Black Coffee (Deprecated)

Crash Flash

I've had my camera rig since late 1998 or so. In that time I've basically never used the 380EX Speedlight flash I bought for it. For one thing I didn't feel like I needed it for my street photography, secondly the instructions are enormously sparse, and lastly, I couldn't get it to behave in any understandable way.

It's languished up until now, five days before I leave on a two-week tour of the Outback. Right now I'm in the middle of a crash-course to educate myself how to shoot with my flash.

One of my chronic self-criticisms is that the contrast range will be too high, leaving faces under hat brims heavily shadowed. With judicious use of the fill-flash I can fix problems like that.

As well, I like the photographic aesthetic of a a situation with fairly low light and someone moving about a bit. The background is exposed, maybe a bit soft if hand-held, the action is a bit blurred, but the face, or other critical points are glistened with a bit of catchlight. Understanding how the different modes interact with the flash allow me to do that.

These are a just a few examples of applications I want to learn.

Yesterday I walked around the major bookstores, Borders and Kinokuniya, staring at piles and piles of photographic instruction books. Last week RogerW asked for recommendations on good photo books. I was hard-pressed to name any. My field trip this weekend reminded me why -- they're mostly crap.

I gave up, went home, and searched Google. In what was one of my top five or ten bits of GoogleWebLuck this year, I found that just in July a three-part essay was written that perfectly explains everything I need to know -- fundamentals of flash photography, and specifically, how they are implemented with the Canon EOS series. Unbelievable. I cannot recommend this guide highly enough. I suspect that even if you don't have an EOS-based camera, the general discussion will give you a good, solid ground in flash photography if you don't already have one.

Have a Nice Day

Oh my god....

Oil markets moved almost two bucks tonight (a huge move). I didn't get back to my house till 130am. It was so late that I didn't turn the lights on in the living room, because I didn't want to disturb our two hamsters' day/night rhythmn (basically they go hyperactive at night).

Almost as soon as I got home I was on the phone again with my two foxhole colleagues discussing the NY markets. I was wandering around the house and decided to check on the hamsters' progress with the apple slices I left in the night before. I hadn't checked them this morning because I was running late.

In the dark I was squinting into the cage, but they were suprisingly quiet.

I used the led-face of my handphone as a flashlight. There was one...sitting in his little aerial roost, but I could not see the other. I kept looking, but no luck.

I kept escalating the light level. Still no second hamster visible.

Eventually I turned on all the lights, and could still only see one hamster. The cage is an open-top glass aquarium with walls nearly two feet high.

...
ARM: So WTI is hanging solid at 3175
RS: Yeah, right now it's 73/79
MDS: Holy shit... the hamster is missing!
RS: The off...
ARM: ...excuse me? what? hamster what?
MDS: A fucking hamster is missing from the cage
RS: You keep hamsters?
ARM: Why do you have hamsters?
MDS: They're not my hamsters, they're my wife's hamsters. She's going to fucking kill me!
ARM: Doesn't that sound pretty gay, having hamsters?
MDS: They're not mine!
RS: Did you check up your butt?
MDS: I'm fucking dead!
RS: So Paribas said the market took off after brent crossed 29$
MDS: I am so fucking dead; where could the hamster be?
ARM: Yes, it blew through 31.40$ resistence around 10pm
MDS: I mean how could it get out... there is no way....
RS: Oct/Dec Brent is now like 71/76
MDS: Oh man..... Oh man.....

It went on like this for fifteen minutes; I was dying. In the middle of the same phone call, Ling is SMS'ing me from Norway, asking how my day is going. (hint: all the sudden really badly)

So once the call was over I started doing the forensic finger-rake through the dried litter in the cage, expected to find a stiff hamster buried in the duff. No such "luck."

Ok, then call Tien-Lee and find out if one of them removed a hamster (dead or alive) in the last day. She says no.

Ok, then, like Sherlock Holmes said, once you eliminate every other possibility, the ludicrous possibility remaining (that the hamster scaled a 2ft glass wall) must be the answer.

Ok stipulate so.

Well, then it must be around here somewhere. Try to find it, or at least leave some food out for it.

I rustled around nearby furniture for a few minutes; couldn't find it. Decided to feed the remaining hamster some food. I turned around, and at the hallway, I see the missing hamster staring curiously at me from around the corner. It looked ok. I walked over, it didn't run, and in fact allowed me to pick it up and safely return it to the now-sealed cage.

It seems no worse for wear; they're back to their nighttime freneticism again -- the hamster wheel spinning 900rpm for the last half hour, which will continue till 4am.

Good grief. That was 45 minutes of aggravation I definitely did not need.