I've noticed that I suddenly have a lot of AA battery powered photo gear. There's the A95 which serves as my light/flash meter and photographic sketchpad that takes 4 AA batteries. There's 2 Sunpak 383 Supers and a 1 Sunpak 144PC, and each one takes 4 AA batteries. There's the kinda cruddy Sunpak Digital Flash that is now just used to trigger slaves off of my RB67 that takes 2 AA batteries. Finally, there's the Quantaray QS-1 that takes 2 AAA batteries

Despite my film-shooting bent, I do like to keep up with the digital scene as well. This is all rampant speculation based on the available facts, given that nobody's dropping any expensive loaner hardware on my doorstop anytime soon.

And here I thought I was a little oddball for wandering around with my G7 and my RB67... but apparently everybody else does that too.

I was talking with some other photographers lately and the subject of lighting came up. The studio we were at had 6,000 watt seconds of power, including several power packs and some Alien Bees monolights. One of the other photographers asked me how I felt about the religious question of Packs vs. Monolights

After Christmas, I spent a bunch of time getting used to my new setup and building a lot of little bits to get my lighting where I want it to be. I also took a step back and decided I didn't like where my whiteground photos were going at that point; I wanted to do something else...

When I started out doing portraiture, I did only outdoor portraits during the golden hour. If you don't have much gear, it's great. My first portrait shoot was taken on my Canon A95 and came out quite well. And I did my art indoors with lightpainting...

The Quantaray MS-1, backgrounds, umbrellas, and models

The idea of making light that's brighter than the sun is a source of constant amusement whenever I use it. If I wanted to do this sort of stunt with video, we'd be talking the sort of lighting gear that they used in the days of Technicolor that left actors and actresses complaining about eye damage from the bright lights...

In a brilliant demonstration of why competition is a damn good thing, PocketWizard is trying to change the game with their latest flagship set of radio remotes for strobist photography.

I've been noticing some people finding my page on Google searching for more detailed information about the 383 Super. Since the 383 Super is a reasonably priced manually-controllable flash, suitable for both on and off camera use, it's experienced a little bit of a resurgence in recent times. Vivitar has responded as well by putting the 285 back on the market.

After reading Strobist, I almost purchased the recommended cheap old Nikon flash. However, I also wanted a flash to be carried around for impromptu situations that I could have better control over, I felt that the Nikon would be too specific to the Nikon cameras.

My personal preference in natural-looking photography is to search out beautiful lighting instead of trying to create it. It has a habit of surprising you with beautiful colors and glows and shading. Plus, it's cheaper and I'm stingy. So I picked up the Sunpack Digital Flash.

Vivitar went bankrupt, but apparently the new owner is going to make the 285HV still.

I've been noticing some people finding my page on Google searching for more detailed information about the 383 Super. Now, since both of my 383's are presently dead and I've started to buy Vivitar 285 HV's instead, I might as well provide yet another guide.