A quiet day at home included clean up in preparation for our trip to red rock country (southern Utah) later next week. EV and I experimented a little with flash right before dinner. I've come to the conclusion that my vintage Vivitar 283 flash needs some help. It is evidently dangerous to use it in the hotshoe of modern DSLRs because it puts out much higher voltage than digital cameras can handle. As such, I've been using one of the little peanut photosensor units from the early 90s to trigger it and it just isn't syncing very well. Or I'm doing something very wrong. I might splurge and use my Amazon gift certificates to get a good, solid, manually controlled modern flash. Vivitar just started making the old 285 in a new version that works with DSLRs last year. Just the ticket.
At dinner, EV and I enjoyed a rather spectacular sunset. As predicted by the National Weather Service, we had snow most of the morning and into the early afternoon. The clouds veiled Lewis Peak at sunset:
200mm, 1/640th of a second, f/8, ISO 200. Not sure why I used F8. I had to switch the lens to manual focus mode because the high-key scene confused the camera's autofocus sensor and the lens did it's characteristic "hunting" back and forth. In some ways I prefer manual focus, at least for landscape work.
Despite the advice of HeyLucy, I went ahead and had Adorama print some of my recent images. I have to say that I am NOT impressed. The prints came back looking like they dropped the contrast setting dramatically and desaturated the images. This is a little disappointing in that the service was supposed to include correction by a live, experienced printing technician. My $36 refurbished Epson snapshot printer did a much better job. Ok HeyLucy, this time I take your advice and go with Scott Kelby's suggestion which I have forgotten at this point. Now what did I do with that email...
www.mpix.com :o)
Posted by: marne | October 12, 2008 at 09:18 AM
Do you guys happen to be going to Lake Powell next week? I am flying to Salt Lake on Wednesday and heading down there to do a Sprint Triathlon on Saturday. Where are you guys going?
Posted by: vanessa | October 13, 2008 at 04:36 PM