mfunnell
Newly Enlightened
I bought some lights last week - the first time I've bought a serious light since the 1980s (a long story; don't ask).
While I was playing with one of my new toys last night I heard some rustling in the trees by my place and turned the light on them. That really lit them up! More so than I'd expected. So much so that I thought "that's enough light to take a photo". (In my "real" hobby, I occasionally pretend to be a photographer.) I was right:
(Note: these are fairly common brush-tail possums, who seem to put on hobnail boots and march across my roof most nights.)
I got to thinking that if I'd been less thoroughly inept getting my camera and lens together to take these shots (another long story) I would have got a better series of photos. (Including one or two before the flying fox flew off in disgust.) Perhaps fewer glasses of red infuriator before trying this might have helped as well :thinking:
I did get to thinking I should have used both my torch and my flash for these (torch for locating and focusing on the target, flash for additional light when taking the photo) - but I didn't because I'd scrounged the batteries from the flash to feed the torch (see "inept", above). But I also got to thinking that I need some kind of arrangement where I bind the torch in parallel with my lens so I'm not flapping about trying to use torch, camera and lens in the dark in a manner that needs at least three hands. My SRA40 has a tripod hole on its base, so I'm thinking of some Heath Robinson-esque device where I use a double clamp, L-bracket and single clamp to mount my torch to the Kirk foot under my lens on a parallel axis.
But I've only been thinking about this for less than a day. Has anyone here tried to do something similar in terms of mounting a light in parallel with a long lens? I can't be the only one to ever think on this. While I did look around (quite possibly not well enough, but I did make the effort) I didn't come up with much. So can anyone who has some kind of solution that actually works please help point me in the right direction? Otherwise me and Heath Robinson might have to proceed with my rather flaky-seeming L-bracket solution...
...Mike
While I was playing with one of my new toys last night I heard some rustling in the trees by my place and turned the light on them. That really lit them up! More so than I'd expected. So much so that I thought "that's enough light to take a photo". (In my "real" hobby, I occasionally pretend to be a photographer.) I was right:
(Note: these are fairly common brush-tail possums, who seem to put on hobnail boots and march across my roof most nights.)
I got to thinking that if I'd been less thoroughly inept getting my camera and lens together to take these shots (another long story) I would have got a better series of photos. (Including one or two before the flying fox flew off in disgust.) Perhaps fewer glasses of red infuriator before trying this might have helped as well :thinking:
I did get to thinking I should have used both my torch and my flash for these (torch for locating and focusing on the target, flash for additional light when taking the photo) - but I didn't because I'd scrounged the batteries from the flash to feed the torch (see "inept", above). But I also got to thinking that I need some kind of arrangement where I bind the torch in parallel with my lens so I'm not flapping about trying to use torch, camera and lens in the dark in a manner that needs at least three hands. My SRA40 has a tripod hole on its base, so I'm thinking of some Heath Robinson-esque device where I use a double clamp, L-bracket and single clamp to mount my torch to the Kirk foot under my lens on a parallel axis.
But I've only been thinking about this for less than a day. Has anyone here tried to do something similar in terms of mounting a light in parallel with a long lens? I can't be the only one to ever think on this. While I did look around (quite possibly not well enough, but I did make the effort) I didn't come up with much. So can anyone who has some kind of solution that actually works please help point me in the right direction? Otherwise me and Heath Robinson might have to proceed with my rather flaky-seeming L-bracket solution...
...Mike