PhotographyBanzai.com

A group of people I know from the convention scene went back to an abandoned church in Gary, Indiana recently. This was a great opportunity to try out some off-camera flash, so I went all the way and bought another Cactus V5 and a middle-weight tripod for a setup I was planning. Here are some highlight photos from the excursion:  Here is the lighting setup: The strobist lighting setup consists of: 2x Yongnuo YN460-II flash units Custom Brackets CB-Mini flash bracket 1x Cactus V5 trigger A flash extension wire (has a hotshoe on both ends) A Manfrotto MKC3-H01 tripod The flash extension takes place of a second trigger or using the optical slave method. Both of which would have either a downfall in expense or usability.  The optical slave method could cause issues with orientating the flash heads away from each other and, of course, having two triggers would mean more cost and more batteries to deal with. I used this setup most of the time and it worked quite well. With cosp...

I needed to get some fresh air, so I took some macro photos around the house today. My favorite thing about macro photography is that you can find interesting things everywhere because the small world isn’t seen with our naked eyes. I might be trying to make this a consistent effort moving forward. This time I used a slightly different setup. The Sigma flash was used in wireless mode in tandem with the built-in flash to trigger the Sigma. I positioned the flash to the left and as close to the fully extended lens as possible to maximize light on the subject. The Ant buffet. They were snacking on some cat food. What that exactly is I don’t know, but it’s interesting. The lens and teleconverter setup can produce very pleasing results. This fly allowed me to have a little photo session. It even appeared to mimic my movements as I bobbed up and down trying to get it in focus.

I’m thinking about what to bring to the “Otakon” Anime convention. As this is going to be a big trip for us, I wanted to bring my A-game. The K-5 body is still MIA, but I wanted to have two camera bodies available. I purchased a used *ist D camera body. That blurred coin in the image is a nickel, not a quarter! I just had the camera delivered a few days ago. Really great. The small size is amazing. Guess which lens I instantly put on it? Yep… the DA 40mm f2.8 Limited. The grip is better than the old *ist DS I had, but it could have been better with some extra room for finger tips. Surprising number of advanced controls and settings. Three custom setting saves. Timer button, green button, flash control button, af button… I started by turning off all of the extras such as noise reduction and instant preview. With my 16gb CF cards a single RAW writes in around 9 seconds based on one test. Once the image is written, I can press the review button and the image comes up instantly. While I...