Quick and dirty radiopopper mod for Canon strobes (that won’t void your warranty!)

Oct 292008

I love my radiopoppers. They are just super-awesome and make doing off camera strobe work sooo much easier. The only problem is that (by virtue of design) they are rather clumsy to use – you have to position the bead in front of the sensor, have some way of holding it there (tape? ugh…) and then affix the actual receiver body so that it won’t jiggle the bead off the sensor etc…

I’ve been playing around with a few different mods to affix the popper without drilling holes in the case or covering my flash with tape/velcro. So far this is the best I’ve come up with. It works extremely well, allows you to attach the popper super quickly and securely, and is dead easy to do (no actual “modding” of the unit required.) The one compormise is that it involves putting a little velcro on the flash body, but there is even a workaorund for that :-)

So without further ado:
you will need the exact same materials described in my DIY snoot/bouncecard -

  • velcro wrap (the kind that is hooked on one side and looped on the other (so it can stick to itself, often used for wrapping computer cables)
  • a small piece of self-adhesive velcro (loop side, this will form the mount points for the
  • “Foamies” craft foam (thin sheets of flexible foam, available at craft/art stores (pearl etc..))  If possible get the sheets that are self adhesive on one side, which allows you to skip the next ingredient :-)
  • glue (optional, if you didn’t get the self-sticky foamies)

the procedure is simple.  Cut a strip of velcro wrap long enough to reach halfway around your flash body, with a little extra.   Take 2 small pieces of the self-adhesive velcro, and mount them on each side of the flash, these are the “mounting points” for the popper/strap.  Cut 3 pieces of foam with an x-acto, the width of the velcro strap, and long enough to go across/cover the IR sensor.   On one of the pieces of foam, cut a “channel” about the width of the radiopopper bead, splitting it in two.  Now stack the 3 pieces together and glue (with the “channel” piece on top obviously).  Hot glue works well for this, or if you got the self-adhesive foamies that will work too.   Once done the whole assembley should look like this.

And that’s basically all there is to it!  Now simply slap the body of the Popper on the still exposed loop side of the velcro, and loop the fiber optic over placing the bead in the channel.  Position the whole shebang on top of the sensor on the flash, and attach the loose ends of the strap to the velcro mount points on the side of the flash body.  The channel in the foam hold the bead securely in place, while the thickness provies a “cushion” that makes a flat/secure surface for the popper body to mount on.  I find that this is a very stable/secure method of mounting the poppers – once on I don’t have to worry about the bead coming loose or the body flopping around.  (I cut the fiber optic in half to make it “neater” but you dont have to)

a few caveats:

  1. because of the position of the IR sensor this will really only work for Canon strobes (nikon has the sensor on the side of the body, not the front).   I use it on a canon 580exII and a 550ex – it may work on others or not depending on the location of the sensor, as always YMMV.
  2. when mounting the poppers this way, make sure you rotate the flash head around 180deg.  (pointing “backwards” from it’s normal orientation)  The RadioPopper folks have pointed out that the electromagnetic pulse from the front of the flash head can damage the RP units if it is in direct proximity – as long as you turn it around it should be fine.

Hope that helps all you RadioPopper folks out there.  I’ve been very happy with this mounting system so far!

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I hate the 24-70/2.8

Oct 132008

…Ok, so that’s a bit of a sensationalist headline.  I don’t really hate it.  But I’m going to offer a bit of a contriarian view on the much venerated “fast zoom” type lens.   On pretty much any photgraphy fourm/discussion a question that pops up all the time is “I’m looking to upgrade from my “kit” lens, what is a good choice”.   Invariably the responses will point toward the traditional “fast normal zoom”, ie a 24-70/2.8 or the like.

I, on the other hand prefer a slow zoom (high quality and still constant aperture, such as Canon’s F/4L lenses) and a fast prime.

Consider:
Point 1: f/2.8 is one stop faster than f/4.   In other words, the difference between bumpring your iso from 200->400 (or 400-800 etc…)  Us digital photographers sometimes forget how spoiled we are… back in the day we needed every bit of speed we could get out of our glass, as film speed was often the limiting factor.  Anyone remember shooting film past ASA400?  got grainy pretty fast didn’t it :-)    These days I will shoot my 5d at 3200 without even blinking.  And it’s only getting better from there!   Considering that an f/4 zoom is a)smaller/lighter b)greater range (24-105mm vs 24-70), I would much rather bump my iso one stop than carry the extra bulk/weight of a 2.8 zoom around all day.   Not to mention that when using strobes/lights, I’m generally working at f/4-5.6 maximum, it’s only available (low) light that demands fast glass which leads me to my second point.

point 2: in my experience, when I need low light capability *i need low light capability*, and in those cases even f/2.8 won’t cut it.   A f/1.4 lens gives you a *3 stop* advantage over an f/4 zoom (and 2 stops even over a 2.8!) – that’s the same as going from 200-1600ISO, not insignificant! or consider the low light potential of a 1.4 lens on one of the new bodies capable of doing ISO12,800 or even 25,600 – now we’re getting into the “EV -crazydark” territory.  Not to mention that at f/2.8 the prime is already stopped down two stops, while the zoom is still wide open, which will generally give you better edge to edge quality.

Ok, so maybe I’m a bit biased, as I am a “prime guy”, but I think a lot of folks underestimate the potential of the humble fixed focal length lens.  The classic 50/1.4 is a surprisingly flexible lens that can yield a huge variety of perspectives simply by taking a few steps forward or back.

Some will respond that it’s the combination of flexibility and speed that makes the 2.8 appealing, but to me it seems like you sort of get shorted on both ends – it’s not fast enough to be *really fast* and not flexible enough to preclude frequent lens switching.

(and before the hate mail starts, yes I’ve used the fast zooms plenty. Yes they are great lenses, and yes, maybe if I were a dedicated wedding shooter I’d change my mind.  All I’m saying is that there are other alternatives!)

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The black-and-white project – wrap up

Oct 072008

Well, as September is “officially” over, my black and white project is technically done… although I have to say, it was actually quite enjoyable… kind of “getting back to my roots”.

I definitely found myself rusty at first… I find that shooting b/w definitely requires “seeing” the scene differently… very quickly though I fell back into my old habits from my film days, looking more at light/contrast/texture rather than color…

It’s amazing how some self imposed “restrictions” can really get you out of a rut creatively & doing things differently. Definitely going to be concentrating more on b/w in the near future (and I haven’t even gotten my 120 film processed yet!)

a quick gallery of some pics from the month too…

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Thoughts on Photokina ’08

Oct 062008

Now that Photokina is all wrapped up something occurred to me – I can’t say I was really all that excited about it.  Surprising, as Photokina is usually the main “gear lust inspiring” event out there, and you can practically hear the mobs of photographers panting and salivating over each new announcement.  And sure there was some pretty cool stuff this year – (Olympus micro-four-thirds prototype? – Awesome.  5DmkII? – sweet.  The new paradigm of video on SLRs? – very interesting development.)  Overall though, it was just kind of like “oh yeah, new gear…”

I dunno, maybe it’s the economy or maybe I’m just becoming one of those crotchety old photographers who is more concerned with light and composition than with gear :-)   I think as is common with many photographers as our skills and experience improve, our interest in gear for the sake of gear decreases.  I’ve been doing this long enough that I know what I want out of a camera (high quality, light weight, fast wide glass- particularly primes) and I’m happy with what I’ve got.

I’ll probably take a hard look at the olympus “pseudo rangefinder” micro four thirds camera when it comes out (probably not for another year is my guess) but for now I just want to go out and take pictures :-)

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