Swedish Chameleon SC3 interview with Mattias Holmer

Just the other week we brought you a video showing the Swedish Chameleon SC2 that we filmed at a trade show earlier in the year. Well, never one to rest on their laurels, Swedish Chameleon already have an update to the SC2 – the new SC3.

We were invited to The Flash Centre in London (the sole UK retailer for Swedish Chameleon) to meet Mattias, the sales and marketing director and co-developer of the Swedish Chameleon products. He had some SC3 rigs with him and took the time to talk to us and show us the new features and functions and why the SC3 is a good step forwards in shooting video with DSLRs.

We also managed to get hold of one of the rigs and have produced our own video review of the rig giving our views on it. Expect to see that on the blog in the near future.

For now, here’s Mattias…

A Swedish Chameleon

Back at Focus this year Brian and I managed to get our hands on the new Swedish Chameleon HD DSLR rig from The Flash Centre. We took the opportunity to to do a quick overview of what it’s like. Here’s a short video we made of Brian talking about the rig and showing some of it’s unique features that make it such an interesting, and useful product for HD movie shooting with DSLRs.

If you want to see the Swedish Chameleon products, click this link to see what TFC have.

Review: Acratech GP ballhead

Acratech GP ballhead

I’ve written before about the importance of a good tripod and if the tripod is valuable, then it follows that the head you place on top is equally important.What use is a solid tripod if you mount a flimsy, floppy head on top of it that’s not capable of holding your kit securely and allowing you to use it efficiently?

For years I’ve used what I consider to be the best ballhead available anywhere – the Really Right Stuff BH-55. Despite 6 months with the Acratech GP, this is till true, however the RRS has two big drawbacks that mean it’s no longer the default choice of ballhead when I go out shooting.

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Position your off-camera flashes with Novoflex ball heads

Novoflex Neiger 19 mini ball head

When you start with using off-camera flash for your photography one of the first problems you need to overcome is how to position the off-camera flash where you want it. Over the years I have tried many options, and one that I still use is the Novoflex NEIGER 19 mini ball with flash shoe. There’s so much thought gone in to the design of this little inexpensive ball head it cannot fail to impress.

• It’s made of metal, so that means it will survive the rigours of use, the blue alloy is unlikely to split if you try to ‘tighten it up a bit more’

• The flash shoe has a metal insert in the base, and it unscrews to reveal a standard tripod thread out of the top of the ball head. This means it will screw directly in to the base of a PocketWizard Flex TT5 or many other radio triggers. It also can be used for small cameras such as a PowerShot S95 or maybe a PowerShot G12 at a push

• The fitting in the base is a standard tripod 1/4″ – 20 threaded hole, but with a reasonable sized screwdriver (of if on location a small coin) this insert can be removed to give a 3/8″ sized threaded hole. Now the head fits on top of many light stands or tripod legs directly

Manfrotto 175 clamp and Novoflex ball head

 

Speedlites and external power sources

Do you use Speedlites for events style photography? The sort of place where you don’t want to be changing batteries regularly and you want quicker recycle time?

Speedlite 580EX II and CP-E4

If so, then it might be worth looking at the Canon CP-E4 battery pack. This pack has a slide magazine holder that takes 8xAA batteries and plugs into the side of your flashgun (550EX, 580EX, 580EX II, MR-14EX and MT-24EX).

By having 8 batteries instead of the normal four in the flashgun itself, the recycling time is reduced and you will get twice the number of flashes before you need to switch out the batteries.

If you go down this route, there is a flash custom function trick you should look at as well… on the 580EX II it’s Flash CFn-12 and on the MR-14EX and MT-24EX it’s Flash CFn-7.

This custom function allows you to set which power source the flash recycles from – the internal batteries and external power source (default) or the external power source only (setting 1).

You may think that the default setting is the best option – surely the flash will recycle a little quicker and you’ll get yet more flashes before battery change….right? Actually no. You may get a little faster recycle time but you can very well run into problems – the external power source will not power the LCD screen on the flashguns, it is only used to recycle the flash head. This means if your internal batteries flatten while using the default setting (for sake of argument FCFn-12-0) then no matter how much charge there is in the external battery pack, the flash will turn off and not function.

The solution? Set this flash custom function to setting 1 to only use the external power source for recycling the flash head. You’ll need to change batteries a in the external pack a little more frequently, but you won’t have the frustration of the flash turning off even though your flash pack batteries are brand new.

You can leave this set all the time as when you don’t have an external battery pack plugged in it will have no effect on the operation or recycling of the flashgun.

If indeed you don’t use the CP-E4 (E3/E2 etc) and prefer a third party unit like a ‘Digital Camera Battery’ or ‘Quantum’ pack, then again, this is a flash custom function you should be setting.

Hahnel Giga T Pro review

Hahnel Giga T Pro

Have you looked longingly at a Canon TC-80N3 and thought you’d love to have one but paying £130 is a bit much to swallow? Or have you looked at it and thought ‘if only I had an N3 connected camera rather than an E3 connected one!’ ? If either of these is you, then you really should take a look at Hahnel Giga T Pro.

Sounds like a mouthful, but it’s actually a pocket marvel. This is a bit of a red-letter day as usually you’ll hardly ever hear me recommend a 3rd party product over a Canon equivalent (not for any reason more than I hardly ever find 3rd party products doing as good a job as the Canon ones) but this is an exception. The Hahnel takes the TC-80N3 functions, puts them in a wireless package and does it for much less money. Bonus!

So what is it? Essentially the Giga T Pro consists of a transmitter and a receiver. The receiver has a mini-jack on the side and the whole thing comes with two different cables – one terminating in a N3 connector and one in an E3 connector. Yep, that’s right, all of you with EOS 300D, 350D, 400D, 450D, 500D, 550D and 1000D can now perform complete timelapse functions, not to mention get involved in really long (and accurately timed) Bulb exposures for astrophotography.

The functions included are: long exposure, interval timer, self timer and shot count. Combining one or more of these gives you a huge range of options for setting when, how often and for how long the shutter is tripped.

Hahnel Giga T Pro attached to EOS 5D Mark II

Even better, being wireless you can trigger the camera from a distance and avoid two issues – where to hang the TC-80N3 when shooting a really long exposure and making sure you don’t pull on the cable accidentally and jolt the camera.

The transmitter is where you make all the settings and to be honest, the manual is not the clearest and it’s not the most intuitive unit to set, but then again, neither is the TC-80N3.

The unit uses a 2.4GHz wireless connection and here it adds another trump over the TC-80N3 and the LC-5 – the range is up to 100m! Nope, you’re not limited to 80cm (like the TC-80N3 cable) nor to line of sight, like the LC-5 infra-red unit. And being wireless, you’re less likely to accidentally follow my favourite mistake…. having the TC-80N3 dangling from the camera when shooting with the tripod over water, only to notice the release merrily bobbing in the water.

And if you don’t need all the fancy functions, you can make use of the unit as a simple remote trigger (although there is a cheaper version without all the timelapse functions available).

Is it all hunky dory? Mostly yes, with one caveat – the connector to N3 connectors on a camera does not feature a locking latch like the Canon TC-80N3 (and other N3 connectors) do. This means it can slip out accidentally, which is somewhat annoying. Also, while having cables that plug in to adapt to different cameras is brilliant and useful, it also means another cable to carry around and lose.

Overall it feels well built (time will tell how much this counts for) but for now, if you’re in the market for a remote release or you want to upgrade your TC-80N3 (there, I said it!) there’s nothing better out there, that I know of, than the Hahnel Giga T Pro.

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