Initially I suspected it was simply the batteries in my flash. I can’t remember the last time I changed them; but I’m sure it was before Australia in March/April! (for those wanting a battery recommendation for a flash – can’t go wrong with these Energizer Lithiums). Unfortunately I bought some spares which I lost on the camping trip in July, so I was without any to test my theory and I was in need of using a flash. So, I was left with the unfortunate need to use the built-in flash…

… which errored – “Err 05″ to be precise, which thought the flash hadn’t popped up (though it had) and was accompanied by a couple of clicks as it tried to release the already-free flash. It demanded I switch the camera off and on again. Which I did, same problem. I repeated this a few times and the problem went away, only to return again later when I wanted to see if I could replicate the problem.

I re-attached the 580EX II and found the camera wasn’t communicating with it – basically reporting the flash was either off or not compatible. Again, this issue came and went – with it mostly failing.

I did me some Googling and was unable to find anything that matched what I was experiencing, but there were plenty of mentions of issues with just the built-in flash not popping up. They attributed the problem with a microswitch on the hot-shoe which sometimes doesn’t pop up – and is a common issue on a number of different Canon models. I checked mine though, and it was up:

It’s the tiny black thing a finger-nail away from the white cable tie, underneath the metal track the cable tie is holding up. When an external flash is attached that will go down preventing the built-in flash from popping up. As can be seen though, no problem with it. Other Canon models have this switch in the same location, others on the opposite side (I think the 40D and 50D are on the opposite side, while the 350D is supposed to be the same as the 500D and I can confirm from my own 400D it is the same as the 500D).

I gave up looking last night as my attention was on Top Gear, Sherlock then ‘Coast’ in HD – which had a bit on the Isle of Man. Sleep then beckoned.

Today I picked up from where I left off and decided to take a look at the other side of the hot-shoe. There’s no switch there, but there is something – what, I’m not sure – but it looks metallic. Perhaps it’s literally nothing – a place holder for using the same hot-shoe construction on cameras with the switch on the opposite side? Alternatively is it some kind of contact which is used to recognise an external flash?

However, I got my cable tie and brushed it over it (plastic removed, so it’s basically a piece of wire) and since then I’ve not been able to recreate the issue which – previously – occurred after just a couple of attempt of popping the built-in flash, and occurred after just a couple of uses of the external 580EX II. I’ve taken around 50-ish photos, or more, since using built-in flash or external, no problems.

Maybe this is just random chance, or it’s genuinely fixed. All I know is it’s working, and nothing changed until my trusty cable-tie got involved. It’s now found a home in my camera bag, just-in-case. If anybody, who knows these cameras and how they’re built better than me, can explain what could have happened I’d welcome their input so I can figure out if this is going to occur again, or if there’s a more “robust” fix.

The challenge here was light – the venue is a sports hall, and indoor lighting is pretty poor in terms of available light and colour.

To deal with the low light I cranked the ISO up to 1600, aperture down to f/2.8 (so wide open on the Canon 50-200mm L IS USM) but mostly shot at 1/320s to ‘freeze’ the action. I’ve cleaned up a lot of the noise in Lightroom once I got home.

In terms of colour- this particular lighting was kind of like tungsten, but I found the default white-balance options on my camera weren’t so great. I’d never used custom white balance before, so had no idea how to set it up. Thankfully a quick flick through the menu found the option to configure it – and there was a handy white banner that helped server as the image used to set and test the custom white balance.

Here’s an example of how it turned out:

I also took a few shots at a shutter speed of 1/50 and ISO 400, to capture some motion. As they’re going round a track, and moving limbs and head it was very hard to get shots that worked doing this; they frequently turned out blurred due to motion or out-of-focus, but I did get a couple I’m reasonable happy with, and here’s one of those:

The full set is here: Rainy City Roller Girls vs Stuttgart Valley Roller Girls

Rainy City won, by the way – 131 to 77.

Going in to the game the team – Manchester Mosquitoes (or ‘Manchester Mozzies’) were undefeated in the League.  They were playing Huddersfield Rams.

The last outdoor sports I shot was a youth rugby tournament in Rochdale and back then I had my old 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS lens.  I’ve upgraded since to a 70-200mm L f/2.8 IS USM lens  so a faster, and much better quality lens – but not so ‘zoomy’.  So on Thursday I ordered a 1.4x extender to take me up to 280mm, albeit losing a stop on the aperture – so making it f/4.

On the day I quickly found the slower speed I shot the youth rugby at wasn’t suitable for the pace of the game, the light and the distance I was – so I soon found myself shooting at between 1/1600 and 1/2500 – going to 1/4000 when the sun shone.  I turned IS off as it was doing more harm than good.  Aperture was fixed at f/4 for most shots.  This froze the action nicely and minimised the distraction of the background, while keeping the subjects immediately around the main focal point in sufficient focus.

This is one of the first I took, capturing the determination of the players to get to the ball first, jumping high to get possession.

To the uninitiated, Aussie Rules Football might often look like a fight:

A Mozzies player kicks the ball up-field:

And here another Mozzie is kicking toward goal, however one of the Rams manages to stop it going between the posts as it comes back toward the ground:

You can click here for the full set of Manchester Mosquitos versus Huddersfield Rams.

Manchester Mozzies won the game, by the way.  They play the final on July 24 – which I won’t be attending as I’ll be shooting the Rainy City Roller Derby game in Bury – Rainy City Roller Girls versus Stuttgart Valley Roller Girlz.  That presents a different challenge, as it’ll be under indoor lighting, though hopefully closer so I get a stop of aperture back by not using the extender.

Initially I was shooting at the back of the house and I figured sunlight would be sufficient, but on reviewing the shots I felt they were blurred and figured I could do better.  One problem with bees is they move – quite fast – and, well, I’m a bit nervous of getting too close and pissing them off.

Solution: well, I don’t have a macro that can get very close, so I’ve had to settle for some cropping of images and to deal with the speed of them I used my flash.  For the first few shots I was shooting with an aperture of f/8 – they were a bit of a mess because of all of the foliage.  I changed to f/4 and they were much improved.

And here they are:

One of the exercises is looking at the difference depth-of-field and wide apertures make to shots, and involved me taking two shots of the same subject – with the focus on two aspects of the scene.  Granted, the shots are by no means the best I’ve ever done.  I basically found something that would be pretty easy to show depth-of-field on, a few fence panels resting on the garage.  Perhaps if I’d spent a little more time on it I’d have set it up better (perhaps shooting the tops of the panels and getting more of the wall in), but that’s incidental.

Here are the shots:

Out of the two I prefer the first.  The sharp area is more apparent and generally more interesting; there’s the knot in the wood and leaves caught in spider webs rather than – well – just a piece of fence.   The second looks like an accident which – to some extent – it is, as I set up the first shot first.   The first shot benefits from sharpness in the foreground, so there is less distraction – the green foliage and the broken ‘To Let’ sign in the background (I know it’s not possible to tell that’s what it is, but trust me – it is ) are bolder in the second shot as the focus is more central to the scene.  In the first they seem firmly placed in the background as are the more distant fence panels (without looking too blurred to make them look like anything other than part of the fence).

All in all, that’s about all I can get out of my head.  Going forward, perhaps more care with the shots I plan to use for exercises would be better.  I think some more practice at writing about my own shots is needed too.

Impro, originally uploaded by SkyFireXII.

Yesterday in work we identified an issue with customers not finding the wireless password for their networks on the bottom of the routers we supply. Our guide says where it is, but doesn’t illustrate it (shame, as it’s awesome in every other way).

Today I wrote up a ‘quick fix’ guide to send out with the routers, so needed an illustration to show the underside of the router. Unfortunately our media room only has a green background (great if I want to show the router flying through space) so I improvised a white background with some sheets of A4 and the corner of my desk.

Pity about the shadow, but with the available light and one flash it’s about the best I could muster in a short space of time.

If only I had a bigger product option than my beer-box “studio”.

Last Sunday I signed up for a photography course with The Open College of the Arts and on Wednesday the course materials arrived.

For the last couple of years I’ve been practicing photography – attempting (and failing, d’oh!) a self-portrait photo-a-day project and a more general photo-a-day project – shooting at the Isle of Man TT in 2008 and 2009 and just generally enjoying practicing and learning more about my hobby.  More recently I’ve been feeling I want to get some more formal training and qualification and perhaps even turn my hobby in to some aspect of a job  - so had been looking around for a distance-learning/correspondence course.

While browsing some photography sites I came across an interesting blog (which has nothing to do with Half Life!) – The Freeman View – with much detailed content on many aspects of photography.  From viewing this I browsed further to the Open College of the Arts site – and the photography courses  Michael Freeman has written and decided I had found the course for me.

The course I’m doing is titled ‘The Art of Photography’ and, if I go in for assessment, counts as 40 points toward a BA.  They have options for paying for the full degree, but at this stage I want to prove I can complete this before committing on a more long-term basis.  This course indicates a time of one year to complete (with 8 hours work a week) but it can be studied in a longer or shorter period of time.  I’m hoping to complete it quicker than that – and find a way of getting myself more time to do so.

So, fingers crossed – and if I’m planning a night out in the future, don’t forget to ask me whether I’ve done my homework first!

Potato Flower, originally uploaded by SkyFireXII.

A potato flower in my parents’ garden in Wigan.

Weathered Watch, originally uploaded by SkyFireXII.

My old watch, beat up and without the glass cover on the face after it finally smashed in Cyprus (having been cracked for a couple of years).

Bee on Flower, originally uploaded by SkyFireXII.

A bee lands on a flower in the front garden.