Feeling rather sad today, as today should have been our 3rd Anniversary, but as most of you know, Alice and I are separating.

Not a good day :o(

I have had quite a good evening this evening, because I’ve been building my high speed flash trigger kit that I got from HiViz

The kit is good value, and I went for the option with solderless breadboard so that I can’t make a pigs ear of the soldering.  I went for the version with the Schmitt Photogate and delay which works out at about £12 with the current exchange rate.

I picked up a hotshoe to sync lead adaptor from my local camera shop for £6.99 and followed the instructions for connecting the output cable from the trigger to the sync cord.

I managed to fit the delay circuit together easily, but found that I’d been slightly generous with my connecting cables and didn’t have enough left to finish the trigger circuit.

So I’m off to Maplins tomorrow to get some more solid core cable to finish it all off.

Hopefully I will be able to have a play with the trigger tomorrow to get some shots of water droplets.

Unfortunately today is another day when I’ve been feeling completely down and fed up, and really didn’t feel like taking photographs, but the idea was to get me to focus to keep my mind off the separation and stuff, so here I go.

Firstly, I tried to take a slow shot of a record revolving on a turntable, but couldn’t get anything that I was happy with, so I tried a different approach.

I pulled out a blacklight (UV) and some glow in the dark stars that I had.  I arranged the stars on the turntable, and then set them off at 45 rpm.

The exposure was obviously very long (30 sec)as the room was virtually dark, but I was quite pleased with the result.

Today I’m feeling completely pissed off, bitter and resentful, so I’m, afraid that todays image isn’t up to much.

Basically a 1 sec exposure taken whilst I was walking along the deserted platform at Bracknell station. Quite like the light trails, but thats about it :o(

Nuff said!

I went out for a drink with a couple of the lads from work tonight, so only had my compact camera with me.

I decided that the floodlit Minster church in Reading made an ok image, so thats what I’ve got for today.

Today, Alice pointed out that there was a nicely posing garden spider outside the back door. There wasn’t much light left, so I had to act quickly.

The spider was in a less than ideal position as it was in front of a white background which had dead plants in front of it, which the web was attached to, and prevented me from placing a coloured card behind the subject.

In the end, I chose a manual exposure to underexpose the background and attached a snoot to the flashgun. The snoot gives a tight beam of light with a sharply defined edge, and by aiming the flash downwards, I was able to light the spider and web, but throw the background into deep shadow.

I’m quite pleased with the result of my efforts, and all achieved in just over 5 minutes :o)

Today, I wanted to experiment with the 2nd curtain sync function on my flashgun, so really wanted to get something with movement, and as my Newton’s Cradle was laying about, I thought I’d try that.

Getting an exposure I was happy with was completely trial and error as I was using the camera on manual mode, dialling flash exposure compensation into the speedlite and using a homemade snoot on the flash to control the spread of light.

In the end, this was my favourite, as the highlights create some nice arcs showing the path of the steel balls when they were in motion.

I got to the end of today, and have to confess that I was at the stage where I really couldn’t be arsed (I find that packing your belongings into boxes tends to do that to you, well me at least).

I tried several different angles and compositions, but in the end decided to opt for the pencils on a diagonal and use a wide aperture to keep only ght tip of the front pencil in focus, progressively blurring the rest, as I far too frequently opt for maximum depth of field.

The shot was lit using a daylight balanced desk lamp on the RHS, and my speedlite on the left to lift the shadows slightly.

I thought that I would have a bit of a play with my flashgun again today.

I got this crackle glass tumbler in The Pier and decided that it would look good against a black velvet backdrop, lit from the top with the flashgun and snoot to create a tightly controlled pool of light with sharp falloff into shadow.

The lighting works, and the glass positively glows where it is cracked, but unfortunately the sides of the glass which are uncracked disappear, so I’ll be keeping my eyes open for a glass that is cracked all over.

I was feeling a bit fed up today, and having read a lot of positive things about the new Canon EOS 40D, thought that I’d pop into town to see if I could have a play with one.

Jessops in central Reading had a couple still in stock and let me have a play around with one.

I wanted to get the 30D instead of the 400D last year, but as I needed lenses, couldn’t justify the extra cost, and I have been waiting for the much rumoured 40D ever since.

All I can say is “I Want One Now” and if the money had been in the bank today, I’d have walked out with one.

The focussing is incredibly swift, its really comfortable to hold without resorting to the additional battery grip (unlike the 400D), and the Live View function that allows you to compose using the rear LCD screen is certainly impressive, though how often I would use it is debatable.

Its quite a bit bigger and heavier than the 400D, so I would probably keep hold of my current camera as a bacjup when travelling, but my mind is made up and the money is spent before its even in the bank.

Its very expensive compared to the now heavily discounted 30D at £839 body only street price or £799 online price, so I think that I’ll hold off until the new year so that there is time to work out any early issues, and see what the price is doing then.