For those photographers looking to shoot with seamless paper, this might be a deal for you if you're looking for white and not the 107" size thats so hard to transport anyway.
I wanted to buy a roll of regular seamless and when I noticed the typical 53" roll contained 12 yards and ran about $35 shipped, I thought to myself that paper in that size should be cheaper. And it was. I remember buying some plotter paper and I knew the rolls were bigger then just 12 yards.
So I did a little research and found this deal, HP Universal Heavyweight Coated Paper (60 Inches x 100 Foot roll) for just $17.95 + $16.46 shipping or about $35. Whats great is that you get 64 feet more and its also 7" wider!
Here is a link to the 100 foot roll I ordered from amazon,
UPDATE, there is this roll that is 225 feet long with free shipping, dunno how long it will last.. (link below shows a different price, but when I click on it it goes to $17.99) YMMV
If the 225 foot roll price is still high, this is a 150 foot roll (its not heavyweight however) someone else found on Amazon..
The paper works great, its a nice bright white and I like having the extra 7" to work with side to side. I'd prefer 107" when shooting but its just not practical for me travelling. This deal works out great and I have plenty to spare! Actually, I split the roll with some other photographers so we all have some white seamless now.
(laser not included!) Its actually an IR trigger, but lasers are so much cooler! I wanted to trigger the camera to very specific action so I thought i'd get an optical trigger. There are a few commercial ones out there but as a fun hobby project (I love repurposing equpment btw) I thought this toy RC car lap timer would make for good inexpensive optical trigger. After adding a plugin jack and a diode, I had one that will trigger my pocket wizard which in turn will trigger my D300.
The lap timer is actually made for the Radio Shack ZipZap mini rc cars. They can be found for just $2.99 shipped on ebay. I comes with the lap timing scoreboard and an IR beam railing for the opposite side of the lane. two AA's power the lap timer, and 2 AAA's power the IR emitter bar. You can use the emmiter bar to make a beam for triggering. It works well but the object needs to be big enough to completely block its wide range. The laser level I'm using on the otherhand has a very tight beam, and even a single water drop passing through its path can trigger it.
While testing the stock unmodified lap timer I noticed that the Red LED on top would turn off whenever the beam was broken and be on when the IR beam was seen by the timer. So I decided to do a quick modification by adding a diode and an 1/8" (3.5mm) mono connector. That would allow it to connect to a pocket wizard transmitter.
The transmitter would trigger my DSLR with the addition of an inexpensive pre-trigger cord from Calumet (it was $9.99)
For the Canon folks...
Here it is in action, this is reject test shot that happens to show everything. You can see the laser on the right side, my water dropper in the middle, and the laser trigger on the left. The drop broke the beam, and traveled the distance seen when the camera shot it. For those needing a poor mans adjustable delay and using flash (in a dark room), one trick you can do is rear curtain sync. By syncing rear curtain you can adjust when the flash goes off, and in turn creates your exposure. If you need more discrete timing you'll have to build an adjustable delay (I've done that too, but thats another blog..)
A prettier example of it in action. using this method I can get pretty repeatable drops in front of my camera. Not the most exciting use of this trigger, but it shows it works and is repeatable.
Here is another example of the trigger, I had another photographer "spray" the camera with a card ala 52 card pickup. The laser trigger was in front of him, and I prefocused the camera so that when the cards did break the beam they would be in focus. We did a this a few times and got pretty good results, I plan on doing some more exciting triggering once things warm up and I can get outside.
All in all the trigger has been a success, it looks a little funny, but hey it cost less then a happy meal and now I can trigger things like the cool sharks in Austin Powers!
So while at Radio Shack I saw this on clearance for $9.95
I picked one up and hopefully I'll run some tests on it, I'm thinking it might be useful so long as I keep the power jack available to use regular batteries in case this thing dies. (proprietary batteries are a pet peeve of mine unless I have a spare or 2 or 3) Based on the 5.2v spec and up to 500mah draw it might work, but real testing will tell the tale. Also I have a bunch of interesting projects in Draft mode, but I haven't had the time to post them, Soon though as its getting cold here in Chicago and I won't be able to shoot outside as much!
So early in the year I went to Garfield Park Conservatory to try and work the light and get some pictures that had the feel I wanted them to have, not the way they were actually lit. It was rainy and cold on the day I was there, a very flat cold light. So I gel'd up and tried warming things up in different ways, some worked some didn't. This shot was just a quick snap I took of powder puff tree in full bloom. I flicked a little light with my strobe on a stick and snapped off this DoF shot. I liked it as I thought it looked like a fireworks explosion. Well fast forward to a few weeks ago, and Schmap contacted me about it asking if they could use it. Flowers are not something I usually shoot or usually have an interest in shooting, so I was suprised anyone even noticed it. Well I guess they picked it and put it into their guide. I'm okay with them using it since I consider it a snapshot and not my more serious work.
Office Depot has these nice little Pencil Boxes for back-to-school, only $0.79. I was looking at them and thinking they might work as a snoot. I do like my cereal box/gaffers tape ones, but this his a very nice high grade plastic so I figured it might be worth the gamble. So I picked up 2. They fit my SB-800s very snug, but the black part does fit over them. I figure I can cut it to fit and I've got a store bought looking modifier for under a buck.
The even better part is the inside, its a nice translucent plastic that lights up just like an expensive diffuser material for a flash. So its 2 for 1, you get some nice material to play with to make your own design for a diffuser and a snoot.
Let me know if you pick one up and find a good use for it!
Well if you haven't noticed I like to tinker. I always have and probably always will. So when I get bored I fix things, all sorts of things. A while back I started repairing digital cameras for fun. Recently after I bought my D300 another damaged D300 came up for sale that had taken a humpty-dumpty fall from a tripod with a 70-200 2.8 attached. I bought it for parts just in case anything happened to my new D300, but after ordering a new button I had it all fixed up. Its now my backup camera to my other D300.
So last month I was reading about a Canon fellow that had the misfortune of having his newly acquired Canon 5D mark ii fall into a lake while setting up for a shot. I bought the camera from him for salvage to see if I could get it working. I figured best case I could and then I'd play around with it to see what Canon has to offer. Worst case I'd end up parting it out eventually to recoup my money. Since I fixed the Nikon so fast that I never got a chance to document any of it,I figured I'd document the tear down of this camera body as it might be of interest to someone out there.
I even made a pointless video that I sped up showing the partial tear down. The video isn't the best as it was my first time trying to do something like this, but you can see as I strip away the rear, top and side panels of the 5D2 to expose and inspect the inside for water damage. I found very little water exposure on the first time tearing it down, but on later tear downs to find the odd behavior it was giving I found the board that was lightly corroded.
Here is the main culprit, it was the board on the bottom of the body. There was corrosion on 3 of the ribbon connector areas and 2 of the surface mount ICs. I carefully cleaned them off and sprayed the entire board down with a 0 residue PCB contact cleaner. The camera has been flawless ever since, but only time will tell, and with water damage you never know for sure, corrosion can kill very slowly and create odd issues with systems, in this case the buttons acted irrational and certain shooting modes would do different things.
I have since cleaned all the corrosion off and its working fine, although I do plan on ordered a new board from Canon at some point. I bought one lens for use with it, and one flash and I will be documenting some of the obstacles I found using off camera flash with Canon. I will also show some hacks to get things to work, like rear curtain sync and high speed sync.
One other side note, the body construction of the 5D2 I was not particularly impressed with for a camera in its price class. I would have expected a stamped steel frame in the lower end bodies, but not in one thats a notch from the flagship. This is my own personal opinion however having seen both the D300 and 5D2 on the inside. The D300 skeleton looks like its battle ready, a large cast body wrapped in plastic, the 5D2 had a simple and not rugged design. Also I really wish there was some solid weather sealing, I didn't see any o-rings at all on the 5D2.
I was at Radio Shack when I came upon this, a USB Swivel, Radio Shack part #26-785 on clearance. I think the original price was $6 something but it was Clearanced at just $1.37. Perfect to getting more rotational flexibility for the Wireless Tether. This should be a nationwide clearance item, so if you happen to be there it might be worth picking up!
PS - I have a big post coming soon, I just have to finish editing the video.
