Thanks to everybody who attended my talks!

I hope you enjoyed hearing them as much as I did giving them! Vancouver was a challenge, since I had to reschedule my post-volcano trip for May, and that put me right on the Victoria Day weekend when everybody was out, you know, camping and stuff. But London and Seattle had awesome turnouts.

Thanks to the Regent Street Apple Store (London), Chapters Granville and Broadway (Vancouver), and Ravenna Third Place Books (Seattle).

Blue-green and orange

An impassioned plea.

A darkly hidden cost of digital technology

It’s so easy to think about the nasty hidden costs of our computers and cameras. All the junk that gets swept under the carpet.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8528066.stm

CompactFlash version 5 hits crazy limits

The new CompactFlash spec was published today. Future cards will have a theoretical ceiling of a completely bonkers 144 petabytes, up from the current 137 GB.

http://www.compactflash.org/pr/100222cf5prs.pdf

And it was only a few years ago that you’d see CompactFlash cards with 256 MB of capacity and stuff.

I’m a photographer, not a terrorist

Does your EOS digital camera fire TTL flash units?

EDIT: Okay. I’ve got enough info, and it appears that the breakpoint was between the 400D and 450D, and the 30D and 40D. (in other words, consumer bodies before the 450D won’t fire TTL flash units at all, and the same goes for midrange bodies before the 40D)

Thanks!

—

I’m trying to compile a list of which digital EOS bodies will fire TTL only (E or EZ) flash units at full power, and which won’t fire them at all.

It appears that the digital 1 series units will fire TTL flash units at full power, whereas earlier digital consumer bodies don’t fire them at all. However, at some point it seems Canon enabled full-power firing on consumer bodies.

So. If you’ve got a digital EOS body and a TTL-only flash unit (ie: any flash unit that’s NOT an EX model), could you tell me if the camera will fire the flash unit in TTL mode? The flash unit mustn’t be in manual mode, since all EOS bodies will fire Speedlites in manual mode. It’s important to mention what camera model and Speedlite model you’re using.

Please post a comment or use the feedback form.

Thanks in advance!

Tales of wrongful arrest

From the USA to the UK, this sort of madness seems everywhere. More of this bizarre and sick idea that somehow a person with a camera is automatically a suspect terrorist. Unlike, presumably, every other person in the country with a camera phone.

http://monaxle.com/2009/07/08/section-44-in-chatham-high-street/

Two terabytes

I’ve just upgraded the hard drive in my primary computer. It’s now got a 2 terabyte 3.5″ drive.

The first computer I used had a 5.25″ floppy drive that stored a princely 143K. Now I’ve got a drive with 2 147 483 648 kilobyte capacity.

Crazy.

EOS 500D, Speedlite 270EX

Couple of new products from Canon: a new consumer model (Rebel T1i in the US) with many of the features of the EOS 50D, including HD video, and a new low-end flash unit.

The 270EX is sort of a funny one - it’s like a resurrected Speedlite 300EZ from the days of yore. It adds E-TTL metering and the ability to tilt upwards but takes away flash head zooming (you can manually zoom to one of two positions), a test light, and an autofocus assist light. It’s this last which is a bit annoying. Instead of a red LED you get the nice stuttering blasts of light from the main tube.

It doesn’t have wireless capabilities. Interestingly, it has control over manual output, but the goofy thing is there are no manual controls on the device itself - manual output works only with those EOS cameras which support Speedlite control via the menu system.

EOS 500D/Rebel T1i.

Speedlite 270EX.

Catch a mouse with flash

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2009/03/building-better-mousetrap.html

Cute little deermouse, too.