A new goal: One photo a day. Every day. I might need to rethink my gallery situation before I start this project. Currently, there are nearly 20,000 photos in my gallery. One of these days I swear I am going to label them all. I suppose I will stick with PHP Gallery, as it has gotten me this far, but I need to rethink the presentation strategy.
Let the day of photography begin. I was really pleased with how my shots were turning out. In particular, I got a great shot of a ball passing through a tire during Obstacle course. Then, during egg toss - one of the Theta Chi groups kept dropping the egg but it never cracked. Finally, the egg smashed when the guy caught it and I caught the shot very well - the egg splatter flying everywhere.
After egg toss was the Unity event where I got some great blackmail quality shots of some friends bouncing on balls :). I particpated in Pyramid - which Phikap placed 5th in. Not bad!
I ran up into Thwing and caught some shots of the International Student Association Dinner and show. The food was *un-freaking-believable*. Indian, Mexican, Turkish, you name it - they had it - and it was great. I took some great photos of the after dinner show. I ended up using exclusively the 135mm f/2.0 prime and the 50mm f/1.4 prime. No flash. This worked out beautifully. I set the mode to shutter priority, except during the juggling act when they turned out the lights for some glow in the dark acts. At this point, I went into completely manual mode and manual focus. I need to improve my manual focus skills. It’s *freaking* hard with a lens as sensitive as the 50mm prime. A single hair length is the difference between in focus and a blur.
Apparently my strength-o-meter idea wasn’t that novel. In fact, I think the total count of chapters that built a strength-o-meter was five. Damn.
However, *nobody* built a strength-o-meter banner that was 12*sqrt(3) feet high. One might say, “But the rules state that the banner must fit inside a 12×12x12 foot cube.” And that person would be correct. However, nobody but Phikap considered the fact that the cube could be positioned such that the banner extends along the interior diagonal hypotenuse of the cube. Brian drew up autoCAD diagrams to prove that our banner which towered over 14 feet high into the sky would, in fact, fit inside a 12×12x12 cube.
We didn’t place, but we were happy. We didn’t place in variety show as well. I had a fun time shooting photos. I need to stop using the 70-200 and start exclusively using the 135 prime. I think the shots would have came out much better had I done that and never use a flash. I also need to get a monopod one of these days.
Last Thursday night I fixed my broken Canon 580EX Flash. The customer service representative that sold me the replacement part told me it was ‘user servicable’. The part was a replacement front panel to the flash which included the auto focus sensor.
After removing the two top screws hidden by the flash head, and then the bottom two screws at the base of the front panel, the two screws holding the camera mount, and the screw hidden by the rubber panel, I began to delicately pry the unit apart. Delicate didn’t work, so I forced it.
The front panel ripped off and exposed an array of ribbon wires and dangerously sized capacitors. There was a final screw hidden inside under the camera mount holding the front panel on. I was unable to remove this screw with even the smallest jeweler’s screw driver. I ended up taking a pair of pliers and ripping the plastic out and then using a pair of metal cutters to crush the screw. While doing this, I shocked myself on (thankfully) one of the lesser sized capacitors.
User serviceable my ass. After reassembling the unit, I had little hope in it working again. I hooked it up to my camera and, by some miracle, it worked.
If you have been following my photography, you might have noticed the last week of pictures haven’t quite all been in focus. Alas, this is somewhat my own fault, but only because I took horrible care of my equipment. My flash unit got slightly smashed causing the autofocus on the unit to go haywire. I am not sure when this happened, but it must have happened because of the way I pack my equipment into a makeshift camera bag that in a former life served as an insulated cooler. I received the replacement part this evening and will hopefully be back up and running with ultrasharp shots by tonight. (more…)