We meet again.
It hasn't really been a long time since my last entry, and not much has happened since then. But hey, I'll try to say something here.
ANTHROCON 2012
Anthrocon was, once again, insane. The insanity seems to increase with each year, and I love it. We had over 5000 attendees, this year, and the fursuit parade crossed into 'epic' territory, with its 1000+ fursuiters. I had way too much fun, and it all ended too soon for me. But AC is still my favorite furry convention, and I certainly will return in 2013 for more insanity.
Of course, I did a little photography while I was there. But this year's photo adventure had its own... 'interesting' turn of events.
I was asked to do a small photoshoot for April, on Friday afternoon, and I gladly accepted. I set up to use remote flash, and everything went on without any issues. All of the shots looked good, and I went to the Dealer's Den when we finished. It was dark because the skylight was covered, and I didn't get any of the nice and diffused lighting I expected from above. No problem; I dialed in a little more flash power and went on my way. I got a few photos and reviewed them, and I found they were somewhat underexposed. I checked the file data for each, and they all stated that the flash fired. I checked the flash power again - no issues there; it was just as I had set it. I didn't think much about it then, and I got a few more photos before leaving.
I made my way back to the third floor of the convention center, and took the flash off the camera to check it. Power down, power up, check the controls, check the LCD, check the standby mode... everything on the flash unit checked out OK. Everything... except the flashing part. I hit the TEST button on the back of the unit and got... nothing. No flash. It would give me the muffled 'pop' sound that normally goes with the flash, but it didn't give me any light. I initially thought it had overheated somehow, but there were no warnings displayed on the LCD. I powered it down and made my way back to my hotel room. When I got there, I powered up the unit again, and it still didn't flash. Yep, it was dead. My old, reliable SB-600 flash had just... died. I didn't damage it, it wasn't overheated, but there it was... dead and gone.
There was nothing I could do to repair the flash, especially since I didn't know the cause of its death. Tweeting about it didn't make me feel any better. I had to start thinking about how I would shoot for the rest of the convention. The camera itself was fine, but the on-board flash was nowhere near powerful enough for shooting in dim light, and I needed the bounce capability that an exteral flash provides.
I didn't have a spare flash unit (a mistake that won't be repeated for future events), but thankfully, someone else did. Fibre saw my tweet, and said that I could use his SB-700, if I wanted to. I'll admit that I was a bit hesitant to respond. I thought that my D800 would do well enough in low-light that I could pump the ISO to 6400 and still get some good exposures (with a fair amount of noise that would need cleanup in post). But, the more I thought about it, the more I didn't want to do it. I had already taken a lot of photos at that point, and I knew that I would have a ton of work to do in post if I let the ISO noise get crazy. After more thought, I sent Fibre a message, asking him for a meetup so that I could borrow his SB-700 for the rest of the weekend. We met, I got the flash, and we each went back to our convention fun.
I had only briefly operated an SB-700, and never used it on any of my cameras. So, I had to learn how to use it, and how it would behave with my camera, in a very short amount of time. It was somewhat different from my familiar SB-600. The interface was much better, but the flash functions seemed a bit quirky at first. The big difference between the SB-700 and the SB-600 is that, in auto mode, the 700 will stay in TTL-BL unless spot metering is selected on the camera. There is logic behind that; both center-weighted and matrix metering evaluate the entire scene (with greater weight placed on what's under the focus point), and the background will be 'seen' with those meters. But I could toggle between TTL and TTL-BL anytime when my SB-600 was in auto mode, regardless of the meter selection. This was important because TTL-BL mode attempts to balance the flash exposure of the subject with the background exposure. That can be useful when shooting against a bright background that backlights the subject, but it also works the other way. If the background is dark, then the subject will get just enough flash for balance, and that almost always leads to underexposure of the entire frame. Not good.
Anyway, I learned how to use the flash and adjusted to its oddities, and I was back to my normal shooting habits. I returned the flash to Fibre when the convention ended, and I certainly let him know how grateful and appreciative I was. A few days after I arrived at home, I sold my dead SB-600 to someone who was interested (I don't know if he repaired it or just used it for spare parts). Soon after that, I bought an SB-700 for myself. I'll likely get a cheap Yongnuo manual flash to serve as a backup unit. I don't expect the SB-700 to die anytime soon, but I also didn't expect to have a suddenly-dead SB-600 during the middle of a convention weekend.
NEXT
I've decided to give IndyFurCon another chance, and I'll be there, in some capacity (one day or the whole weekend), in August. The third time is the charm, right? We'll see.
I'll also be at Furlaxation, in Columbus, Ohio, in September. It's a new convention and not too far from home, and I'm eager to see how it goes.
I'm gonna try to get back to Wolf Park in October. The thing is, all of the autumn photoshoot sessions are on Mondays. That itself isn't a problem, but getting the time off from work could be tricky for me. We'll see what happens.
And, I'll certainly attend Midwest FurFest in November, Thursday - Monday. As usual, that one will wrap up my convention adventures for the year, and I'll begin again with Furry Connection North in April 2013.
This has gotten long enough, I think. So, that's all for now.