More preparations for my week off away from civilization:

Camera and Lenses

• Canon 30D
• Sigma 10-20mm
• Canon EF 100-400mm L
• Tamron Adaptall-2 90mm SP f/2.5 macro
• Carl Zeiss 35mm f/2.4
• Zenitar 16mm f/2.8 fisheye

This week I'll be going for my annual summer vacation -- back to a familiar place: Hornby Island. If it was anything like that the last few trips I'll be spending days waking up very early hoping to capture photos of the placid Hornby deer chewing on dew-tipped grass, interspersed with landscape photos from Helliwell Park, night shots of stars and shooting portraits of people we hang about with.

I made up this guide to answer a question on Flickr so I put it up here for anyone else who couldn't figure it out. As I recall, the Manfrotto manual (who knows where it went now) was pretty bare and it took me a bit of trying to figure it out.

Below I am replicating a long post I made on Flickr I made in response to a question from someone who just got a 430ex and asked: what do I need to get this to work off-camera? Hopefully this helps someone who tried to look at the Strobist methods and got confused.

With the 430ex there are six methods for getting the flash off-camera:

Wireless using 580EX as commander

1) triggered by a 580ex using infrared -- but then you need a 580ex. Also, what if you only want to trigger the 430ex and not have the 580ex on your camera firing?

Note: I know you can also rig some sort of periscope to your on-camera flash to get it to fire an optical slaved external flash -- or you can live with having the effect of the on-camera flash.

My ratched up old LCD protector

On my trip out of the province I did a dumb thing, I left my 30d in a loose bag without compartments and forgot that I also had a lens rolling about inside as I walked around for hours. The result was a very scratched up LCD screen.

Canon, in its infinite wisdom, doesn't allow idiots like me to damage the actual LCD, instead they have a piece of hard plastic between the actual LCD and things like loose lenses. So if you scratch it up like I did, all you have to do is replace the screen protector.

I'll get you yet, Mike Hammer!
copyright 2007 Keith Loh
This is one of my submissions to the newest Strobist assignment: film noir. Ever since I shaved my head I've been in my friend's movies as a heavy. When I walk the streets people look at me sizing me up. I guess I was made to be an antagonist. Anyone who knows me knows I couldn't intimidate a puppy. Ah well, it works for the camera.