Tag: optical trigger

2009-05-27

Changed My Mind About Budget Radio Flash Triggers

It is called the Cactus. Why so, I have no idea. They are about $40 for a pair, and once you have them, you attach a radio transmitter to your flash hot shoe and the receiving to your flash. Place the flash anywhere you want and you have wireless radio flash triggering.

Of course, you could just buy the unnamed, expensive radio triggers, and they really are worth the $400 or so if you need super reliability and other kinda groovy features, but those kind of folks will not read this anyway! I had given up on my pair of Cactus triggers. I had debated giving them away and just sticking with optical triggering (using the light of a flash to set off another flash wirelessly), but everything changed the past couple days. Here is what happened.

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2009-04-01

What Photo Gear to Prepare for Bright Outdoor Shoot

Still preparing for the QingMing Festival shoot in my head. We will be traveling tomorrow so we can be there for an early morning start the next day, QingMing. Quite obviously (I think), we are not starting early for the photographer, but just because that is what you do for QingMing. It is usually an all day, heat stress, endurance test for everybody involved.

My first pieces of gear will be sunscreen and a hat if I can scrounge one up. I will take my backpack full of all kinds of gear, but will most likely need to leave that behind and carry a small choice of essentials. most likely, if it is like all the other days recently, the day will turn very bright and sunny. So, instead of uselessly cursing the brightness, I will embrace it as my friend and let it add to the feel of the day’s shooting.

So, what gear will I actually take?

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2009-01-29

Flash Took a Dive Underwater

I have had too few chances to use my umbrella flash set up. Most of my shooting is still natural light (everyday life and such), but this past week, I have had two chances to take photos for a friend of mine who is graduating with his Master’s degree, and I figured that was the perfect opportunity to put my set up to the test in the field. And out comes the umbrella!

The first day, about a week ago, things went ok…not great, but lessons learned. I also wanted to field test a pair of Cactus triggers. “What are those,” you might ask? With those, I can remote trigger my flash via radio (i.e. no cords). Those ended up incredibly frustrating, to be honest. They did not fire very consistently. When you read through discussions about these on Flickr, some folks love them and some hate them. They are consistent for some folks and inconsistent for others. For me, when they are needed, the break. When I am goofing around, they work flawlessly.

Wait, this was about the flash. I will get back to the story.

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