Day 3 Caen, France

We left Bayeux this morning with Cecile and Vincent. They were heading out of town and passing Caen, France on their way, so we rode in their car (a Peugeot brand hatchback like a Element or Scion xB). The bedroom for us had a memory foam mattress (the blue bed in the picture) and a cool view. We are in Caen, France now! We are staying Patrice Renard and he and his two friends came over this morning and brought a real french breakfast for us "Americanos" and it was really good, croissants, sweet apple fritter things and "Jus du Orange". Everyone is gone now and they gave us a key to the house which is right in downtown Caen and has a cool back yard. They are going to try to get a "cabriolet" (convertible car) and take us to the D-Day beaches with their girlfriends tomorrow. Today we are just recovering, resting, charging batteries, and walking in Caen. The next day we will see Paris.

Day 2 England and France

We made it to London! The flight was not that great because they had pasta and I had a "special" vegetarian meal because they said it was going to be chicken...and we couldn't sleep because the seats leaned back about 2 degrees and that's all! Hayley sat behind me and played "Bejeweled" on her touch screen and I watched a show like planet earth. Anyway, we got to London and tried to figure out what day/time/world we were in because of the time change and no sleep. Caught the Underground (the "Tube") to downtown and walked around a while, saw Westminster, Parliament House, Big Ben etc., then got the train to Portsmouth.  Got our ferry and were bloodshot-eyed by the time the ferry let us board at about 11pm! Woke up in Caen, France, bot some Euro cash (England uses the British Pound) and tried to activate our Eurail passes... the people speak no English here and had so clue what a Eurail Pass was or how to activate it! We had the girl stamp it and we just got on the train. As far as we know, that's all you have to do because it works! We went to Cherbourg, France just because we can go anywhere we want and that was the first train that pulled up to the station, so we took it!Saw some cool stuff like WWII bunkers. Came back to Bayeux on a nice train! Saw the sights there. Hayley donated a Euro to light a candle on a box inside this huge cathedral that said "Tronc Releve Journellement". It was in front of a stained glass wall with lots of flags in the design. We thought it meant something about helping you on a journey...turns out, Vincent said it means "Don't try to steal this box!" Oh well, Cecile and Vincent are two people from Bayeux we are staying with tonight. They have a nice place and cooked us crepes and eggs, let us try cheese from all of Normandy, and gave us our own room with a memory foam mattress in the floor! Next Day = Paris! Au Revoir!

We are finally in New York, NY! Finally found WiFi and are sitting next to a window with a double decker 747 parked outside. We have to be back at our gate in a few, but then we are on our way to London, England for the first stop of our trip! Check back here every day and we'll have something cool on here! We aren't the only idiots with huge backpacks here either. Thanks to Candace for taking us to the airport! We are looking forward to sleeping on the next 13 hour non stop flight over the pond more than anything! Feel free to comment on here too! See ya

DIY Studio Set-Up

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Here is a shot of Hayley in the studio we set up in the room. I used my SB600 triggered by v4s camera right shooting half of it through my diffusion panel (5 in 1 reflector) and half of it blasted onto the background to make it white. The silver cover of the reflector was held above the camera along with two panels of styrofoam sitting on the bed camera right. Here is a setup shot...

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I caught her while she was singing :) The high-tech mounting system is made up of our ceiling fan, a coat hanger, my fly rod, the power cable from my Nikon battery charger and a usb cable, with some masking tape.

Canon FD Lens on a Nikon DSLR

 
Yes you can do it... here are some shots from my Canon 50mm f3.5 Macro 1:1 FD lens on my Nikon D60. As with all non-CPU lenses (Nikon or not) you have to shoot in manual mode, but it doesn't matter for macro flash shots. Also, if the lens is unmounted, you can't change the aperture. But, you can change it if you press in the two little pins on the mount and twist the lens so it thinks it is mounted. Then, the aperture can be selected by rolling the ring to whatever you need. You have to just hold the lens up to the mount on the Nikon but it works great. I am working on a way to get it to stay there without having to hold it. This was shot at f11 and 1/80th at 200 ISO the SB600 was about 2 feet away camera right at 1/4 power.
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Reflecting Crosslight

For this shot, I actually got to use my reflector outside. It is an Interfit 42" 5-in-1 Reflector and I found that the white panel doesn't work from far away (8ft+) even in direct sunlight. We were taking a break so I propped it up on my leg on the gold side because I didn't get the one with a stand and everything. It really threw some light out there! The gold color was a little harsh for this kind of shot though. The next addition to the "Vault" will probably be trying it out with just the see-through diffusion panel on my SB-600 outside.

AE-Lock and HOLD

This was shot at f3.2 and 1/200th at ISO 100. I used my Nikkor 35mm f1.8 AF-S lens. The only reason I want to "Vault" this picture is that I found that it is a million times quicker to set the AE-Lock on "Hold" instead of having to hold it down for the shot. On hold, you can just point to the background you want to expose for (in this case the woods outside the window) and press the AE-Lock one time, let it go, and still focus on something else. It's a lot faster than holding it down the whole time to lock your ambient exposure. Then just set the flash power however you want...here I just bounced the SB600 off the ceiling in TTL.