Came across the CheetahStand site the other day while researching some options for Speedlite compatible softboxes. Their gear looks impressive – I’m especially tempted by their octobox, which is something I’ve long lusted after. But what caught my attention right away was this: the Cheetah Speed Pro Bracket.
Photo credit: CheetahStand.com
Pretty ingenious – by mounting the Speedlite horizontally like this, it’s able to rotate a full 360 degrees around it’s base, which means that even with the head stuffed inside softbox, the wireless sensor window is left outside and can be positioned to best see a master flash unit’s wireless pulse.
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Took a little trip yesterday, out of the “big city” and down into central PA, to Lewisburg. No real reason, just one of those fun afternoon trips you take to see something new, poke around a small town, and get lost a couple of times despite the best efforts of the GPS.
Lewisburg, PA, for those of you who may not know – and I suspect that’s almost everyone, since goodness knows I’d never heard of the place – is known for it’s “Main Street, USA” status as well as for being the home of Bucknell University.
Market Street, Lewisburg, PA
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Finally made it out this morning for sunrise – another of those hectic weeks where I didn’t get a camera in my hands for far too long and it left me feeling blah. In a strange approximation to guilt, I got up even earlier this morning to atone, heading out to Ford’s before the sun was up. It’s Fords because it’s close and because at least half the reason for going out was just to go out; but the other reason was to finally try out a new filter that I picked up a week back.
New to my bag is the Cokin P-series Blue/Yellow Polarizer. It’s the (much!) cheaper version of the Sing-Ray Blue/Gold polarizer that you hear landscape photogs talking about a lot. According to the reviews the Cokin isn’t as nice and suffers from softness, but frankly for $40 vs. $200+ for the competition, I’m okay with applying a bit of Unsharp Mask in post.
Blue/Yellow Polarizer in action
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The lens bug is still with me, and the latest acquisition is another golden oldie, the Canon 70-210mm f/4 telephoto. This was one of the first EF fast telephotos, originally introduced in 1987. My copy is from 1987, purchased in like-new condition from KEH.com.
It was my first time buying from KEH and I’m pleased to say that the experience was a good one, and I’ll likely use them again in the future. KEH appears to be an excellent source for used lenses, although their user reviews are a little spotty – the jist of it seems to be that internet orders take second place to phone orders, so sometimes net orders lose out and folks get annoyed. (Frankly, if you know that going into the deal, I’m not sure what right you have to get annoyed.)
Anyway, I wasn’t really looking to buy this lens – I was poking around KEH just to see what they had, actually looking more at prime lenses when I stumbled across this one. I’d never even heard of a 70-210mm f/4, so I had to Google it, and what I found was promising. I’ve had my eye on the new 70-200 f/4 IS lens for a while now, but I just can’t get past the $1200 price tag. The fact that the old 70-210mm was only $200 sealed the deal – for $1k in savings, I can live without IS.
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With the introduction of the EOS 7D, Canon finally took the initiative to play catch-up to Nikon in an area where they had been woefully lacking: wireless flash control. For years Canon has been not only in the backseat, but in the far back of the bus, when compared to Nikon’s Creative Lighting System.
The 7D was the first Canon DLSR to include a Speedlite commander mode in its built-in flash, a feature that captured my attention very quickly. For years now, Nikon users have has commander capabilities built into their DSLRs, SB-800 Speedlights, and dedicated commander units. Canon shooters, on the other hand, have had…well, very little.
Very little, that is, if you’re looking for TTL control. If you’re shooting Strobist-style, with manual flash settings, then any “dumb” radio triggers will work (although all units except the Canon 580EX lack PC ports, so you’re left at the mercy of hotshoe adapters). So long as you don’t mind running from flash to flash to change the output, this works okay.
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Right now I’m snow-bound and having visions of the Donner Party. Okay, so it’s not that bad, more a case of cabin fever setting in as I reach the 36 continuous hours in my apartment. But still, the farthest I’ve managed to go in that time is the street, to dig out my car. It’s dug out now, but I don’t dare try to actually drive anywhere, since the roads are “plowed” only in the sense that the top 14″ of snow have been removed, leaving just the messy bottom 4″. In fact the only way to get around the city seems to be by joining the roving bands of ATVs and snowmobiles that are roaming the streets.
18" and counting
So in an attempt to keep myself from climbing the walls, here are 10 ideas for photo-related things to do on a slow/snow day:
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Went out this morning to feed Frederick before the snowstorm really hit – after all, I can’t leave the poor guy hungry with a foot of snow coming down! As I trudged out through the drifts, I could see multiple…somethings…sitting on the edge of the ice. My first thought was mallards; mallards hang out there with Frederick all summer long, it’s possible that a few arrived and hunkered down for the storm.
As I got closer I could see that the shape was wrong for mallards. For a few moments I even thought that perhaps they were just rocks sitting in the ice. When I finally got up to Frederick’s area I finally saw what they really were – muskrats!
Muskrat family hanging out on the ice
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Last time I covered some Strobist-style shots, both studio & mixed-ambient based. Working with strobes is a lot of fun and the level of control that it grants is clearly higher than you get when you leave it to nature. Natural light, on the other hand is unpredictable; clouds come and go, the sun rises and sets, and as photographers, we’re left with a few moments here and there when the light is good.
Far more often than not, shooting in natural (ambient) light seems to be synonymous with shooting in low light – at least in my own experience. I end up at parties, birthdays, family gatherings, nights out, whatever the occasion, and the result seems to be the same; some room with more shadow than light. The trick, then, is to make the most out of whatever natural light you can get.
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If you read the previous thread about the Strobist workshop, then you’ll recognize some of what follows. This all came out of the last hour or two of the workshop, when a group of us decided that by staying inside, we were missing out on the best stuff. In the end, we have to thank the smokers – it it wasn’t for them these photos wouldn’t have been made. They must have stepped out the back door of the conference room a dozen times during the day, lighting up on the loading dock, before somebody finally realized that the it made a kickass stage to work on.
It started small, just a couple of us out there with a single monoblock strobe & softbox, swapping the PocketWizard between cameras and sharing exposure settings. While one of us was shooting, another played the role of Voice-Activated Lightstand and held the strobe aloft. We got our model up on the lid of a rusty old dumpster and shot him against the brick wall, and then really lit a fire and shot him against the sky.
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