber flaps at either side - on one side a PC socket for wired control in difficult transmission areas, and on the other an input socket for external power. This is a flash that can fasten upon a light stand and take power from an external adapter just like a studio monoblock. Tempting?

The really tempting thing about this is the price - the box in front of me says $399 for the Nikon version with the flash and the transmitter in the packet. Click here to purchase one from our online shop.
I daresay you can also get the flash on its own, letting you build further on that strobist studio set.

Tempting? Nissin make some great flashes for DSLR and for the mirror-less systems as well. If this air idea goes ahead we might see the transmitters for those as well.

Well....I'm tempted

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.

The Humble Slave - Promaster

With all of today's TTL, Wireless, Air, and Radio control of the flashes, we often overlook simpler things - items that have been developed from older technology.

Suppose you wanted to use several old flash guns for a portrait setup and they were of different makes - perhaps they have no TTL connectors on the bottom at all. Maybe they don't even have hot shoe connections - just a PC synch cord coming out of one side of he flash.

Also suppose you have very little money in your pocket. How are you to synchronise the extra flashes to your camera? With one of these:

This is a simple little electronic cell flash synch. It completes the basic flash circuit when the sensitive cell on the front of it detects a pulse of light. It has a 1/4" threaded socket on the bottom, a hot shoe on the top, and a PC connector on the side - you can cater for all the old flashes you want to.

Fire a basic master flash from your camera - it can be the in-built one or something that you sling on the top. You needn't even let the light from this hit your subject - you can shield it with a piece of alfoil or cardboard. As long as the light of that basic flash reaches the electric cell on the humble slave, it will fire off whatever is connected to it.

Cost? $ 18.95.

The Magic Healing Spell - And The Radio Trigger

The magic healing spell for photographers is: " If I put it away carefully, it will be better in the morning...". You say this spell whenever a piece of equipment falters. Then you tuck it away until you really really need it, and when you take it out again...it fails completely.

Whereupon you say other magic words. Short words, but emphatic...

Yesterday in the studio. The radio trigger. The old dodgy radio trigger. The old dodgy, it will be good for one more time, radio trigger. The I need it badly to work this one more time because I forgot my new radio trigger back home, radio trigger...

You've guessed where this is going.

Thank Heaven and Mr. Elinchrom that each of their studio monoblocks has an in-built IR trigger cell - and that you can put a Fujifilm EF 42 flash on the Fujifilm X-Pro1 and swivel it around to point at the back wall and turn it down to 1/32 power. Not enough to foul up the lighting scheme but powerful enough to trigger the monoblocks.

I am ashamed that I forgot the new radio trigger - also from Elinchrom - but I am proud that I made the lash-up work. I hope I have learned my lesson.

Røde Talk - You Listen - People Watch

Making a video? Making it on your DSLR, mirrorless, or cine camera? Thinking to have someone out there in the middle distance do some talking? Would you like to hear what they have to say?

So would your audience. Trying to get to get clear speech recorded from the camera position with an in-built microphone can be impossible. Even using a shotgun microphone with all the housings, mufflers, and booms can still result in bad sound - the wind and background noises can conquer all your efforts. You either have to have the actors hold up signs with their lines printed on them or hire Marcel Marceau...

The answer is a small microphone attached to the actor and some way to transmit this back to the camera wirelessly. Røde have now introduced their equipment for this - the Rødelink Filmaker wireless microphone/transmitter/receiver set.

The pack shot is included above to show you the basic boxes for the set - there is an omnidirectional lavalier microphone and a number of connecting cables in the carton as well, but it seemed a pity to unpack it when it was such a cute parcel.

The range of the transmitter/receiver combo is 100 metres and it throws the signal with a series II 2.4 GHz digital transmission. The signal is encrypted as it goes so only you share the info with yourself. If you need to adjust the gain control there is a three-level system.

At last - a neat, clean, Australian sound linkage. No mimes need apply...

I Seen It

Yep. Thar it was. I seen it. Right thar in Plaza Arcade in 1968.

A woman brought a Kodak Instamatic camera in - just a basic sort of model - with the Kodak 126 cartridge inserted in the back the wrong way round - the left side on the right side. Those of you who have seen a 126-Instamatic cartridge know that this is impossible, but that did not stop her.

Then there was the Canon 318 movie camera that was dropped of the side of a boat into salt water. The person who brought it into the shop a fortnight later was philosophical about it and bought a new one and told us to throw the old one away.

For some reason it got forgotten in a back cupboard for about a year. When we hauled it out the plastic parts of it were untouched, but the aluminium parts of the casing and internal works had literally disappeared into dust. A memento mori if ever there was one...

Today a client brought a camera in with a wireless transmitter attached to the hot shoe on top. But the wrong way around - meaning that the shooter's eye could not be brought to the eyepiece. Unfortunately it was also jammed tight there...an awkward situation.

For my own part I have managed do the one thing with a classic film camera that would render the negatives produced by it unusable - I got in the habit of flicking the lens assembly of a Plaubel Makina 67 in and out rapidly to shoot. Which sucked the film forward from the film plane and rendered one side of all the negatives out of focus. And the subjects were unrepeatable...so that I have a record only of foolish failure.

And then there was the time that I made an entire slide show for a social group comprising 18 years of their negatives and files scanned into the computer for showing at their big celebration. I pressed one button on the computer and wiped 18 years out - before the show...

I must look out my copy of Erasmus' " Praise Of Folly " to see if I can pick up a few technical hints.

Uncle Dick

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.

Heath Robinson vs Rube Goldberg

Or how I learned to love photography.

Old photographers will remember the sorts of things that we did in the darkroom to produce the special effects. Weeks spent gathering equipment, chemicals, containers, tanks, agitators...months spent sealing the space against the ingress of light - while letting the most aggressive of the poisonous fumes escape...hours spent trying to get the negatives to register accurately in the gate of the enlarger or he paper to register accurately on the easel. Then the clean up afterwards. Scrubbing the stains out of the bathtub before the wife discovers them...

Now we just download a plug-in app and click the mouse. All over in a second and no scrubbing. All the fun has evaporated.

Well, no, it hasn't. Not by a long way. We now have the wireless link and the WiFi and the iPhone  and the hot spot and all the other horrors of modern electronics. In the interests of saving the lives of copper miners by reducing the amount of cables that are needed, I have prepared a plan for the best selfie ever.

1. PocketWizard transmitter in pocket firing a...

2. Camera with a transmitter firing...

3. Several speedlights wirelessly, in full TTL, with frosting and sprinkles, while the camera is...

4. Recording the image on the WiFi card that sends the image off to the computer that...

5. Sends the image automatically to Facebook, Twitter, and Google who then pass it on to...

6. ASIO, NSA, the FBI, the KGB, Mossad, M.I.5, and Julian Assange while simultaneously...

7. Sending it to the Epson 3000 printer that whirs away while...

8. It goes to the cloud where it then rains down on your iPad, and iPhone.

All this within a fraction of a second. No smells, no stains. The bathtub is pristine. Your bank account has a hole in it but that is the price of progress. Cheer up - with on-line banking you don't even have to go to the local branch. You can stay at home and press the shutter release a second time.

The first shot will cost you $ 8900 but the second brings it down to $ 4450... a snip!

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?