After several years of lying back on my existing photography kit, I finally splashed out on a couple of minor purchases! First off is a pair of Yongnuo RF-603 wireless triggers - poor mans pocket wizards. These should kill two birds with one stone for me, being both wireless shutter release - handy for setting up kingfisher setups without having to conceal myself within cable distance of the camera, but also wireless flash triggers too - although they aren't TTL, I know they'll be really handy. Will at some point, if they work out as decent as most reviews rate them, buy a couple more so I can do both at once (trigger shutter and flash) or with multiple strobes once I pick up a 2nd speedlite. Time will tell how much use they get, but initial impressions are good, especially for the price.
Second purchase was on a copy of Lightroom 5 to sort out my RAW processing issues. I have been switching between a bunch of free and low cost RAW convertors (and Photoshop CS3 Camera RAW Plug-in) for a while now, with my favourites being Scarab Darkroom and RawShooter Essentials, but never really been completely happy with them. Not to mention that I have been conscious that their lack of features has driven me to compromise how I run my workflow, I have been looking at getting a copy for a while. With Adobe switching future products to a subscription model and me being a bit of a cynic when it comes to this kind of "progress", I went ahead and wasted some cash on an old fashioned boxed copy.
The three photos posted here have been processed entirely in Lightroom, with no Photoshoppery. It'll take a while to get going on the more advanced features, but most features seem nice and intuitive. I especially like the quality of the built in luminance noise reduction, I haven't compared to my old friend Neat Image yet, but it would definitely be handy for de-noising masses of high ISO photos - like the wedding I'm due to shoot in a couple of weeks.
Whether I splash out on a new body with better high ISO performance while I'm in the USA next month - I haven't decided yet, we will have to see ...
 |
| Rain Pigeon ISO1600, 400mm, f/5.6, 1/640s, -0.6ev |
 |
| Tree Portrait ISO200, 24mm, f/10, 1/30s, -1.6ev |
 |
| Jurassic coast storm ISO100, 16mm, f/10, 1/125s, -1.3ev |