Camera PC jacks are the bane of many a photographer.
Why? Because they go wrong. OK most things go wrong, but these little beauties do so due to their design not allowing a decent connection and therefore cable to be produced.
This wouldn’t be so much of a problem of they were cheap to replace, but with a Nikon brand cable starting around £35 they are an expensive necessity.
David Hobby @Strobist had a good and simple idea, swap them for 3.5mm(1/8″) headphone jacks.
OK I’m not sure if it was his idea entirely but he’s definitely onto a winner.
3.5mm jack cables are a little more reliable, maybe not massively so, but with them available from £1 each on eBay the worry starts to go away, simply buy spares.
David has put the challenge to manufacturers that he will actively promote their product on his site, http://strobist.blogspot.com if they produce a hot shoe flash in 2010 that includes a 3.5mm jack.
So if you happen to be a camera or flash manufacturer (Nikon I’m looking at you) got yourself over there and get it made!
Take a look at Davids’ article at this link It’s Time for the PC Jack to Die.
Filed under: Photos by Matt Dean
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For all you coffee aficionados, the UKBC is being held at Hotelympia 2010 this year with the final on the 1st of March.
It promises to be a intense competition with the winner going on to compete in the World Barista Championships.
If you would like to attend, a free ticket can be had by registering on the Hotelympia site.
Filed under: Coffee by Matt Dean
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With my Windows 7 RC running out in the near future I decided to switch to a retail copy and start the process of reinstalling everything. One of the first things to get setup was of course firefox and with it firebug.
For those of you who don’t know firebug, it is a web development tool that allows you to inspect HTML and modify style and layout in real-time. This superb tool allows you to see the effect of any changes you make to a website on the fly without making actual modifications to the code. You can also debug and profile javascript and pause execution at any time. As with most of the best bit of software it works really smoothly, is incredibly powerful and saves us hours of development time.
For you web designers out there who don’t use firebug, get it now!
There is also chromebug to integrate with Google’s browser should that be your choice. For you IE users there is some sort of version that can be used by adding code to your site, not tried it but it looks like it’s a PITA. Just use firefox, it’s simply better.
Filed under: The Web by Matt Dean
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Headed to the Pyrenees this weekend and thought I would drop a few photos in here.
Starting with of course the mountains themselves, once the cloud cleared there really was some spectacular views on offer.
The shear scale of what is in front of you is quite hard to comprehend and to be honest very hard to do justice to in a photograph.
After staring at the Pyrenees mountains for a while we moved down to the snowboard park to see some xtreme sports in action, photos after the jump.
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Filed under: Photos by Matt Dean
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Just having a bit of a play with a couple of Nikon speedlights and a CTO gel. A toy dino that sits on my desk was the victim model, apparently it’s a Deinonychus if your interested.
Filed under: Photos by Matt Dean
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