This is how to set it up up your mk-rc7 poverty wizards for remote shutter and remote flash.
You need two transmitters and at least two recivers.
1. Attach one receiver to the camera shutter release port and set this to say channel 1 – the transmitter that you hold in your hand to fire the camera needs to be set to this channel. This is your shutter release system and is totally separate to your wireless flash system.
2. Now attach a transmitter to the hot shoe or the sync port on your camera and set this to say channel 2. Now all of your flash receivers need to be on channel 2 or whatever channel you choose. This makes up your remote flash system
So what happens now is that when you push your shutter release it fires the shutter. the camera then sends a signal to the flash system the same as if you were pushing the shutter button.
Home owners may soon have to reveal the energy efficiency or ‘environmental performance’ of their homes when they put them up for sale or lease, potentially affecting the value of millions of homes.
The Victorian Government, as part of a national process, is drafting the new disclosure rules for the benefit of potential buyers or tenants. The law, known as ‘Environmental Performance Disclosure’, is expected to be introduced into Victoria in 2012 for the residential sector – this means that people selling or renting out houses may be required to show an energy efficiency rating performed by an accredited assessor. The scheme is currently in operation for commercial buildings over 2000 SQM-
Currently, most of the existing homes in Victoria have an energy efficiency rating of less than 2½ stars (out of 10) – significantly lower than the 40,000 new homes built each year to a minimum standard of 5 -
How will this affect Victorians?When mandatory disclosure begins in Victoria, people will be able to use the disclosed environmental performance to better compare different properties. A relationship between energy efficiency rating and house property value is expected to be seen.
This means that every house being sold must have some kind of energy rating report from an accredited energy assessor.
So in addition to photography, floor plans and copy writing vendors will now need to pay for an energy audit report. Property Snaps hopes to be partnered with accredited assessors so we may minimise inconvenience by compleating an energy audit while the home is being photographed and having its floor plan drawn. In most cases a floor plan will be a requirement for an energy audit.
Real estate agents will now have a duty to ensure that all advertising material contains energy rating information.
By using one company to perfrom the audits and floor plan mapping it should benfit the vendor with reduced costs.
In closing, the expected date for this requirement is May 2012, At this stage nothing has been set in concrete but im guessing a 90% chance this will go ahead.
I have been meaning to make one of these slide shows for ages, I finnaly got some time this afternoon to make one. I must say it was preety easy with ProShow Gold. Pro show works on a simple drag and drop system.
So far the response has been very good on this video. Im hoping to add this service into our range.
The next task will be trying to find a voice artist. I did the audio on this so I aplogise ! I thing Im better at taking photos than speaking! Enjoy…
I received my set of MK-RC7 2.4ghz Wireless flash triggers today. I’m writing this review based purely on my experience with these triggers and I am in no way affiliated with any reseller or manufacture. Apparantly these are similar to the RF-602 triggers but with AAA batteries.
There is a lot of choice now when it comes to wireless flash triggers and in the past I have had some bad experiences with cheap ebay triggers. However recently there has been a lot of 2.4ghz transmitters coming onto the market and I have heard more postive than negative feedback about the new breed of “Poverty Wizard” flash trigger systems.
In my experience with gadgets and gizmos I can safely say that 2.4ghz and 5.8ghz technology is very good and in most cases there are vary rarely any problems with 2.4ghz devices. Occasionally there are interference issues but not as often as we used to get with lower spectrum based stuff.
I ordered my new MK-RC7 from Link Delight for US$23.99 and I also ordered second receiver for US$16.99
Shipping took around 8 days which is not too bad.
I must say I from first impressions I am very impressed. The quality of these look fantastic and the kit comes with every thing you need and more.
- Receiver
- Transmitter
- 4 X aaa batteries ( replace these)
- Lead to go from the receiver to a studio flash 3.5mm connector
- Lead to go from sync port on camera to sync port on flash
- Lead to go from receiver to camera body for remote shutter release
The leads that come in the kit are supper good quality, all the leads have locking rings on them to stop the leads falling out. Even Pocket wizards don’t come with leads this good!
The new MK-RC7 has metal shoes and a locking pin on the transmitter and a spot for the camera flash locking pin on the receiver. This makes for a very safe and study combo.
The plastic casing feels good and solid and not like some cheap triggers.
There are 16 user selectable channels that can be changed via 4 dip switches.
The batteries that come with them are pretty crappy so I would advise replacing these witha good quality set of rechargeable batteries.
(WARNING – DO NOT PUT THE TRANSMITTER SHOE ONTO THE RECIVER - THEY WILL GET STUCK TOGETHER! - I DID IT WHEN I WAS FIDILING AROUND AND THEY GOT STUCK….. I SMASHED MY THUMB NAIL CLEAN OFF WHEN I TRIED TO SEPERATE THEM)
After installing my batteries I put the transmitter on a Canon 50D and the receiver on a Canon 430ex.
The first problem I found was that I couldn’t turn the power button on the receiver on because its located directly under the flash. Not a major problem and I am sure this will be changed in the next few models that get released.
Once I powered them up I popped of a few shots and I must say i am very very impressed! out of 80 shots not a single miss fire! This was froma distance of 8-10 metres.
Next I tried a distance test. I could only get about 60 meters away because of the building I was in, I had the flash in another room with a window and out of 30 shots not a single miss fire!
These units seem like they are ultra reliable and would definitely recommend any strobist real estate photographer consider geting a set. For under $25 bucks you can’t beet them!
The other great feature of these is that they also double up as a wireless remote shutter release, so with two transmitters you could effectively trigger the camera and the flashes remotely.
I give these an 8/10 rating!
Pros:
- Well priced under $25.00 for a transmitter and receiver and $17 for extra recivers
- Good quality construction
- They come with an assortment of leads and plugs – the leads are very nice quality
- 2.4ghz – very reliable and stable – better than most expensive triggers on 433mhz
Cons:
- Power button on receiver is hard to access when on the flash
- Batteries included are crappy (but hey its a $25 trigger set! what more do you want?)
Final comments:
For the price of these triggers I am really impressed, No miss fires and really well constructed units. The true test will be when they are used out in the field. I’m sure they won’t handle all the punishment I put my gear through. But hey for the price of one pocket wizard I could by nearly 10 sets of these!
Now anyone that knows me here in Australia knows that my business model is based on high volume turnover, hence pricing is a little lower than other photographers while quality is still kept high.
In order to get our processing times down I like to switch between using RAW and JPG on the camera, RAW files are much larger and take a lot more time to process.
I have worked out that I only need to use RAW when shooting a difficult room that needs some recovery in lightroom or if its a shoot that requires a White Balance adjustment.
So for most daytime outdoor shots I use JPG, for shots indoors with windows I usually shoot in RAW unless I can get a clean window pull using all my strobes. I use JPG for shots that have no windows. This gives me a mix of around 30% Raw and 70% JPG and can save as much as 20 minutes of download, sorting and processing per job. On 10 jobs per day this equates to around just over 3 hours of saved processing time. A lot of people will say RAW is the only way to go and I agree to some extent. However in real estate photography most of the photos will be used on the Internet and will be compressed hence quality from RAW is lost anyway. As for boards and brochures, Depending on the shot JPG will usually work fine.
If I am doing a luxuary property or commercial magazine work then I always shoot raw. But for day to day real estate this is a great way to save valuble time.
Last year some time I posed on flickr about using rechargeable torches for twilights – you can read the thread here
I thought I would touch on this again for those that are just getting into the business.
Super Cheap Auto sell a range of rechargeable spot lights (6v & 12v) they range from around $10 – $30 with a ac charger and some come with a car charger. I went out and bought 3 at first and have now gone and got a further 7.
I have diffused the front of the lights to give a wide spread of light. I diffuse them by using tracking paper on the outside of the lens. (Be Careful with high power lights as they may burn the paper)
I use these in a lot of twilight shoots for magazines and some real estate.
I basically hide these small lights in the garden bends and aim them on the front of the house and hide them in door ways.
I find that they are the same temp colour as the inside halogen lamps(2800k – 3200k) so they work really well and give a warm glow.
I would one day like add a wireless switch so I can turn them on and off remotely all at once, as the 6v battery only lasts about 20 minutes and begin able to shut them off while I change position would be really handy.
In one of the photos I have not cloned them out so they are clearly visible.
You can see the lamps here!
2 Lamps hidden behind the trees and one in the entry way facing the roof.
Update: Larry and Scotts book is now for sale – click here to go to their page
Scott Hargis and Larry Lorhman are set to realease a fantastic book soon. You can read more about this book on Larry blog here
Quote from Photographyforrealestate.net
“I’m proud to announce that Scott Hargisand I are partnering to publish an eBook titled The Essential Guide to: Lighting Interiors, Techniques for lighting with small flash. We are currently working hard on this project and we expect to be adding this eBook to the PFRE store sometime in mid to late October, about a month from now.”
Anyone who has read Larrys other ebooks or been to a Scott Hargis seminar will understand the value of a book like this.
I have been meaning to write this for ages. My friend John Hokkanen in the US sent me this device a few months ago and admittedly its been sitting on my desk for a while now. Im kicking my self that I didn’t try it out sooner!
John emailed me and told me had a fantastic product that will transform any painters pole into an elevated pole rig and asked me if I would like to try one out. I love product reviews and of course I said yes!
The reasons it was on my desk for so long was probably because work has been flat out lately oh and I have a big monster, space age, fully automated elevated pole system that gets robot enthusiast creaming their pants. So why would I need a little painters pole to take elevated photos?
Well I finally got the time to try it out last week, I went down to Bunnings Warehouse and bought a colapsible painters pole and took the pole, the Pole Pixie and my camera down to a friends house to try it out.
Man! where has this product been all my life! I could beleive how simple it was to use and how quick I could get an elevated photo of a house! My mega automated pole rig takes me 5-10 minutes to set up properly and I have the added disadvantage of it being on the back of my car so access to small areas is not on the cards.
The beauty of the Pole Pixie is that you can deploy and elevated photo in under a minute and you can get access to any property!
The whole painters pole system is simple, and it reverts back the the KISS philosophy (keep it simple stupid!) To use it you simply screw your camera onto it, set the self timer (or use a wireless remote) and swing the pole up. It takes less than 10 seconds per comp and then you move onto your next shot! The best thing is with a collapsible pole you can take this anywhere.
This product is defintly worth the $30 bucks, I’m know keeping my painters pole and Pole Pixie in my car and I’m going to use it on properties that are high up on hills, or require a slightly lower elevated composition!
I must also make note that the construction and quality of this product is fantastic, being a hobbyist engineer my self I can appreciate the craftsmanship that has gone into this product. Its not a cheap piece of plastic that you would expect from some overseas factory. Its a high quality professional adapter that I would happily trust my most expensive camera on.
This is a video I put together a few years ago, Its a really simple method to replace Sky’s in real estate photos.
I have a free sky library here that you are welcome to use for personal use.
I find that a when erasing the top layer its important to not make the sky look to saturated as the whole sutle effect is what makes sky replacement work.
This is my elevated photography rig in action. I took this video when I was doing a job for a client down on the coast near Wonthaggi in Victoria (Famous for wind turbines and desalination plants!)
The pole goes to 12 meters in height and the pan tilt head is controlled using a 2.4ghz spektrum radio system (as used on RC models)
