Category: Photography

Limerick Camera Club Photographer of the Year Award

I just received official word that I’ve won the Photographer of the Year award at Limerick Camera Club for the 2010/2011 season.

Here’s a selection of images that placed throughout the year and all added to the tally of points. Continue reading “Limerick Camera Club Photographer of the Year Award”

Eye-Fi Wireless SD card

I recently got my hands on a very clever little device (and it IS very little) calle the Eye-Fi X2 Pro 8GB SD card. What this looks like is a standard SD memory card that slots into your digital camera. What’s clever about it is that it contains Wifi functionality that will wireless transmit your pictures from the camera as you take them. It’s amazing that they can pack that much functionality into a package that small. Continue reading “Eye-Fi Wireless SD card”

Workflow Tip – Fast cards & Fast readers

Here’s something that might be of interest, and will help speed up some parts of your workflow.

Get a faster memory card, and the means to get the images onto your PC as quick as possible.
I recently ordered a couple of 600x Duracell 8Gb Compact flash cards from 7DayShop.com….
They give a read speed of 90MB/sec. and are only £20.99 for 8Gigs. That’s great value. Continue reading “Workflow Tip – Fast cards & Fast readers”

DIY Intervalometer for Time-lapse videos

(See edit below regarding DSLRBot. A slightly more expensive solution, but quite a bit better…)

Recently I was awe-struck by a Time-lapse video by Terje Sorgjerd I saw which was shot around El Teide on Gran Canaria early in 2011. Looking around on the internet, I saw various solutions for time-lapse, including some very fancy rigs for moving the camera as it’s shooting the images. What I needed was something that could trigger my dSLR camera to take an image at regular intervals over a few minutes up to a few hours. The camera already has a port for a remote switch, so I needed some way to trigger that at regular intervals. There are solutions available as cheap as €50 on e-bay, so I wanted to see if I could do it a lot cheaper than that. Continue reading “DIY Intervalometer for Time-lapse videos”

The Shuttersnitch Proxy

What the heck is “The Shuttersnith Proxy?” I hear you ask! Well, Shuttersnitch is an excellent application for the iPad that allows you to view images as they are sent to it from a Wifi enabled camera. It listens for incoming images, then displays them on the iPad, allowing you to zoom in, tag & rate the images as they are received. This is ideal in a wireless environment where your camera can send images wirelessly to the iPad, such as the Canon 5D Mark II when used the an WFT-E4 wireless grip. Continue reading “The Shuttersnitch Proxy”

Real-Time Photo Reviewing (Tethered Shooting)

I recently did a shoot where I was shooting macro shots of precious gems. Each shot needed to be reviewed for focus, clarity, dust spots, etc before moving on to the next gem. The preview screen at the  back of my Canon EOS 5D Mark II is normally a great screen, but just didnt cut it in this situation, when more than one person needs to look at an image to approve it or bin it. I needed to be able to get the images onto a full screen device quickly for preview. So, I looked into various forms of previewing images on a full screen device (PC, laptop) as they are being taken, from card swapping to usb tethering, to wireless tethering. Here’s the list, followed by a description of each method with the pros and cons of each. Continue reading “Real-Time Photo Reviewing (Tethered Shooting)”

Evening Drive to the Clare Coast

Well, the evenings are getting longer, and sun is setting around 6:25 these days. With this in mind, I had a quick drive up to the Clare coast to see what kind of time I’d have on the coast to grab a few shots before going home for my dinner. I left work at 5:25, and by 6:15 I was parking at the beach near Quilty. The sun was just about to go down behind a bank of clouds, but I managed to grab this shot before it disappeared completely. Continue reading “Evening Drive to the Clare Coast”

DIY Double Flash Clamp (under €5)

I was browsing around Woodies DIY today, and spotted the following clamps for sale in the bargain basement bin at €2.99 each. The spring was strong, and the plastic seemed like the good quality, hard wearing type. So I purchased a couple with some DIY strobist work in mind…

I noticed that the plastic jaws did not have a lot of grip:

so I super-glued some bits of bicycle inner tube to them:

Next, onto the real reason for the purchase, the double flash mount. This consisted of a simple tube bolted onto one of the handles of the clamp.

The copper tube has a bit of timber jammed into it so the tube would not collapse when brolly/strobe holders are screwed onto it. A simple drill hole in the clamp handle, and a drill hole throuhg the copper pipe, with a 30mm bolt and wingnut to hold them together. All done. The Result:

They’re probably not as strong as the Manfrotto clamps, and would struggle to hold a flash out horizontally, but the have no problem holding two strobes in the position of the image above, and would have no problem hanging from something. Not bad for under a fiver….