Screaming Monkey Research Laboratories

Working on a picture. Can you guess what this layer mask is for?

I think I lost it. I’m hoping it is just laying on the floor by my backpack or something rather than out in the woods. I really need to find it and try to use it with the Canon Xti. I’m 95% certain it will be unusable with the Xti’s viewfinder. (Love that toy train effect.) It is a bitch to focus. I think the microscopic viewfinder will be tough to use.

I’d just about decided to buy a russian tilt shift lens when Kiev Camera decided to go tits. Actually, lets confirm that. (As I can’t remember the name of the other russian tilt shift reseller.) Hey! It looks like they just lost the .com version of their domain name. The .net version still lives. Maybe I’ll still get one.

Course the other brand was cheaper. Just can’t remember who they are.

William O’Brien State park from, I think, last spring. I did something that blew out the sky but by then I was far enough along I didn’t want to bother with it. (Day late already and all that.)

This is an alternate to the picture of the week. (Which is arriving shortly.)

And the curves are pretty nuts to get any kind of range out of this photo. Still, I liked the look of the bark and the colors in it. This kind of works for that. Need a better composed one.

www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com

My 20D’s L bracket is a Kirk. My Xti’s is a Really Right Stuff. My next one will be a RRS. I wouldn’t buy a RRS ball head over a kirk but I sure do like their L brackets.

The main differences.

The RRS is lighter and smaller. Obviously it is for a lighter and smaller camera but it looks like that would translate to the 20D.

The RRS attaches to the camera mount. The Kirk attaches to the camera mount and the left camera strap loop. This means you have to remove the camera strap to remove the kirk. This is a pain. This is enough of a pain that it just doesn’t happen. This means that the plate is a fixture on the 20D. This means that I simply do not attach the 20D to my pano gear. Since the RRS can be popped off the camera with relative ease the Xti fits it nicely.

The RRS can be centered in portrait mode. They even mark the center point of the lens. The Kirk would sit off to the side. Nothing major. Just a little detail.

The RRS’s screw mount is centered with the lens. The Kirk’s was offset. (Again nothing major and neither is centered on the focal plane.)

Other than the camera strap thing there really isn’t a show stopper. But that and the attention to the little things is enough to get my business next time.

It is amazing all the little crap you buy to go with your camera. Today I received a new remote shutter release and an L bracket for my Xti. I think that they cost more than my original 35mm camera. (Some 20+ years ago. So I guess that isn’t a surprise.)

I already had an L bracket for the 20D. Doesn’t fit the Xti.

I already had a remote shutter release. Doesn’t work with the Rebel line.

I can’t use my off camera flash setup because the Xti doesn’t have a pc sync connector. [1] A wein hotshoe to pc adapter or a set of ebay pocket wizard knock offs [2] will fix that.

Still need a Kata rain cover. Still need good 67mm and 77mm polarizers. (Price those. See why I haven’t bought them?)

These things add up. They add up enough that the reason I’ll probably never go nikon or pentax isn’t the lenses. It is all the crap that I buy for canon cameras. Either it only works with canon or it is sized to work with canon or my lenses. Buying new polarizers for a set of pentax lenses alone would cost me a ton.

Bah!

[1] The 20D works fine when it is out of the weather so I think it is going to become the dedicated “studio” camera. It also has a viewfinder big enough for me to manually focus in doors. Might start running it tethered.

[2] These things are so cheap compared to the real thing that it is best to buy a few extras. Fortunately they are so cheap compared to the real thing that one can buy about 10 knock offs to one actual pocket wizard.

A lot of near misses this week. (Things I think will look far better in a print than in a reduced size jpeg.)

Anywho, a squirrel at Jay Cooke.