This is a cool looking staircase I found...
...and looking up...
The Tanana Bluff & Pipeline Bridge
1/850sec - F8.0 - iso100
...I love the sky on this one.
This is the newly finished back of my softbox, wires covered, painted black. As you can see, I have velcro all around the circumference so the reflector can detach easily.
And following, some more experimenting with the softbox:
hmmm. Almost looks like that backdrop needs an iron.
Any comments on these photos would be appreciated - I really need to know what direction to go with them!
Vertigo
1/180sec - F5.0 - iso200
Well, it has been a long time since I posted anything. So there were some of the more interesting images I've taken since then.
I am selling a few things on ebay, saving up for a DSLR, but this next wedding I am renting one from BorrowLenses.com - a very nice site that I have used before and recommend.
I have been following the Strobist blog which is highly educational, and you will see some influence from there in the following!
I already blew my initial savings on a "starving student light kit" from bhphotovideo - notably light stand, umbrella mount, umbrella, sunpak 383 flash. This I am working on being able to use with my Fuji F30, which does not have a flash sync output.
The main issue with using an optical slave is the preflash which you cannot disable. I toyed seriously with the idea of adding a sync connector to the camera myself, and opened the case to attempt a circuit trace. I thought at first I had something but I had looked too hastily... The circuit board is actually a three layer one and everything is not only tiny but hard to trace because the center layer cannot be seen. I gave up - a combination of laziness and good sense taking over - and decided to use a circuit my dad (who does electronics for a living) forwarded to me, which basically counts flashes (phototransistor) and ignores the first. I had been going to use it in modified form to accept the sync signal from the camera since after all I wasn't going to be able to get rid of the preflash trigger.
I will post how this all works out. So far I have parts on the way to me in the mail...
As far as the wedding and renting goes... I went with a Rebel Xti so I could afford two decent lenses. These would be the Canon 17-55mm F2.8 and the Sigma 50-150mm F2.8. This is close to what I would like to purchase initially for lenses - I would substitute the Tamron 17-50 F2.8 for the Canon because it costs less than half as much and has great reviews. As the Sigma is cheaper than its Canon equiv. - borrowlenses just didn't have the Tamron or I would have gotten it to try it out. The 50-150 becomes close to a 70-200 on a 1.6 crop factor SLR and is a good bit less hefty being designed for the EF-S cameras (as is the other lens).
The sunpak 383 will work on the rebel - but not E-TTL. The flash itself has some sort of auto mode but I really got it to use in manual anyway. I will have a few days to experiment before the wedding as the rental is for a week.
