Monthly Archives: May 2008

Oven repairs

We finally had to get our Our Smeg SA708X oven serviced. It hadn’t been working on fan-forced for a few months. So the broken bits included 2 door hinges which caused the microswitch on the door to short because it wasn’t holding the door closed firmly. The blown microswitch, and two light bulbs.

Strobist: Unlock The Superslave in Your Nikon SB-800

This is a really cool hack to get a SB-800 to be an optical slave:

1. First, turn on your flash.
2. Now get into the submenu by pressing and holding the “sel” button for 2 seconds.
3. Arrow right (the “single tree” button) to get the upper right quadrant highlighted.
4. Push the select button again.
5. Scoll down (“-” button) until “SU-4″ is highlighted.
6. Push “sel” again to select.
7. Push and hold “sel” for 2 seconds to get out of the submenu.
8. Your flash will now say “REMOTE.”

This means I can use the ringflash to trigger a SB-800 positioned to lighten up a white backdrop. Very cool.

Amazing lifehack: Pack a starter pistol to deter luggage theft

Jon Udell wrote about a pretty cool way to get extra security for your checked bags here. Has anyone actually tried this? – in Australia?

OneLight DVD Trailer Online

OneLight DVD: This DVD tutorial looks like it’ll be worthing buying. Zack already has a great tutorial on shooting with white seamless background on his site.

Getting Ready for the Close Up

Getting Ready for the Close Up: A nice piece on UK photographer Platon about portrait photography. Video interview here.

My Day With Jay

One day I’ll have My Day With Jay:

If you ever get to the point that you think “it’s about the camera,” you should spend a day with Jay. He could make magic with a Kodak disposable camera.

AlienBees ABR800 Ringflash

I picked up an AlienBees ABR800 Ringflash used from a nice chap from Iceland. I can’t wait to see some of the people and product shots using this light.

Adobe Photoshop Drop Shadows

I’ve been looking for a simple way to make realistic looking drop shadows to simulate the look of a piece of paper on a piece of paper (if you get what I mean). This is the best tutorial I found: How To Make Drop Shadows

Richmond Hill Larder – misleading ads

So I saw an ad for Australian Pork featuring a pork schnitzel dish at Richmond Hill Larder done by chef Clair Feig. Being a schnitzel fan I went there after seeing a photo of the dish.

Don’t bother, it’s a ripoff. The actual dish is described as “Pork schnitzel in a toasted fennel seed crumb with a cabbage and anchovy slaw, roasted apples and sherry vinegarjus $27.50″ is totally overpriced. It had 2 small pieces of soggy schnitzel no bigger than one of the pieces shown on the photo. There was no roasted apple, just a bit of coleslaw. If anyone at the restaurant is reading – I was there at lunch on 14 May 2008.

New lens

So after shooting for 2 days at last week’s Barista competition I found the gap between my 17-35 and 70-200 quite frustrating. While I could get a nice tight shot of the barista’s face I found most of the wide shots only needed 30mm or so. But when I wanted to get a bit tighter the 17-35 ran out and I had to swap to my other body with the 70-200. What to do? My mate showed me his Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 last week and it seemed to be just what’s needed. This is one of the new Nikon lenses with the funky Nano Crystal Coating that significantly reduces flare and reflection.

I had a similar lens when I had Canon gear – the 24-105 L f4 on the 5D but I never really loved that lens. The images just didn’t pop. Let’s see how this one goes. I got it from Photobuff BTW.