A Watermark and A Workaround

Two pieces of news today. Last night, I was extremely bored and started playing with Adobe Illustrator again. It had been a few years but it was honestly fun working with it again. One thing I had been meaning to do for a while was do myself up a simple watermark (especially with my first wedding being a month and a bit away). So I spent the evening fiddling and then this morning, came up with this:

I know, it looks a lot like the Adobe CS3 logos, bit my text isn't in the middle and my corners are nice and round hehe. Anyways, was a quick effort but i was pleased with it.

Now, to my second point. Remember in my last entry how I spoke about the problems I had with the seller on ebay who sold me my ebay triggers? Well I left him some rightly deserved feedback today and also did some more fiddling and with the help of dads off shoe cord, came up with an almost reliable combination to make my 430EX work with the receiver.

There is still the odd pop depending how close the receiver is to the flash but I think that a hot shoe to pc adapter and a pc sync cord that is about a foot long should do the trick. That is if I keep them. Dad offered to buy this set off me so I was looking at the strobist kits from MPEX. Still not sure...

False Advertising

After much waiting, I decided to jump on the Strobist movement bandwagon and get myself into off camera lighting via a set of the venerable "ebay triggers". I had heard very good things about a certain local ebay seller and upon seeing a listing of his for "Wireless Hot Shoe Flash Trigger (V2) Kit" and seeing that they were indeed the ones I was after, I ordered a set.

A few days later, I got an email from the seller saying they had run out of stock the day I ordered and there would be about a half a month wait before they got more back in stock. I thought to myself, that's fine, I could do without the distraction from my assignments anyway but it will give me something to look forward to.

So the estimated date for the next shipment of the triggers to the seller came and went and I had heard nothing. Again, I thought that it would be fine and they would probably just post them to me when they get them in. A couple of days later, I got another message from them saying that the stock had arrived and my package was on its way.

Skip forward a few days to yesterday. I come home from uni, to find a package sitting on my desk. I opened it up to find a blank white cardboard box and inside, my new wireless triggers. In my excitement, I took them out of the box, put the battery in the receiver and mounted my 430EX to them. Hit the test button, pop went the flash. That is where things went pear shaped. The flash kept popping by itself, a lot. Oh crap I thought. I remembered reading about this exact problem with the V1 version of the triggers but it was supposed to be fixed with the subsequent V2 and V2s versions. I jumped back on the items ebay page to see in rather small print "not compatible with canon 430EX". Hmm.. I thought, how could I be so stupid to not see that. But I still had a niggling thought in the back of my head that I was certain that issue was fixed with the V2 triggers.

So I spent the night researching and the more I looked, the more I doubted that my triggers were the ones I ordered. I did manage to work out a deal for a friend with V2 triggers to come around to test them. Our theory was that if mine were really what they said they were, my trigger would set off his receiver when set to the same channel (V1 triggers used a different frequency to the V2(s) ones). Sure enough, nothing happened when we tried it. Also, my flash did not pop by itself once on his receiver. My receiver also refused to fire his Vivitar 285HV, which was another known problem of the V1 triggers.

So here I am, with triggers that were not what they were advertised as and I am still waiting to hear back from the seller (2 messages sent know). I think I will get a set of the 16 channel ones and do what this fellow on POTN has once this is sorted out. But to sum it all up, really not happy!

Ye Olde Melbourne Town

I know it has been over a week since I returned from Melbourne, but I have been incredibly busy with uni work...

Anyways, into the trip!

My dad and myself made our way to Brisbane Domestic Airport on a rather pleasant day for this time of year. In fact, the weather was almost identical to what it was like last time I flew to Melbourne, right down to the type of clouds in the sky. We arrived at the airport at a rather good time, no line for check in and we only had 15 minutes to wait before boarding by the time we got through security (they thought my camera bag x-ray looked interesting and then wanted to swab my and it for explosives).

So onto the plane we got, Jetstar had moved us from my original requested seats to second row by the window. Was a bit miffed about this but what can you do? We taxied out to the runway, the pilot gunned the engines and we took off with me snapping out the window the whole time. We flew out towards the city this time, so I got a nice view over the river to the west.

Two hours later, we landed at Avalon airport, collected our bags and made our way towards the CBD. After a short cab ride from Southern Cross Station to our hotel and we had somewhat settled in. What do two photographers do when they go on holidays? Meet up with other photographers and take photos of course. We met up with some people from POTN and had a bit of a night shoot. So, I'll give the words a rest and just show some photos...

Friday saw myself wandering around town by myself for a bit before meeting back up with dad. We both headed towards Docklands on the free tourist tram (free is always good), with a stop at the Queen Victoria Markets on the way. It was incredibly windy this day and we had to be careful that we weren't blown into Port Phillip Bay. As before, I will let the photos do the talking for Friday heh.

And so came Saturday. Time to get ready to head back home. It was freezing and wet so no photography was done by me. I just "enjoyed" the weather... We ended up heading back to Avalon a tad earlier only to be told that because of storms in Brisbane, our flight home would be delayed by an hour (meaning we didn't land until about 12:15am Sunday morning).

There are however, more photos from my trip than this. Check them out here.

Old Rockers...

.... never die, they just get glasses and drink more.

Remember the Expo 88 celebrations I wrote about last week? Well I went along to the concert that night and it was awesome. Got to try my hand at some decent band photography. Wish I had been able to get a bit closer but I'm still really pleased with what i came away with. So without further ado, here is a few quick edits from my photos of Joe Camilleri and The Black Sorrows and Mental As Anything.

I still have some 300 photos from the whole night to go through, so I may post some more on here in the near future.

New Glass

Yes, its taken a bit longer than I expected but I'm finally sitting down and writing the post I promised on Friday night. Let me just say that the Sigma 30mm f1.4 is an amazing lens. I had about a month with it last year and it is just as great a performer as it was back then. The focal length is great for a walk around lens on the 40D and its nice having something a bit faster than the 1.8 of the nifty fifty.

Its also an uber sharp lens and the bokeh is oh so nice heheh. Anywho, just a few quick photos from the day I got it.

Expo '88

For those who have been living under a rock all year, this year is the 20th anniversary of World Expo at South Bank (before it was the South Bank we know today) and the major public celebrations are being held this Saturday. Also pretty sure that we are the only former host of Expo to actually celebrate this far on after its long gone.

There is definitely an 80s theme for the event, lots of 80s movies, music and bright fluoro colours on all the advertising. Lots of free stuff too for the cheap photographer among us (hey, isn't that most of us?) as well as a gazillion photo ops, from free bands (Mental as Anything), roving street performers and of course, fireworks.

Just a bit of a heads up. For more info go to www.southbankcelebrates88.com.au

And yeah, still picking up that lens this afternoon, so expect another entry later tonight.

I'm Leaving On a Jet Plane

This time next week, I will be wandering around Melbourne with my camera, tripod, my dad and couple of friends. Kinda forgot I was going down until yesterday when I was at uni and realised, crap I'm going to be in Melbourne in just over a week...

Getting down and back thanks to some ticket I won from Jetstar late last year so hey, free flights, awesome right?

I was down there for a few days towards the end of last year but I didn't get to see everything I had wanted to. Still came back with some half decent photos but this time I'm hoping to return with a few more keepers. Especially since this time, I'm taking my tripod, a new camera and a new lens hehe.

But yeah, don't know how I forgot to talk about it in the last entry, but last Saturday I scored a new camera. A Canon 40D. Certainly a tad of an upgrade from the 20D I had before. Already had a battery grip so pretty much everything I owned already stays. And tomorrow, I'm getting a Sigma 30mm f1.4 just in time for the Melbourne trip. So tomorrow, expect some first impression shots.

Sorry about the lack of photos this time. Really haven't taken anything since Tuesday. Tomorrow though, shall be different....