Lightning Flashes

Last night at the Meadowvale Photography Club, we opened our collective new purchase – a lighting set consisting of two powerful flashes, two not so strong stands to hold them up plus some odds and ends to make them work.

Almost immediately it became apparent one flash wasn’t working. Carefully going through the manual (not helpful) and trying different ways to set the flash off (using the test button and various cameras which we confirmed worked, swapping out parts) we established the bulb must be shot. It was a great reminder about how even the simplest photo shoot can end in peril with just a minor equipment failure.

Now with even more members than ever, we can have multiple lighting stations and models to shoot. Next month we’ll have Ashley back and hopefully others. Our first studio model shoot of the year!

• Send Andrew ideas for external shoots
• Model shoot for Dec 9th, 2009 at old Meadowvale Townhall
• Send Arun your photos if you haven’t already done so
• Leslie St Spit shoot this Saturday
• Butterfly shoot – but it has to be 7am. Let Andrew know if there’s interest

Accessory 101

No, this isn’t about clothes or fashion. I’m talking about the nifty Asus netbook that I’m using. Pretty much every digital camera has an LCD screen on the back to show the photo you took. The BIG screens these days are about 3”x3”. They’re limited by the camera size, expense and weight but the difference between last generation 2”x2” seems enormous. But what about a 10”x6” screen instead? Impossible? Not with my little netbook.

It’s just not the coolio factor. My netbook works really great. First, it’s light – a mere 2.4 lbs or 1.1kg. My camera and flash might outweigh it. Second – its SD card reader is about 10-17x faster than the one on my desktop. Taking a 5 minute break while on a photo shoot, I could copy them over and show them to the model before they went home… if I wanted to. Third – it runs Picasa or Adobe Elements (barely) should I want to analyze photos while waiting on a train.

Now don’t get me wrong. It’s not perfect. It’s rather small to use as your only computer. But it’s damn close. And at $290USD fit’s not even my most expensive accessory. It’s a $290 netbook with 1GB of ram and 160GB of hard drive space, and it’s a great way to backup your photos. Buying a devoted backup hdd-with-reader-plus-LCD screen seems quaint in comparison.

I still need to colour profile the LCD screen (or figure out any colour casts) to start fixing the white balance/exposure settings on any photos I take, but I’ll get the bugs worked out. I promise.