In the style of Homer Simpson, I was compelled to eat a few of these, Eight in fact. EIGHT. Eight delicious doughnuts. mmmmmmmmmmmm drooolgurgle…

In other news, I took a day off work which in the past has resulted in spending lots of money. This time was no different as I purchased a camera rig – which you attach to cars and take photos. It’s much much less boring than it sounds – more on this subject later, count on it!

So the Ignis has gone. It came in for a lot of stick because of the way it looked – I actually quite liked it, and I’m not one to be too bothered by what people think. Ultimately though, when you get a fair bit of abuse from your nearest and dearest for the car you drive it can’t help but get to you a bit.

As a result I’ve got mixed feelings about the Ignis going – it was quite simply great fun to drive – the rorty little 1.5 litre engine was plenty quick enough for me, and the handling was always entertaining (in a good way).

Where the Ignis lacked a bit was in the luxury department. With little or no sound deadening, it wasn’t the most refined of steeds, but it was no worse than my 205GTI is!

So what has replaced the Ignis? I wont share any full pictures until I’ve had a chance to do a proper shoot, but I do have this one here….

fin.

So I shambled around a field with my Vivitar 285HVs and my new radio triggers to see if I could get any interesting photos. I ended up bright yellow from the pollen of all the lovely yellow buttercups, and had to run squealing from several wasps but apart from that it was relatively uneventful.

This here photomographic image was taken using the two Vivitar 285s to the left and right of the frame, triggered by radio.

As Richard needed some shots to help the car look as good as possible for the sales advert, I took a few interior ones and detail photos as well, which are alright I s’pose.

Starting to get a few more cars lined up for shoots, which is nice. Nothing more to say at this stage!

Today on a routine visit to a superstore I find myself buying a set of knives. Not just any knives though – Global knives, which are all sharp and pointy and made by Japanese people. The price was too good to refuse; at about 60% of the cost of buying them online it would have been rude not to.

Knives are good because you can use them for all sorts of things, including but not limited to;

1.) Cutting.
2.) Slicing.
3.) Stabbing.

I probably wont do any of 3.) if I’m honest, it’s not really my scene. I do like a bit of cheese though so 2.) will be fairly common.

I should hope so too, with what they cost if they aren’t sharp then I’ll be pretty annoyed.

I’d like to say I’m some sort of gifted chef and need to spend sick amounts of cash on knives but this would be a big fat lie. I’ll use these for cutting bits of cheese and avocados in half and that’s about it. But all the time I’ll feel like I’m Gordon Ramsey or Heston Blumenthal.

All these knives apparently have a specific function but in reality I have no idea what those functions are so I’ll chop away with whatever random one I lay my hands on.

Anyway I’ll lay off the pictures of knives now for fear of looking like some sort of total psycho.

In the style of an episode of a mediocre US TV series, flash back 24 hours. Richard sends me a text message as he needs me to take some pictures of his Ford Focus RS before he sells it, and I’m happy to oblige, so I scrawl some notes in my journal in what is possibly the least preparation I’ve done for a car shoot since I started the whole journal affair.

Fast forward to lunchtime the next day and I find myself at a barbeque at a friends house. Naturally as it’s one of the first half decent days weather of the year I start swilling beer and eat a load of meat and get some nice sunburn, before rolling home in time to do a photoshoot.

So to recap;

1.) Not enough preparation
2.) Full to the brim with beer and meat.
3.) Sunburn

It was never going to result in the best photographs ever but I did get a chance to use my new radio flash triggers and they are a definite improvement on the optical ones, although the range is still a bt lacking, which was a disappointment.

I rolled around on the grass firing away and got about 70 odd shots which I’ll no doubt whittle down to about one that I don’t totally hate.

My flashes went off most times I wanted them to though – woo!

In practice the optical triggers were quite simply sh*t. As in they almost never worked, either triggering the flash totally randomly or not at all. Fun for about two seconds then utterly enraging, especially when you spend ages setting up a shot, wait for the flashes to cycle up to full power, and have one flash fire for no apparent reason. So you have to wait 10 more seconds for a recycle – only for the other flash to fire on it’s own.

To summarise, these optical triggers were only any use in a studio environment and even then not really much use at all.

Ebay to the rescue, hopes I.

The industry standard for triggering off camera flashes are called Pocket Wizards. They however cost an eye-watering pant wetting amount of cash that I am simply too cheap to pay, so I bought three Chinese radio triggers for about 1/10th the price of one pocket wizard. The stylish packaging doesn’t inspire confidence – particularly when the only bit of English text says “Suitable for advanced camerist”.

How bad can they be?

The answer is not nearly as bad as the optical triggers, but still not that great. With only two flashes involved they work very well. Factor in a third flash and the reliability seems to fall off with all three firing only about one in five tries. I can play with the settings to try to improve this, as I think it’s a timing issue. Hopefully it will get better. They are still a world apart from the optical ones so I’m not unhappy.

I’ll use these in anger as soon as possible then see what they are like out in the real world. I may smash them all up if they don’t work. Another dent in the bank balance in the name of bad photographs. Onwards, ever onwards!

I’ve written here before about Wilf’s neurotic character traits. He’s been examined and observed by a number of vets and dog psychology experts who have diagnosed his excessive obsessive tail chasing as various things such as epilepsy, and come up with various ways to cure him – none of which have worked. Fortunately with some recent work his tail chasing seems to be getting better, which is promising.

He’s also been diagnosed as exhibiting “extreme fear” when taken on a walk, which results in him not wanting to get out of the car, or leave the house unless it’s to get in a car. All this leaves Wilf as a bundle of pure energy (typical of the Staffordshire Bull Terrier breed) who gets little or no exercise.

When the opportunity to walk him with other dogs arises, it’s always worth a try – he seems less fearful when other dogs are around to take the lead (pardon the pun).

Here’s a rare photo of Wilf enjoying the great outdoors:

After the walk, we take Baggins and George back to my studio and attempt to get them to sit still for five minutes so I can photograph them. Once again I had issues with the optical triggers on the Vivitar flashes – you would think I would have learned by now and given up.

Meet Baggins:

Baggins is the Brother of Bailey and Simba, who I photographed a couple of years ago – back before Wilf had developed the worst of his current psychological traits.

And this is George, who lives with Baggins:

Two dogs at once is difficult in the extreme – I hoped to get a photo of them together but all my efforts were in vain. Sit still you buggers!!!

When I do eventually process and post my pictures from Venice, you’ll see I’ve developed an apparent obsession with panoramic photos. This seems to have continued after my return, with this one resulting from the walkies with the doggies.

Click on it for a larger version, go on, you know you want to.

Cue an hours frenized driving around looking for somewhere interesting. It did highlight the issue that planning a shoot is all very well but if you don’t know where you are going to do it in the first place, it’s all a bit pointless.

Anyway, onto the results. I had terrible problems with the optical triggers for my Vivitars – they simply wouldn’t work reliably. Or to put it more bluntly, they were utter utter shite. One flash would constantly fire on it’s own, whilst the other only fired one time out of every five or six attempts. Clearly the optical triggers need to go, they are are no good outside of a studio. In spite of this I got the static shot I wanted. I’m not totally happy with it, but equipment failings are the main cause of this unhappiness.

1.) I had to push to ISO 800 to get the shutter time I wanted – this caused a lot of noise which I hate.
2.) The boot of my Ignis is not a nice place to be whilst driving over bumpy ground. I was too busy concentrating on not falling out to be able to give enough attention to the shots I was taking. I’ll share the picture here if only to illustrate my points.

Despite these problems, I’m confident my new approach to shooting cars is really helping to improve the results I’m getting. on to the next car which will depend on which of my friends I can convince to stand around for an hour whilst I mess around taking photos!

I set out with Rich for whom I’m currently working on a website. He buys and sells tasty but affordable motors, and I take the opportunity to take pictures of them. We made our way to a pitch black industrial estate, and after convincing the security guard not to “release the hounds” and that we weren’t there to instigate a terrorist plot against a double glazing company, I set up my gear.

Inexpert clumsy fumbling in the dark is my forte (just ask my Wife), and last night was no exception. Note to self – buy a torch.

The next lesson was a more painful one. When trying to work out if the remote flashes are firing, staring directly into them is not a good idea. MY EYES!!!!

I had in mind two images I wanted to create, and although I struggled a bit in this first one getting the lighting even, I got there in the end. This was shot with the two Vivitars off camera, and my Nikon SB600 on the camera, set to underexpose by 3 stops.

By saying “underexpose” and “3 stops” I appear to know what I’m talking about – don’t be fooled, I heard those terms somewhere else and thought they might make me sound clever if I used them. (this may be a lie). The idea was for the car to loom out of the dark, like some sort of sinister zombie monster. This is admittedly less convincing when the car is sunshine yellow coloured.

This next one was taken by cranking everything up to full power, and then pressing the button. Oops, looked directly at the flashes again, now I’m definitely blind.

Anyway, I was pleased enough with these for the first attempt, and I’m looking forward to exploring the creative opportunities these flashes open up for me. I am however in the hunt for some radio triggers which I hope will be more reliable. It does mean spending yet more money, but as I only have one set of eyes, I’d like to protect them by avoiding beaming flashes directly into them in future.

Ebay here I come!

fffffftt….splrrgggh…ft.

That is the sound of money, hemorrhaging out my wallet across the pond to the YEW ESS of AYE, where these bad boys were purchased;

Not the boxes silly, but the stuff in the boxes. In nerd parlance, these are two Vivitar 285HV flashes, and two Morris hot shoe optical slave units. In normal speaky they are bright lights what flash when you press a button on a camera… Oooooooh.. Like this! Flash! AHAAA!

Mistake one. Looking directly at these and firing off the shutter hurts my eyes. The blindness eventually subsides, which is a relief I can tell you. On to a more advanced test; Here you can see the flashes illuminating stuff, which is basically what they are designed for. Those grey things at the bottom are record decks – remember when I said I used to not be a SuperStar DJ – these are leftover from them days.

These flashes, or flashoids as I want them to henceforth be known, are pretty much all manual so you have to do actual working out before you use them. This seems primitive but then I remember I’ve been playing with a Holga for the last few weeks, and then these suddenly are elevated to space-age technology status in my addled little mind.

This white dial here is for the worky outy stuff;

And this here ‘Vari Power’ dial controls how badly you are going to blind someone. It’s physics Jim, but not as we know it.

I call it the Blind-O-Meter. Set it to stun!

Anyone that is still reading this is a glutton for punishment, so I will punish you with more nerd speak.

The Morris optical slaves seem to work well – although my tests so far are limited to indoor work in low light. The Vivitar flashes seem to be quite powerful, which is great – the above were all shot at 1/16th power, triggered by an Nikon SB600 in the hotshoe of my D200, which was set at f/22 and 1/250th.

Punishment ends.