[ZFP_Photo id=’325a6f68′]
Cameras are cool, too…. testing the zenfolio plugin..
For the 100AW rally, I decided I wanted to catch some action photos… which is not a horrible challenge, if one has a good vantage point – at that point, it’s all camera settings. At night it becomes a bit more challenging – especially when one doesn’t own a flash.
To solve the lack of night lighting, i bought a couple Neewar 680 flash units. The reviews I saw said they were pretty close to the mid range Canon flashes, and they were a LOT less expensive. I also bought a remote flash trigger setup – two receivers and one transmitter I thought I was in business… not so much.
In tinkering with the flash units, I found that they were shutting off after only a minute or two of inactivity. Since I had intended on setting the flashes on stage somewhere convenient, then shooting from a safe area (possibly leaving the flashes to get hit, if things don’t work out), I would not be able to fiddle with them every 3 minutes… the Rally came and went. I shot the rally during the day, and tinkered with on-camera mounting… it didn’t work so well. After this, i started looking for a way to durn off the auto-sleep… and even started shopping for other flashes that wouldn’t have this issue, and might still work with E-TTL when on-camera. no such luck.
I emailed Neewar – no response. Maybe lost between translation and the spam folder.
Almost a year later, I started googling – I had already considered opening the flash and looking for a circuit that I might be able to interrupt, if the sleep timer was an off-processor circuit. I then found that the canon flashes had a similar function that can be adjusted by holding the c.fn button, and changing the menu settings. The wheels started turning, when i was next in my office, i turned one of the flashes on and started holding different buttons (I was hoping for a menu button – no such luck), but when I held the backlight button down, it entered into a menu that said “SL 3”, pressing the left and right arrows changed the numeric value – up to 90. I haven’t timed it, but it seems that it will stay on for almost an hour and a half. I’m hoping to get a chance to use them this year…