I’m selling my Nikon D200. It’s come down to the fact that we have too much stuff in the house and we never really use the older camera, as the D7000 does a better job in almost every situation. So, the older camera, the battery grip and the 18-55 VR lens are on their way out. HiRes pics on flickr.
Category: Photography
I broke the number one rule of non-cluster-aware filesystems Thursday night, and accidentally mounted the iSCSI volume that hosts my Aperture library on two systems at the same time, both of which were in read/write mode. The volume was only mounted for 15 seconds or so, but the damage was done: pages of error messages in Disk Utility, ending in “invalid thread count” and an error that the volume could not be repaired. Disk Warrior was also unable to do anything with the disk, reporting it damaged beyond repair.
I also broke the number one rule of using iSCSI on a Mac: my last backup of the volume, which holds my Aperture library (but not the raw images themselves) was on Monday, after I had finished importing all the pictures from Dov and Nikki’s wedding last week.
After a number of restarts of both the Mac and the Solaris box, and repeated runs with Disk Utility and fiddling with the globalSAN iSCSI initiator, I was able to mount the volume, even though I got a pile of error messages about “THIS VOLUME IS DAMAGED. BACK UP WHAT YOU CAN AND REFORMAT IT.” Rsync ran for a long time, and thankfully, pulled a working copy of my 103GB Aperture library back out of the burning wreckage. All 125,000 images files verified, and I was able to do an “Update metadata from master” for everything.
Yes, I’m making an extra set of regular backups now.
I have a pair of Nikon speedlights that use Nikon’s Creative Lighting System (CLS). Cannon shooters call this AWL, but it’s the same idea, which is remote control of a speed light via optical signals sent from another flash. This can be from another flash in the hot shoe on the camera, or from the built-in flash on the SLR body itself. It allows you to alter power settings on remote flashes without walking over to them, and it’s very handy for doing strobist work.
The trouble is the cheapest CLS-enabled speedlight Nikon sells is the SB-700, at $329.00 USD. The older, less powerful, less feature-rich and discontinued SB-600 still sells for $250 when you find a deal on one at KEH. Private party sales (forums, ebay, craigslist) can run as low as $200 or so. This is still a lot of money for a flash Nikon stopped making years ago. If you are willing to step down, however, out of the realm of CLS control and rely on flashes that have decent optical slaves built in, you can get a new-in-box Yongnuo 560 (YN-560) for $65 if you look a little. The trouble with these is they are engineered down to a price. Some of the cost savings come from having a cheaper display on the back and lower power output from the name brand flashes, but some of the savings also come from the fact that they don’t really offer end-user support, the manuals aren’t… useful… and quality control has been reported by David Hobby (and many others) to be an issue.
However, at $65 each, you could get four of YN-560′s and still be just at the level of a single SB-600 from KEH. Statically speaking, you’re going to get a number of speedlights that work properly. My question, before ordering some, is “Will they work side-by-side with CLS flashes?”. We know the built in optical slaves should be able to suppress the TTL pre-flash, but how will it handle the CLS commander flashes? Most reviewers online are triggering them with RF transceivers, not optical slaves, and none of the ones I’ve seen triggering via optical are trying to also use CLS at the same time.
The answer is simple: if you use your CLS flashes in TTL mode and zero out the pop-up flash, so it’s not contributing to the exposure, you can run the YN-560 in “S2″ all day long, and it works. Up and down the aperture and shutter speed range, every test I tried worked. However, trying to use “M” on the CLS channels never got the YN-560 to fire at the right time. Sadness.
The good news is there is an announced but unreleased flash that solves all these problems – the YN-565 supposedly does Canon and Nikon AWL/CLS in the same unit (even though the hot-shoe mounts are slightly different). No word on the price, however.
DIYPhotography is running a contest: build a softbox, take pictures of and with it, and post it online, and you may just win a speedlight and a softbox. I’ve been meaning to enter for some time, but with life the way it is, I’ve not had as much time to myself as I need for a project like this. This evening, I finally got what I needed in terms of time, and started to build.
I had four rules for myself:
- I had to be able to build it myself (without extra help)
- I had only use things I already owned
- It had to be easy to setup and take down.
- It had to be something I’d keep on using even if I didn’t win
Also, as I already have a LumiQuest III, building a small, portable softbox was out – I’ve got that covered in spades. I decided to go big. So, I dug through our recycling pile and found the biggest box I could, and cut a large window in the box with a handy box cutter. I covered the inside of the box with typing paper, taped a old ratty T-Shirt across the window, put my SB-800 in the box, and tested a few shots:
At this point, I was more or less in business. The box is big enough that it will stand upright without any support, which is really handy, and with the power of an SB-800, you can really dump a lot of light into the softbox. Sadly, my SB-600 suffered battery acid damage, so it’s down for the count until I get it cleaned. So, the following shots were all done with one light – the SB-800, with the lens cranked down to kill the ambient (a horrid mix of tungsten, CFL and standard fluorescent).
A while ago, I mentioned that I attended the Flash Bus tour, and had gotten excited about off camera flash again. I’m writing today to say that money I spent was not in vain. As a direct result of attending the workshop, I purchased a number of pieces of lighting equipment, including a LumiQuest Softbox III. I got mine from Adorama, but they are available pretty much anywhere. Regardless, it’s making my lighting more interesting when I remember that it’s in my bag waiting to be used.
I usually stick it on my SB-800, which I’m firing via CLS. I hold the flash in my left hand, close to the subject, and hold the camera in my right (with the camera strap as insurance against tripping). The results are pretty good, if I do say so myself.
