Adding a miniphone sync port to a Sunpak 544

I love my flashes, thanks in large part to David Hobby. One of the things that David is constantly promoting is his preference for using 1/8" (3.5mm) miniphone audio cords instead of the older, standard PC-sync cords for syncing flashes. PC jacks are notoriously unreliable as well as ludicrously expensive. Miniphone jacks are both more reliable and dirt cheap. Even better, the Cactus V4 radio triggers that I use come with 1/8" sync ports built in. Unfortunately, none of my flashes came with them. My old Sunpak Auto 544 "potato masher" flash came with a proprietary jack, but when that jack started to flake out on me, I figured it was time to add a miniphone plug to it.

99 cent flash diffuser

On-camera speedlights are great.  You can angle them numerous directions to bounce your light to your subject while still having the ease of use of TTL lighting.  Alas, if you don't have a bright, neutral surface against which to bounce your light, the shadows resulting from direct flash can be pretty harsh.  I got around this problem recently by using a dollar's worth of materials to make a great, portable diffuser for my on-camera flash.

Christmas party corporate head shots

I was recently asked to make some business portraits for an entire company of 13 people.  Since most of them were salespeople and rarely in the office at one time, and since that office was 60 miles from my base, it was decided that I would shoot these head shots during their annual Christmas party, because they would all be in once place and dressed up anyway.  I've worked with this company before and will again, so I wanted to make this session happen despite sub-optimal conditions.  Given the unusual situation surrounding this session, I figured I'd share it with you all.

Most popular posts of 2011

As the first calendar year of the Prairie Rim Images blog winds to a close, it seemed appropriate to look back at which posts made the biggest splash with our readers.  If you're a new reader, this will hopefully turn you on to a few of the gems that you may have missed.  I'm not surprised at which posts top the list, but I am, somewhat, at the degree to which they blew past their competition.  The top ten most popular posts, in reverse order, are...

A few of my LEAST favorite things

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a few of my favorite pieces of photographic equipment.  Those were items that I'd recommend to a friend without any reservation.  Of course, I'm not in love with all of my gear.  There are some items that I must use frequently, but curse them all the while.  While these pieces may work well enough for some, they don't meet my ever-increasing standards, and I'll be replacing them soon.

Small scale DIY light tent

I wrote a while back about photographing some camera lenses using a DIY light tent that I made from a plastic storage tub and some printer paper.  This time, I demonstrate that the smaller the subject is, the simpler the lighting gets.  In this case, the subject is the SD memory card that I bent in two a few days ago.

Why I prefer CompactFlash cards

The card reader in my computer has had trouble lately reading the SecureDigital card from our P&S camera unless the card was seated very securely in the slot. I've gotten in the habit of giving it a firm press when inserting it. A few nights ago, I guess I must have been pushing in at a slight angle, because I heard a crunch as I taco'd my SD card. I apparently seated it sufficiently, because despite the damage, I was still able to pull all the data off the card. This is not the first time I've heard of the data on SanDisk cards surviving catastrophic physical damage.