Posts on Studio lights, transceivers etc.
Hands up, who knew that Elinchrom did cable tidys? Ordered a Manfrotto Friction Arm from one of my preferred suppliers and spotted these on their website. Probably a bit of overkill for synch leads, but perfect for power cables, will be great for my 5 metre cables as well as the standard ones.
One of my PocketWizards has been a little flakey recently, it will work fine on a camera as a receiver and on the Studio heads, but will only randomly trigger if mounted as the transmitter on the hot-shoe. A quick dismantling session (there are only two screws on the body) and a peak inside didn’t show any obvious problems. However after reassembly it was clear that there was some movement in the hot-shoe mount, which as it moved was enough to break the contact with the PCB.
Anyway a small blob of glue is sufficient to stop it moving & now seems 100% reliable, I will order a replacement foot (if they are available) and replace the original, not sure that it will make much difference as I don’t know if the issue is with the foot or the body of the transmitter that is worn. We’ll see.
Seeing as I have needed a chroma background on the last two shoots that I have taken the studio lights to, I thought it about time that I purchased one, I already have a Pixapro collapsible black/white background & quite like it, I thought I’d add a Blue/Green one to the kit. Only point I would make is don’t try and open it in the spare bedroom, as at 2 by 2.3m you need a bit of room to collapse it back down.
Been messing about again, seeing as there was nothing in the diary.
It’s arrived, Yay…Hopefully that will be the last acquisition for a while. I decided to bite the bullet & buy the lens that I have been hankering for since the announcement of its release.
The Canon 11-24mm F4L is certainly Canons widest linear corrected zoom lens. It is quite a weighty piece of glass. It is nice to use however the lens cap is a bit of a pain, because of the size of it, it will not fit in a pocket easily so I picked up a Lee Filters fabric cap.
Sitting around whilst listening to Totteringham getting all “Spursy” I thought that I would have a go at a style of photography that I have never tried before, essentially floating product shots. I am not a huge fan of playing around with Photoshop, other than to crop/balance & other basic edits, but this type of work requires the building of images from multiple layers. This is a simple composite of two images, one the background & the other of the light meter. I certainly won’t be doing anything like this tomorrow during the football, as I will be glued to the Arsenal v Newcastle game.
Studio kit went on it’s travels to update some player/management profile photos prior to the Guildford City v Woking game. Two lights (one for a background light, one with a 100cm octobox) & a muslin white backdrop.
Well that was bigger than I expected it to be…Purchased a couple of items for the studio kit, which will be going on a trip fairly soon. Amongst the acquisitions was a 135cm Deep Octo Box, a 100cm Octo Box, a few grids and various reflectors, barndoors etc. However on delivery of the 135cm box I opened it up and had a bit of a test run, damned the thing is huge. Â I know it is 135cm in diameter, but ‘kinell’ it is big.
It’s first run out will be some corporate h&s & 1/2 length photos which should be fun!
Today had several photo related events going on… firstly the studio kit went to the store-room at Guildford Spectrum to do some H&S photos. Still a few more to do I think
Needed to shoot some player profile photos, so the studio kit travelled to  the Spectrum Stadium, the only useable space is a a store room, the clubhouse would be suitable if it was empty, but as fans are wanting beer I set up temporary home in a cupboard.
Not exactly the most salubrious of spaces, shared as it was with javelins, hammers & various other bits of athletics equipment. However, after 20 minutes of setting up, we were ready to work through the list. Some players were unavailable so we will be back again.
The ramblings of a press photographer 