The Latest Addition…
The Syer/Culcheth Triumph 2.5 PI London – Mexico Rally Car
Archive for January, 2007
Flash Stuff Pt.2
To accompany the Lomo Wide Angle Slave flash I bought over Christmas – you know, the one that didn’t work with the 20D’s preflash, doh! – on Monday I ordered an old Speedlite 420EZ from the London Camera Exchange shop in Paignton. I’d been scoping some out on eBay but they were going for silly money, especially for what the are, and so I thought I’d bite the bullet, be impatient and buy from a normal shop. Of course, no sooner had I done this than a Speedlite 540 I was watching on eBay went for less than I paid for the 420, but such is eBay! Anyway, the very nice people at LCE did me a nice deal on a 420EX and it arrived on my doorstep a couple of hours ago…
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The Ceramica Exhibition
A couple of nights ago I went with my friends Katie & Martyn to check out an exhibition at Ceramica in Burslem; an exhibition which included their work no less! Being all posh and arty they get to display the pieces they’ve been working on this semester in their own gallery which is open to the public for a week or so, though in this case we went to the extra posh friends and family/opening evening. What perfect timing for a proper test of my new 50mm I thought, and so I took the 20D along in case I happened to be allowed to photograph… I was!
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Lost America
“Pacer X” by Troy Paiva (Larger image here @ Flickr)
Wow is all I can say when I look at this photo, or indeed almost all of the photos that are taken by Troy Paiva of lostamerica.com… My drive to master (at least in part!) and experiment with flash photography goes through the roof when I see photos like this… what a mastery of night shooting (which looks -really- hard by the way!) & the usage of flashes these pictures show. That I also happen to find old American cars and the American phenomenon of automobile graveyards really interesting is just another reason why I gawp in awe at these sorts of photos!
(I stumbled across lostamerica via the Strobist Blog, which I have now decided to wander onto much more regularly!)
HS6 Conversion
Over Christmas I decided to do the first major work to the 2000 and so set about ringing up a nice bill with Chris Witor (very helpful and known to be “the man” for saloon stuff) who built up a kit of hoses, pins and the like for the conversion from Strombergs to HS6s. He also persuaded me to drop the manifold the HS6s had come on – the water pipes had been cut off – for a more standard (and piped!) item. In all fairness I didn’t need much persuading, as I did think having a lot of rubber piping draped over the manifold would look a bit untidy and he said the car would run better anyway (I know there is lots of debate over putting hot water through an inlet manifold , but as I say Chris knows his onions so I didn’t quibble).
With all the parts arriving just before last post and James scheduled in for a New Years arrival – obviously because I hadn’t seen him for a while, not because he can tune SUs a thousand times better than me *cough* – I was ready to go…
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More Photo News!
I have to say I wasn’t expecting to be writing this so quickly; this morning I got a package I sent for less than a week ago, and from Hong Kong to boot! In it was my newest photographic addition, a Canon 50mm f 1.8 MkII prime lens which I had snapped up for the princely sum of £52 (inc. postage!). I’d been thinking about buying one since I read the glowing reviews of it and its Mk1 predecessor on the best lens review site on the net, fredmiranda.com.
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Flash Stuff Pt.1
Over Christmas I ordered a Lomography *shudders* Wide Angle Slave Flash. Yes, I do realise I could have neatly avoided the whole Lomo system by buying them on eBay, but all those come from Hong Kong and I desperately wanted it for New Years. What a shame then that I didn’t read the front page of lomography.com which informed me that orders wouldn’t be shipped between Christmas and New Year.
Bugger.
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