mathilde_mupe

<p>Just to let you know;<br>

I found the Osram Sunnyboy secondhand. This tiny flash shouted from the pile of junk; Take me home!<br>

It is indeed smallest flash I ever have seen; Less than 1/2 sized cigarette box.<br>

According to internet sources; trigger voltage is 188V too much for most average digital camera's. My camera specs only state that x-sync can handle up to 250V (no word about hotshoe voltage) . To be safe I use it with x-sync.<br>

Power supply 1 AAA battery.<br>

Weight with battery 54 gram.<br>

Weight with battery and x-sync shoe 65 gram.<br>

No ttl, no intensity. The only user preference with this flash is on/off, (not even a strobe test button :-)</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I would say leave the Oly in the bag and use the Canon 20D with 50mm.<br>

You can try to use a little bit of flash to fill in dark shadows in front of stage...But if your are not familiar with ballancing flash output power and camera this may be the wrong way. And what's more important anything that is between you and the subject in the photo frame will catch much more light and so it can happen that stage monitors become subject because too bright.<br>

Stage performance has everything to do with the ambiance, so best thing is to adept to the shortcommings of stage light, pre-think when subject movesto better light and so on.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Thanks. This helped to narrow down my search. (And gave me some google on for Europe exotic brands).<br>

I will share my finds;</p>

<p>The most leightweight for Canon is Starblitz 120 mini 50 grams, gn 12. Alas no on flash regulation of output power.<br>

6 ~ 8 sec recycle time is a bit much. But he, the weight is cute with only 1 AA battery.</p>

<p>More interesting is Olympus FL 20, 74 gram, gn 20, 2 xAA and output power regulation 1/8 upto full, manual and auto. I like this one but no specs on Olympus hotshoe contact points.<br>

Yes it should be usabable with a bit of isolation and 2 contact connection. No info of recharge time.<br>

Does anyone have a link with Olympus hotshoe electronic information?</p>

<p> Sunpak PF20XD , 100 grams, 2 x AAA sounds also good with 1/32 upto full power regulation . But I'm not sure if this is only a slave...Anyone an answer on this?</p>

<p>I'm a bit suprised that flash device industry is so conservative. There is a great choice of small / ultra small slave flashes with output regulation. But somehow they do'nt dare to publish such as 1' flash for pro gear? There are no hotshoe conversion 'bla' thingies between Sony/ Olympus / Canon/ Nikon and so on.<br>

Well 2 contacts will work for me.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Pro camera like 5D and others lack an internal flash. That's pro. And that also ignores the fact that build in flash is great to make daylight street photo's 'pop'.</p>

<p>Since I'm interested in buying pro gear I will also need and external flash, usable to be all the time on camera during long walks. It may be connected either by sync cable or hotshoe.<br>

I'm not interested in swivel heads, mega distance blazing light. Those I have gathering dust in a box.</p>

<p> A bit of light intensity control would be nice, either manual or e-ttl. Flash power maybe limited to 4 meters. Small is also important, because it is less impressive while shooting street life.</p>

<p>I found Sony had some ultra lightweight (52grams) Sony HVL-HFL1 for video and photo. Perfect for 5DII . Ofcourse it has Sony contacts and not Canon. I'm not afraid to tweak hardware but I doubt the possibility to make a conversion plug.</p>

<p>So any suggestion for a matchbox sized flash?<br>

Or suggestion for a matchbox sized flash that can be adjusted to sync contact?</p>

<p> </p>

Thanks Elliot. The test print images is somewhat like the test image I always use; A Zone system with below a smooth black white gradient strip (same widt as zonesystem steps). <BR>

Combining your approach and my gradient strip with ruler marker points and we have a killer test image. See file

I ran 6 test prints through the Canon i990 and it looks now near perfect. Trying the same on an Epson 1290 will take considerable more time and tests. As soon as I have some spare time I hope to do so, as this would also reveil if image data is affected by the curves filter.

<P>

Another point is why does everybody have to make their own curves or buy at a shop? There should be a place on the net were atleast foor mainstream printers and paper combinations, photoshop corrections would be available for download.

Mixing a dark and lighter layer is one way. The other way is to create an adjusment layer "selective color" and only set white colors to darken. Next you can patch the mask of that layer to reveal whites that should be lighter (in some cases recreate some depth in white mass).

Have there been Swedish/Scandinavian ba"lg camera's in the past?

Maybe we should set up a travelers pocket vocabulary for photographers with balg camera :-)

(With helpfull sentences like: Could you please advice me the best shop for glass negatives? Help, my bowel needs immediatly repair!)

Elliot, can you be more specific?

From what you say, I think you mean either; Create a curves adjustment layer to ommit some grey tones. Or flatten the whole image and create with curves red and green channels the colorfull counterpart to balance printer color abnormalities. The last one I tried, but it seems at best a good way to get rid of image noise (it trashes data).

Using the same curve layer under a 'satuartion =0' layer causes grey tones to shift a bit, which is not good for academic exact data.

My B/W print crisis forced me to ignore your sound and wise advice. Even the shop recommended me to wait atleast for a half year to see what the A3 version of Epson R800 would bring.

For sake of atleast improvement of printing speed I bought the Canon i990 (A4 version of the i9950, don't know the VS model name). Out of the box I printed one of my b/W test images and still saw some purple / green color abnormalities in a B/W gradient strip, however it less visible than with my Epson. After a minute the drying the colours settled. Compared to Epson photo 1290 print it is a hugh improvement.

Tweaking i990 driver color setings increases the improvement.

If you only look at mega pixels the 1D Mark II versus 10D is 4:3

In reality this means that on average (maximum print size depends on image subject) one can print A4 8"x12" with 10D and 10" x 16" on the mark II.

 

In reality it such differences are nothing compared to using good glass and best printer.

 

And I have seen 10D photos printed on A3 and it still looked good. But what has said before will also be your fate; Nothing beats large film sensors, so don't waste big money on 'minor' improvements.

A 'camp cotton ball' and linseed oil might just do. I don't know if Lexol is available in Europe...

 

I know from past experience with reguly polishing my shoes that some shoe polish, including silicon oil can be quite agressive to leather over time. Ofcourse I will not polish the bowel every week, but still it would be sad to shorten the life due to over enthousiastic renewal treatment. I hope the camera will last me many years.

Thanks you spared me the bummer of buying the wrong printer for the job. It's a pitty HP's don't make the best A3 printers for color, otherwise it would be a no brainer.

Recently a Ica Lloyd came into my possesion. It is still in good

shape and I want to use it.

However it might be wise to take care of the leather balg after 80

years. What would you recommend as non aggresive, smoothing for this

leather?

 

Thanks in advance,

 

Mathilde

Currently I'm using an Epson 1280 /1290. I'm satisfied with the

colors but B/W turns out horrible. What happens is far more serious

than metamerism; Each grey tone has a different composition of inks

and dither pattern. The color cast in end result depends on the most

used grey level. Thus a photo taking in a street by daylight turns

out pink and the same photo taken at night turns out green.

Not good if this kind of photo combinations is needed for a serie.

 

The option using only black ink is not fine enough at 2880 dpi for

serious photo presentation.

 

So now I'm on the look-out for a different printer. The Canon

Bubblejet i9950 has a much finer dot spray. Is it possible to set the

print driver to use only the black ink?

And how do B/W prints made with this printer look?

Any metamerism?

Longlivety of prints?

(And is it possible to print on paper roll panorama's ?)