POTW - Photowalk 37 of 52 - Killen's Pond - Manual / Flash and Umbrella, originally uploaded by dm|ze.
For this walk I wasn't exactly sure what to do. It was drizzling rain and on Sunday so I needed to do something. The rest of the week had been busy so this was the only time I had to do my photowalk. I decided to play with my flash and my new flash stand and umbrella. I took two of my kids to the park with me and we found a nice little place to take some shots without the rain interfering.
We had some fun doing this. Some of the shots came out better than others but it was really just to get me out and try some things. I see some places to improve already and I did touch most of the shots up with Gimp. I had some trouble getting my flash to fire (Olympus FL-36R
) and I was using the RF commander that is built in to the camera. I think I need more practice with placing the flash. I think you still need some line of site to get this to work properly. I recently bought a strobe to go a long with the flash stand and umbrella so that I could play with some portrait shots. I got a flash bracket with a cold shoe to be able to work with my FL-36R so that I could do on location lighting where power concerns are an issue. Originally I had planned to use the slave sync on it, but quickly found it to be unreliable. So I picked up a remote trigger device from cowboy studios. I had ordered the 4 channel with two receivers, the order came and there was only one receiver. I emailed them immediately to let them know of the error but it was late Friday night. First thing Monday morning they emailed me back with a tracking number. I got the new device and it only had two dip switches. So I emailed them again because the other two devices I had already received had four each. Then they realized that they had sent me the 16-channel remote and receiver the first time and the 4-channel receiver the second time. So they sent me another package with an additional 16-channel receiver. The 4-channel receiver will not work with the 16-channel trasmitter, so it just sits there for the time being. These work great with my studio strobe as they have the pc sync port and the 1/4" plug. No misfires or anything. But these won't work for my FL-36R because there is no pc sync port, so I got an adapter hoping that would solve my problems. It didn't, apparently the receiver and the flash just won't work together. So I am going to continue to try using the RF commander through the Olympus camera. If that continues to give me issues I will see what else I can do. It would be great if I could find an adapter to use on the hotshoe of the flash that would work with the trigger I already have. I really hate to buy another set and have one for studio strobe and one for hotshoe flashes. Any ideas feel free to contact me and let me know. I will say this though. Cowboy studio was great fixing the order that they screwed up but since then I've emailed them asking them if they had a hotshoe adapter to trigger my flash using the trigger I already purchased from them and they haven't responded. So customer service seems to be hit or miss with them. Maybe next time I'll just continue to stick with Adorama or somewhere that customer service is more consistant. I know that was a big rant of information but I wanted to let the readers know my experiences with these issues. I'm sure others can use some of this knowledge and there aren't as many of us that rock the Olympus systems compared to CaNikon users.On a side note I ended up missing the following week's photowalk. I was really busy with work and the kids heading back to school and then my sinuses starting giving me trouble. I spent this past (beautiful, and I mean beautiful) weekend stuck feeling miserable. I had planned to go to the Irish day at the Maryland Renaissance festival, but I guess I will visit that another weekend.
Thanks for reading and let me know your feedback and thoughts.
You can see more of the posted shots at www.flickr.com/photos/dmize/
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