Over the last few evenings I have been indulging in some arts and crafts to make a set of grids for my Yongnuo YN-467 flash. Made from a handful of black drinking straws cut down and glued together then mounted to the flash, these are simple, cheap and effective.
First a bit of disclosure: I won this tripod in a contest. While this may mean I can’t comment on value for money very well, I can still be objective and tell you about what I like and what I don’t.
Named after Kirk Hammet of Metallica this differently named tripod from 3 Legged Thing sits at the top of their non carbon tripod range. This one also came with the B3 Arca compatible ball head and a rather nice bag.
Thanks to a superb put down by yours truly (see link) I am now the proud owner of a 3 Legged Thing Kirk X2a tripod.
Initial thoughts are very good. Continue reading
Recently I have been having intermittent power issues with my YongNuo YN-467 Nikon flash. It would power up then the power would just die, then power its self backup, and so on.
Yesterday I discovered the cause: the batteries. They weren’t flat, but too short! Continue reading
I have been looking into telephoto lenses recently and been trying to find a good ballance between cost, length, lens speed and quality.
In order to do this I have made a graphic showing the fields of view of various common focal lengths to help me work out just how long I need, rather than how long I want.
Field of view of focal lengths 200mm through 500mm
The bird is a crow (about the size of a small pigeon) taken at about 10-15m from the subject.
Bean bags are a popular form of support it seems, and a lot of suppliers will happily relieve you of about £15-25 for one, for what is basically some fabric and rice or lentils. I was sure I could make one for far less, so I did.
Initial investigations showed that camouflage fabric was stupid money in the small volumes sold online. A visit to a local miltary suppliers and I had the perfect bean bag kit. The large mess bag from HM Supplies was the perfect size (12×10″) and only £2.50. This is made from water proofed nylon fabric so I can put this down with out worrying that it will soak up loads of water.
After getting my D50 I was pretty skint but still needed a bag. After a bit of hunting past all the normal cheap bags I found one by UK supplier Red Snapper that seemed to fit the bill.
The verso bag offers 2 modes, it can be used as either a back pack or a shoulder bag. This combined with the low price made it stand out from the crowd and was quickly ordered.
I have spent a few evenings working on a new plug-in for creating star trails in GIMP. When asking about stacking star trails the common answer seems to be use startrails.de. This is great until you don’t run windows. The other option is a photoshop action floating about the web. But this means Photoshop and my trial is about to run out. So decided to write a plug-in for the gimp that does what the other 2 pieces of software do.
When I got my D50 it came with the standard Nikon strap. This quickly got on my nerves, I either had the camera bouncing about on my chest but easy to use, or comfortably at my side but a pain to use. Naturally I began to look into sling straps.
After looking at the Black Rapid and Sun sniper I wasn’t overly keen on the tripod mount as it meant I couldn’t leave my quick release plate in place. After a few questions I went for the Op/Tech Utility sling and ordered from WEX for about £35 delivered, which is also cheaper than both the other 2 alternatives.
Continue reading