A New Toy

This week saw the arrival of my latest gadget a device called a Phototrigger from http://www.phototrigger.com.  I’ve wanted one of these devices for a while now, ever since I tried water droplet pictures (see Union Jack pic below), which although was reasonably successful, always felt a bit hit and miss.

There are a few devices out there but I settled on this particular one as it had the features I wanted (guess what, I want more now!) and was at the price point where it enabled a dabble in the technology without the need for a second mortgage.

In summary, the unit can trigger the camera or a Flash or both, when a specific physical situation occurs.  This could be a sound or vibration, a change in light levels or something interrupting its laser beam (cool, it has a laser!).  It will also function as an intervalometer for time lapse work should you wish to try this (I have an idea for this one!).

As always with new kit there is a learning curve that you have to climb before you can start getting creative.  Therefore my first attempts have been to get to learn the way things work with simple subjects.  In the first instance, garden birds.  Since they flee very quickly when they spot a human (or the dog), if I can master the technology I should get a few nice shots.  

I decided to use the microphone as a trigger and you can see the setup in the picture below. 

Did it work ? well, sort of. 

Nothing whatsoever wrong with the equipment, it triggered fine when birds (or my dog) were in the right area.  The issues I had were all in the setup of the camera.  Have a look at the picture below, no laughing now!!

As you can see, it triggered fine, BUT the framing is way off.   When I set zoom and focus point (I set focus manually so lens didn’t have to waste time finding focus, I may need to adjust this strategy).  Obviously I underestimated the size of the birds that would feed.  Also, though you can’t see it here but the original was quite dark.  This is because I set the camera up on full manual as I wanted to dial in a constant fast shutter speed to freeze motion, I think shutter priority would have been better as the camera can change Aperture to maintain light levels.

Still, making progress up that learning curve, I can only improve!

Cheers, Peter.

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