Playing with My Flash Unit

No, it’s not nearly as perverted as it sounds. I finally dug up the manual to the flash unit (the AG360FGZ for anyone whose counting) and started going through the different settings, learning (by doing this time) about high speed sync, leading/trailing curtain, different wireless modes, etc. I’ve read through them before of course, but hadn’t done any real work with any of them…. just set the unit to the ‘green’ mode and clicky-clicky. In the actual doing I found all sorts of little gotchas and how things really worked (like the “HS” icon for high speed mode not showing up in high speed sync mode until you were at 180/s or over). Lots of fun. For the most part sleeping cats facing the wrong way were my subjects, as the point was not to create good photos, but to learn what happens when I click this button.

Ironically one pic that I felt was half decent enough to share ended up from one of the first shots, this is with (if I recall) the flash angled 90 degrees to bounce off the ceiling, with the wide angle flap down and the ‘cachlight’ flap up (note catchlights in the subjects eyes 🙂 Pic is right out of the camera (well, from camera raw imported to Lightroom, converted to DNG, exported to JPG and then uploaded to the webserver 🙂 No manipulation in between of exposure or anything. Great detail in the full size original, and the lighting and shadows I really like.

I do so enjoy wide angle lenses 🙂 Click for bigger.

Aside: Anyone from the fraser valley area (Epp, I’m talking to you) interested in a photo-walk of some sort?