I just bought a Canon 7D to complement my 5D…. I’ll keep you guys posted on its performance.

So far things I like:

• It can control my Canon Flashes off camera
• It has a “level” so it can help you keep things straight
• The viewfinder has an electronic grid “focus screen”, you can turn it on/off
• Feels solid like my 5D MKII

Tweet This Post

I use external battery packs with my Flashes so to extend the amount of shots and also shorten recycle times. I have two CP-E4 knockoffs I bought on eBay, I use them with my Ex580 II and Ex550.

When shooting inside high ceiling buildings like churches, or temples, and using E-TTL the flash will not receive much bounced light so it will try to compensate by boosting its power. This is really bad because if you dont notice it soon enough your flash can overheat and stop working or you can waste your batteries really quick. (If you’re rapid shooting)

Once simple thing that can help in this situation is a flash modifier like a stofen:

There are hundreds of light modifiers, the Stofen is good because its really small and even if pointed upwards it will send light out in every direction.

Tweet This Post

Lately I’ve been getting headaches, and always have itchy, bloodshot eyes… somedays I get headaches so severe that I have to leave work and go home and sleep for 2-3 hours. During those crazy headaches I see flashing in my eyes…  I self diagnosed it as: Ocular Migraines

So after reading many blogs and medical sites I decided to try “Computer Glasses” I purchased a set of Gunnars model “Catalyst Edge”… I just received them and so far so good I’ll report on them after a few days.

*** Update: this is the second day using these glasses and my eyes feel much better. (I’ll keep on reporting to make sure its not a placebo).

*** Update: Its now been a week and my eyes feel really good. They are not itchy or super tired. No headaches either. Gunnar is coming out with a new line of lenses that aren’t yellow for graphic artists. I might have to exchange these because I work on images a lot.

*** Update: Its now been almost a month and I cant live without them… I use them at work all day and really can use my PC without them. I no longer use eye drops there’s no need for them.

Tweet This Post

So I’ve had three USB 2.0 card readers that I use to transfer my photos to my computer. They are all USB2.0 readers. I have two of these:

And one of these:

They should be able to transfer my 25MB RAW images at card speed which is 30MB/s which would be great… the problem is that they are transferring at a rate of ~3MB/s which is like watching paint dry…

I was just about to order a $80 firewire reader when I tried plugin in my camera and trying its speed, well the camera did 30MB/s !!! so my cards are fine its these cheap readers that are at fault.

How do you guys transfer files back to your computers?

Tweet This Post

I created this image for a holiday card for the company I work for. Turns out my boss really didn’t like it so if anyone wants to use it here it is…
Click to see it fullsize.

Tweet This Post