After my recent Canon clear out I have £2180 to spend currently in a combination of cash and store credit (£1330/£850 – Wex credit).
Current Shopping List (all Fuji X Fit)
100-400 + TC (Lowest price and current £1490/1649)
100-400 (£1300/1549)*
18mm (£400/479)
27mm (£319/349)
Fisheye (£212/219)
Battery (£41/46)
Total spend £2272/2642* Based on the 100-400 without TC
So based on the best lowest prices I pretty much get all in that part of the list. The reality is though, prices in recent times have never been great at the show. I have noticed some prices have risen recently so maybe its an artificial rise to make any discounts seem decent.
Ideally I’d like the 100-400 and TC combo so whatever that price is will be a fairly large chunk of the money. I probably can save £200 from this month as well so that’ll boost my spending to £2380.
**Chances are everything could and possibly will change **
So the annual trip to a photography show is now complete (this year it changed from Focus to ‘The Photography Show’) – actually surprised how busy it was for a weekday. For a change I wasn’t overly bothered about kit, nor did I have any intention of spending large amounts of cash.
The show itself was much the same as Focus on Imaging – which isn’t a bad thing to be honest, though the main difference was a couple of stages where every hour or so Pro togs would talk about their specific genre of photography. I did sit through a wedding show which mainly comprised of the professionalism of the photographer – which was a better talk than it initially sounded.
First up for me, was the Canon stand – like a moth to a flame, or me to an Apple Store I’m drawn towards the Canon Stand – probably some blinded fanboy loyalty, or most likely cos I own a chunk of the Canon Eos system. My only temptation camera wise at present is the EF135mm f/2 L – so I’d thought i’d have a look. The results aren’t anything spectacular (it’s indoors at the NEC!) but I had a brief play…..
Tube thingsEos 1DX and 24-70MkIISome bloke looking at things, colour down to me not playing with white balance and leaving it on auto – possibly the NEC lights might be an issue also
So there you go, Canon sorted. The one stand I wanted to check out was the Bessel Lighting stand – mainly as I wanted to speak to Tony Rabin who was demonstrating their kit. I’ve met Tony before at YPS and I do plan to visit his studio for Lighting and Model shoots. After a brief chat I finally got round to purchasing a remote trigger. I do own the Canon ST-E2 remote trigger, which is fine – but limited (distance) so I bought a £19.99 remote and £9.99 tripod/hotshot adapter. One trick with this is set the connected flash up as a master and reset as slaves and they all work fine. With this adapter you loose the E-TTL capability and have to use manual, but for studio settings that’s normal anyway. I’m tempted to eBay the ST-E2 and spend the cash on some soft box stuff from Bessel.
Light Things
The picture above is just a test of the setup. The first EX580 MkII is connected to the hotshot adapter and the remote receiver is connected. This flash is setup as a master (and for space reasons I’ve stuck the front in a roll of packing tape). The other EX580 MkII and EX430 Mk1 are setup as slaves. The primary flash triggers the other two automatically. The 580 MkII’s were set with a flash rating of 1/128th and 430 was set to 1/64th (both at their respective lowest flash setting).
