As I write this, I do believe I do have a couple more posts to do about the Winter Olympics here in Vancouver. I hope that I can get out and see what is going on with the Paralympics too, but in the mean time I did get outside today for a walk around our beloved Lost Lagoon.

It’s been a little over 2 weeks since I have actually taken photos of birds (at least that I can remember anyway). Though today I managed to run into a little character whose noises I will now be able to pick out on my walks.

The Anna’s Hummingbird. As I was walking around the Lagoon I kept hearing this clicking noise. I knew there had been a hummingbird nest nearby before and as I searched around I finally spotted her. She was flying around creating a ruckus with her clicking. It wasn’t until a little later did I notice she was trying to drive away to crows that were hanging out nearby.

One thing I remember from last season is that hummingbirds (if you’re near the nest) will come back ever 15-20 minutes to feed their young. According to one of the local naturists/photographers in the area that I ran unto, this particular female had her offspring a week earlier than last year and she was still around the nesting area.

It’s amazing seeing these little birds darting about, hovering and then pretty much vanishing. To see them still enough to take photos is a pretty patient thing to do. I did manage to capture her in flight, but those photos were back-lit and you can only see her silhouette. Perhaps I’ll play around with those and see if I can bring out any detail.

If you want to see the rough location of where I saw this female Anna’s Hummingbird you can check out the map below:

View Larger Map

I wonder what else Spring will bring to Lost Lagoon and the surrounding Stanley Park area.

When Robyn and I arrived at where the Canadian Mint was set up there was already a decent sized line. We arrived 1 hour before they opened their doors hoping that would be early enough to get inside before the appointment Robyn had to get to at 10AM.

Yes the lineup eventually double-backed on itself. A second lineup started but I was later informed that much shorter line was for the guided tour around the lower section of the exhibit and not for the Olympic Medal room.

Time was ticking away and we weren’t moving really fast, I decided to go up to the door and ask for the PR/Media Manager, after all, I do have press credentials.

A friendly and informative lady by the name of Crystal came and I briefly introduced who I was, for whom I worked for and what I was looking to do. She took us up to the Medal room and started explaining the whole process in detail to us. It’s truly amazing the time, design and effort that went into these Medals. Each Paralympic and Olympic medal is unique, no two medals are the same.

I felt a bit rushed taking photos as they had a group people leave and another group of people come in. At any time there seemed to be 10-12 people in each group.

The above two photos are of the artwork that goes on to the Medals themselves. There were also two binders with each medal that has been created document, sort of like a birth certificate, or certificate of authenticity.

Robyn was ecstatic to see the medals and even hold them. It was her highlight of the Olympics, to hold the very item sought out by the over 2500 athletes that participate in the Olympics. I on the other hand wasn’t as excited to hold them, but if you did get the chance to hold them, wow are they heavy! Each medal consists of roughly 94% Sterling Silver too. Yup, the Gold Medal isn’t solid gold, darn eh?

Various people came in, handled the medals (with little white gloves) and left. Crystal was saying that they were expecting around 4000 people per day but were getting closer to 8000 people per day visiting the Canadian Mint exhibit. She also mentioned that with the few final days of the Olympics, they were expecting much more people. I heard up to 7 hours people were waiting in line to have a chance to view and hold the medals.

Above are the Paralympic Gold and Silver Medals. Not sure why I missed the Bronze Medal but it wasn’t on purpose. Each medal also features Braille on it, which mentions what sport it is being awarded to.

Yes, they staff on hand even told us (as well as each group) that we could not bite the Medals.

Anyway, I’m not happy about the quality of photos I took, remember I am my biggest critic. I felt a bit awkward and rushed to take the photos. Though I guess I can be happy I got to go see them, experience them and at least take photos of them right?

As both Robyn and I were pressed for time we could not view the rest of the Canadian Mint exhibit which included some pretty unique items such as the million dollar coin.

**Updated: Looks like the Medals will be staying for the Paralympic event as well. Good to know!

Now Keith and I only stayed for Heat 3 as we wanted to get down to the village from the Whistler Sliding Centre before the massive crowd would make their way down after the final heat, but we did enjoy the sledding we saw and the people while we were up there.

Sled # 7: Team Canada went to win the Bronze medal in the final heat. Lyndon Rush, Chris Le Bihan, David Bissett and Lascelles Brown zooming past us at nearly 140 km/hour. Even at 1/2000th of a second, it looks like I wasn’t fast enough to stop the movement.

Sled # 2: Team Germany went to win the Silver medal in the final heat. Andre Lange, Alexander Roediger, Keven Kuske and Martin Putze.

Sled #1: Team USA went to win the Gold medal in the final heat. Steven Holcomb, Steve Mesler, Curtis Tomasevicz and Justin Olsen.

Keith and I did watch the final heat back at the Alberta Hospitality building in which the above sledders placed their respected positions. It was crazy close for both of the Team Canada’s sleds to appear on the podium but at the end, only 1 would gain a medal (Bronze). What an exciting final heat, but the heat we watched (the one before the final) was pretty cool and had the crowd going quite a bit too!

The cool thing about photographing Bobsled (or do you say Bobsleigh?) is that unlike luge or skeleton you can hear the sleds from a much further distance away as they come down the track. This makes it easier to set up for the shot. A great tip when doing something like this is to keep both your eyes open. One eye (preferably the left) looking through the viewfinder and the right eye looking out at the track section ahead of the camera. A bit awkward at first but you do it enough it’s pretty easy, I use it quite a lot actually when I don’t want to miss action around me.

People with little point and shoot cameras were having hit and miss with their photos, but when they got a sled in frame and not fuzzy, they were excited to share it with everyone around them. Even the people shooting it with their camera phones (I saw Blackberries, iPhones, Nokias and more) were able to capture some of the action. I even saw one fellow who was using the latest iPod Nano to capture photos, though I don’t know if he managed to capture a sled. There was one lady (she perhaps had one to many beers) supposedly from InStyle Magazine wanted our photos. For what though? I don’t know. I wonder how she felt the next morning?

The crowd was pretty crazy too, not Hockey Gold Medal (Yay Canada!!) crazy but excited as the sleds whizzed down the tracks.

Come to think of it, while walking around the Whistler Village and around the WSC (Whistler Sliding Centre) I did notice a majority of American Flags people were wearing. Though if you walked around the streets of Vancouver you would definitely notice the Red and White of our colours more.

Poor Brit, completely smashed as he made his way back up the sliding centre to watch the 4th and final heat. I wonder how many he has had since before that double-fisting action.

So many people were dressed up, especially in some sort of Bobsled/Bobsleigh configuration. Everyone had smiles, everyone was taking photos with everyone else, it was a truly energetic place to be.

Now if w can only get up to the Paralympic events happening around the Lower Mainland in March, though I have heard a lot of the events are sold out.

With the last day of the Winter Olympics being today, I should I have some time to upload and write more about my experience during the games. With the Paralympics starting soon in March, I’ll be back outside with camera in hand to experience that too. Hopefully Robyn and I can get up to see some of the Paralympic events too, especially the Alpine!

Recently (yesterday), I was invited along with a buddy of mine, to be guests on the Travel Alberta train up to Whistler and what a great way to get up to Whistler too. I have not been on a train since I was little and living on Vancouver Island.

We embarked on our little adventure very early in the morning;4:50AM. In the rain, we booked it up Georgia Street to catch the appropriate bus at the Shangra-La Hotel, which then took us over to North Vancouver to where we would me up with the Rocky Mountaineer and the very friendly Travel Alberta people.

We boarded and found seats next to a couple from Australia who were freelance accredited photographers for the Olympics (Jeff and Courtney Crow). They turned out to be awesome people and company for this trip and shared many stories of their combined 35 years in sports photography.

The train pulled away and we were given the safety speech not long before the first drinks where handed out. It was a bit too early for alcohol (according to some government law) but we did cheers to our departure and the experiences we would have through out the day.

It was raining and quite dark so there were not many photo ops along the way until we reach the Squamish area. Keith and I had a great time explaining the various areas the train traveled through to our new Aussie friends who were amazed at how beautiful it was along the coastline even in the early hours of the morning. Before we knew it, they started serving breakfast and it was a treat. For those food-crazed people, I did not get any photos of the food as there wasn’t much room to bring out the camera with the four of us at our table, but it was good and I was looking forward to the dinner on the way back.

After breakfast we headed back upstairs to where Jon (VP of Marketing) had a special gift for us. In a really cool way of presenting the people with media information, Travel Alberta loaded up their contacts, photos, videos, notes and more into Apple iPod Touch 8GB units and handed them out.

This went over extremely well and what a really cool way to give people all the information they might need (and more) at their finger tips? With all the information they put onto the iPod Touch, there is still about 7GB of room left! They even had laser etched their logo and URL on the back of the iPods. Makes me wonder how much money they spend on all these iPods as they have been operating the train each and every day of the Olympics.

The sun started to rise and give light to the dreary morning we were experiencing. Though the weather was not dampening anyone spirits. The views from the rails along the Sea to Sky are breath-taking. I am envious of John and Rebecca’s trip with Travel Alberta as they had a blue bird day.

We talked to numerous people from Travel Alberta including Maureen, Noelle and Susan. They were all great in providing any answers we had questions for and talking about things we did not know.

On a cool note we also had a great talk with the CEO of the Calgary Stampede about the role of photographers covering the Stampede. We also talked to him a bit about social media including twitter and applications for the iPhone (which is turning out to be a great side project for me). If you have never been to a Calgary Stampede I would highly recommend you adding it to your Bucket List. Even though I only spend 1 day, many moons ago, it was enjoyable (sans the company I was with). I would love to go back and photography the 10 day long event! The rodeo, chuck-wagons, festivals, the people, all of it! And to think, it is only a 60 minute flight away from Vancouver!

Along the route up the Checkamus River we were given two options if we did not have plans once we reached Whistler; to see the Alpine events in Creekside or to check out the 4-man Bobsled event at the Whistler Sliding Centre. Keith and I opted for the Bobsled, or is it Bobsleigh? Anyway, there were reports that the rain was to let up and the clouds were to break.

After walking around Whistler Village for a little bit we headed up to the Sliding Centre to check out the 4-man Bobsled event. I’m not going to bore you with countless photos of the sleds themselves, as I will be writing a post for that at a later time. At this time though, I will have to mention there were some pretty interesting characters as Keith and I watched as the first run of the event unfolded.

We headed back down to the Village after the first run as we didn’t want to face the crowds that would be created with having over 12,000 people at this particular event. We were told the event was sold out  and I was told at an earlier time, that the capacity of the Whistler Sliding Centre is around 12,000. With a crowd like that we did not want to miss the bus back to Creekside to get back on our train home.

When we got back down to the village we rounded the corner of the Longhorn, CTV has a little building setup for when they do news casts and interviews with various people. There was a big crowd that had gathered there and in the chair being interviewed was Usher. He was slotted to perform at the LiveCity Whistler venue that evening. He definitely got the crowd all riled up too.

We continued onward towards the Whistler Golf Course (this was the home of the Alberta Hospitality area). Along the way another show was entertaining the crowds at the plaza near the Amsterdam Pub and Araxi. They got also go the crowd to participate by dancing, which a lot of people part-took in. The vibe at Whistler is (to me anyway) bigger than that in Vancouver.

We arrived back at the Alberta Hospitality centre were Keith and I enjoyed some complimentary snacks and beverages. We watched the second run of the 4-man Bobsled event where Canada won Bronze. We then watched the Men’s Curling and Canada won a Gold for that. As of right now we have 13 Gold medals! Everyone is hoping the hockey game today gives us our 14th Gold medal!

4:30PM rolled around and we boarded the buses back to Creekside and hopped on to the same train which would take us back down to Vancouver. We were scheduled to leave at 6PM but it seems the last bus was late on departing so we were a bit late in pulling out. We enjoyed the free drinks and awesome conversation nonetheless.

We met back up with Courtney and Jeff who had a great relaxing time. They both have said this has been the most relaxing Olympics they have attended and that the trip up to Whistler was much needed and enjoyable. Courtney also mentioned a website she runs called ExplorerGirls.com. A website in which girls and woman who are into travel and an active sporting lifestyle can connect and share experiences.

As the train pulled out from the Creekside station, we headed down to the bar area to catch the Bronze medal hockey game. Being on a train the live feed was delayed for web but also the signal would cut out here and there but it was great to watch it.

We were served various appetizer type food but it was most excellent, I really enjoyed the Braised Elk. The AAA grade Alberta beef is never a bad thing either.

Eventually further along out route back to Vancouver we were in for some great entertainment by Brett Kissel. Everyone was singing and really enjoying his performance. What a great way to end a fun day. Let’s hope he gets a gig during the upcoming Calgary Stampede!

Many thanks to the people at Travel Alberta for the experience and your hospitality! How I have a craving to head up to Lake Louise and the Calgary Stampede and the many other events and beautiful areas you offer!

You can check out the other photos I am sharing online during my Olympic experience over on Flickr too!

In the past few days I have gotten to take photos of Maelle Ricker, Alexandre Bilodeau, visited various areas of Vancouver and enjoyed what has been happening in our city. Today though we checked out NBC’s Today Show that is being shot from top of Grouse Mountain.

We started our morning at 2 AM and picked up our friend Keith to head over to Grouse in time to receive the NBC tickets. NBC gives out 100 tickets on a first come first serve basis which allows people to access the mountain without having to pay. Though once you’re up there they also give first come first serve access to the outdoor section of NBC’s today show as well, so if there are some big names to attend expect a large crowd of people.

Our experience was fairly calm. We found out that Robyn and I could use our Grouse Ski Pass to access the mountain without issues. Once we boarded the Skyride up to the top of Grouse the sun was still down. Vancouver tinkles pretty well when there are no clouds. Grouse does have one of the best views of our city.

After about and hour wait or so, NBC started getting ready for their show. They did some segments from within the lodge at Grouse but more of it seemed to be outside around the fire pit.

Robyn’s friend from Oregon, Heidi, was excited to be on the Today Show, so much that during the weather segment with Stephanie Abrams, Heidi was asked about holding one of the Olympic torches at Birks on Granville Street.

Periodically they (anchors of the NBC Weekend Today show) would come out and talk about various events happening around Vancouver. One segment we found quite interesting was when they brought out Liberty, a female Bald Eagle.

Seeing an eagle up close is pretty cool. I’ve seen a Juvenile Bald Eagle within 15 feet, but being with 5 feet of an adult is neat. I did learn something new, female bald eagles are larger than their male counter parts. Liberty is roughly 12 lbs, seems like a big turkey eh?

There wasn’t any winter athletes being interviewed this morning. We did miss out on Shaun White being interviewed the morning before. I’m sure the weekday Today show will go back to featuring winter olympians but either way it was pretty cool to see how such a popular show is set up, coordinating and executed.

If you haven’t been up to Grouse during the Olympics, I recommend seeing the sunrise and checking out the Today show too. Remember, the first 100 people at 3:30AM get free lift tickets up the Skytram so attend the live taping of the show.

On a quick note, Keith and I checked out the wolf enclosure that Grouse has near the base of the mountain. I heard that they used to be in the same enclosure as the Grizzle Bears but had a small incident so they decided on separating them.

You can check out the rest of my Olympic experience photos over on Flickr too!

Yesterday was a beautiful day here in Vancouver. The sun was shining, the clouds were late in rolling in and people buzzed around the West End. Yes, they are still trucking in snow for Cypress for their Olympic Events. They were trucking it in from Manning Park, but now they are trucking it in from another location. Anyway….

The lighting was pretty good as the sun is higher in the sky these days. Doesn’t seem like winter though, but that’s ok, I was getting tired of the sun not being very high or out for very long. I do miss the snow though, we haven’t been able to hit the local mountains for ski/snowboarding as much as we did last year.

I’ve been working on my Bird In Flight photos. The Canon 7D helps me capture many more frames per second that my Canon XSi did and the results tend to show that. Now I just have to work on getting the sharpest photos I can and then experiment with using even higher shutter speeds to freeze the action better.

A female Common Merganser. They always seem to be smiling, even their male counterparts. Just the way their beak turns up I guess but it gives the photo a bit more personality. Usually at Lost Lagoon the light isn’t great and shadows tend to be cast over the birds. I was glad she swam into a brighter spot which helped bring out some more detail.

A juvenile Great Blue Heron. How do I know its a juvenile? I’ve read that the longer the feathers/hair on their front (chest) area the older they are. This guy didn’t have any, he was also a bit smaller than most of the herons I see. He flew in while I was feeding some ducks, stood around for a while and pulled out a couple of small fish. I just loved the lighting on the side of his body, along with the water’s ripples reflecting light.

Yup, more bird in flight shots. The more I feed the ducks, the more ducks come over to be fed. It’s a great way to set up for bird in flight shots too. Get the ducks all worked up by feeding them millet and the louder the commotion they make, the better chance of getting other ducks to fly in.

The cool thing about posting photos of birds is that the next time you go out after reading this post (or any of my bird posts) you’ll look at the birds and say, “Hey! I know that bird, it’s a such and such bird”. Well, at least I would like to think that you might say something like that!

Here’s hoping the clouds part and I’ll head back outside with my camera!

GM Place is slowly being converted over to Canada Hockey Place. They better hurry though with the games only 6 days away they need to get rid of the large General Motors Place signage that is currently still in place. I’m sure they will just plaster it with some sort of sign in the current Winter Olympic motive. The area around there is also pretty secured too with lots of Police on hand to help people in the right direction.

It’s fun to find all the variations of colours that the Olympic Rings are displayed in. I wonder if the Olympic Rings that are floating in Coal Harbour will be displayed again in all their colours and not just once single colour.

This is where that large Roberto Luongo sign was on GM Place.. err I mean Canada Hockey Place.

Old and new SkyTrain running along the Expo Line near False Creek. I haven’t had the pleasure of riding on the new one but I’ve heard they are air-conditioned! I”m glad for that, riding the SkyTrain with people who don’t shower or wear deodorant is one of the reasons I really dislike taking transit. Yea I’m a bit stuck-up when it comes to transit.

While in the area there was a soccer (football) game happening. They didn’t mind Keith and myself taking photos. A great way to test out the speed of the Canon 7D in combination with the EF 70-200mm f2.8L IS lens!

Kept the shutter speed up to 1/1000 though probably could have used a smaller aperture, but the majority of the photos were good. The action wasn’t exciting and we didn’t stay too long.

Wondering what sort of photos I can get during the Olympics, hopefully I can get some pretty cool venue shots at least. I’m always up for doing photowalks around Vancouver, if you’re available during the days during the Olympics ping me and we can do an impromptu photowalk!

What Are Moo MiniCards?

Moo MiniCards are small business cards that you get to design and create. You can use either your photos from a service such as Flickr, or upload a design, or designs, you have created. The cool part is that not only do you get to design the front side, you also get to include text on the back side.

The Moo MiniCards are roughly 2″ x 1″ which makes them smaller than typical business cards but I find the weight of the paper used seems to be slightly heavier.

I thought it was time now to look at ordering some Moo MiniCards, mainly because I don’t have any sort of business cards to hand out to people when they ask. I think they would be great for the Social Media scene, small and if the photos are decent, memorable.

When I was looking to order some of these cards, my buddy John Biehler mentioned he had a first-time buyer’s discount code I could use which would save me some money on my first order. I loaded up Moo’s website and started the process of ordering the MiniCards.

At first I wondered out of over 3,000 photos I have online, how could I possibly choose photos for my first batch? Rebecca mentioned I could probably ask people to choose my cards for me but I never did end up doing that, perhaps next time though! I just sat down one day and started to go through my Flickr Photostream choosing photos I liked, ones hopefully the represented myself the best.

I ended up choosing 17 photos, though I could have chosen 100 different photos for the 100 MiniCards that the order was for, but I didn’t. On the backside I went with a black background and some basic contact information in white. Some people have asked why I did not choose to put DynamicShark Media on it, but I thought these Moo MiniCards would be more for a personal/photography use than an actual business card for DynamicShark, in which I’m still designing.

After looking over the photos I had chosen, adding information on the back of the cards, I submitted my order. The processing of the order and shipping the result to me would be roughly 5-8 weeks. It was quicker than that.

Arrival of my Moo MiniCards

I received my Moo MiniCards in roughly 2 weeks from the day I submitted my order. I was pretty excited to check them out.

I thumbed through the cards and out of the batch of 100 only 1 seems to have a weird print issue, that doesn’t bother me though. I like the quality and feel of these MiniCards. I can’t wait to start giving them out to people. Hopefully other people like them as much as I do.

I’m really happy with the outcome of these cards. Let’s hope I can give them away so I can order another box of them!

Have you ever used Moo Cards before? If not, I recommend you to check them out!

I’ve been monkying around with my Canon 7D custom functions and getting it to match my Canon XSi so that when I go use both camera bodies, I don’t have any issues with one working a different way than the other. I use * button on the back to stop (or lock) the focus, so that the regular shutter button controls the AE (exposure) and taking the photo itself.

Anyway, Keith and I wandered around the entire Stanley Park seawall on our normal quest to find the resident eagles. We never did come across any of the eagles this time.

We stood around the little stone bridge at the west side of Lost Lagoon for a little bit. Showing some Aussie tourists how friendly the local chickadees actually are, especially when you have the proper seed for them.  While this was going on the two sparrows (I think that’s what they are) were gabbing to each other.

I have really been enjoying my Canon 7D’s high speed continuous ability. At 8 frames per second and a high shutter speed I can now freeze movement and capture instances I would normally miss with my Canon XSi. I still have to work on focusing on the proper spots on a bird though as this guy’s head isn’t in focus.

We popped over to the Vancouver Aquarium, but at the section that is “free”. Here a trainer is working with the recently rescued Harbour Porpoise the Aquarium as acquired. Wonder if they will release it back into the wild, or if it will join the spotted dolphins in the next tank over.

Now if you have ever gone on a photowalk with me into the more nature type places of Vancouver (Stanley Park, Lighthouse Park, Riefel Bird Sanctuary etc) you’ll probably learn I’m really good at seeing and pointing out critters that most people seem not to notice. The above photo is of a hummingbird, just not sure which one it is since the lighting is horrible on it. I cropped the photo to about 90% tried to increase the light levels and bring out any colour I could with Lightroom. I then tossed it into Photoshop CS4 and run NoiseNinja on it to clean it up a bit. Not bad for what I had to work with, maximum focal length at 200mm in a tree whose leaves are almost the same size of the bird and with no sun being out!

I should get a hummingbird feeder out sooner than later now! It seems that Spring is here…

Since the clouds were out and about it’s always a good time to do a hand-held HDR photo of Coal Harbour. The Westin (far left behind marina) is home to not only I.O.C (International Olympic Committee) but also to various families of the Olympics too. I heard a rumour that President Obama was supposed to stay there too but it looks like he pulled out and now the Vice President will be in town for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

So what, now the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics are 9 days away? What will I be doing? Probably just wandering around with my camera taking photos of whatever I happen to see. Too bad I couldn’t get accrediated to do some sporting venues for the Olympics I would have really liked to see Shaun White and them on the Half Pipe like I did at Cypress last year.

Yeah, I have been going through some of my photos taken during the LF FIS WorldCup event up at Cypress Mountain last year. I even did a first attempt at creating a sequenced shot in Photoshop too, I don’t think it turned out half-bad.

There is still some time left in this Winter season, perhaps I can get up to Grouse Mountain for an event or two, or at least head over to Whistler for the upcoming 2010 Telus World Ski and Snowboarding Festival!

I’ve been wanting to take my photography to a new level and one way I thought about doing it was the use of a flash. I don’t mean that wimpy pop-up flash that all dSLR cameras have, or that built-in flash that many compact digital cameras have. I’m talking about the larger, external hot-shoe flashes, such as the Sigma EF-530 DG Super flash I own.

One interesting feature of the Canon 7D is the ability to be used to trigger remote flashes. How does it do this? It uses the pop-up flash to send out pulses to remote flashes that are acting as slaves in order to trigger them. Or so it seems to be explained in the manual that came with my Canon 7D.

As for what I did was relatively simple. I set the Sigma flash to E-TTL mode as a Slave and kept it on Channel 1. In the Flash Control option on the Canon 7D I set up the built-in flash to only trigger the remote flashes and not the pop-up flash as well. The pop-up flash will send out a low-powered flash pulse to the remote flash which sends the settings it needs for the shot milliseconds before the remote flash goes off. The pop-up pulse flash typically has no bearing on the final result of the photograph, or so I’ve read.

I attached the Sigma flash on my tripod a few feet in front of me and turned the optical sensor to face my camera, and turned the flash head towards my subjects. While in the Flash Control menu option, you can fire a test pulse which will trigger the remote flash to ensure the two are talking properly.

The Subjects and Results:

I experimented with various settings on my Canon 7D to get a better feeling for the use of a flash. I switched between Tv and Av mode, I dialed down the exposure on the camera, I dialed down the flash exposure on the Sigma remote flash itself. I moved the flash around in various positions.

So far I am really liking the ability to trigger remote flashes. According to the manual, I can remotely trigger at least 3 remote flashes in a 80 degree field of view from the pop-up flash that are roughly 7 metres (24 feet) away. Depending on the flashes use, the subject could be up to 10 metres (32.8 feet) away! Not bad, though for anything of decent length away it would most likely be better to trigger the remotes via a dedicated wireless system such as PocketWizards or AlienBee’s CyberSyncs. For now though, I am going to have fun messing around with this.

Who knows what I will do next! But I am sure having fun, just hope my batteries in my flash a bit longer. They are rated for 200 flashes (normal power) with 4x Alkaline batteries. Only 100 flashes if I use NiMH rechargeables.