Monday, January 01, 2007

Sennheiser headphones

A quick product shot of the great running headphones Amanda got me for Christmas. She wrote a review of them on her blog.
These were shot in my Heath Robinson light tent that I built from a u-haul cardboard box and some tracing paper. Light is from the camera right, with my brand new Canon 580EX Speedlight (another excellent Christmas prezzie!) and with white bounce panels to the camera left and top for some fill to open up the shadows a bit. Decided to just use a single light for this to give some more interesting fall-off and some shadows rather than an evenly lit scene. I picked up a pair of wireless flash remotes on e-bay, for about $40. So far they've performed averagely well, with the occasional miss-fire. They aren't the best quality ever either, but compared to the gold standard of Pocket Wizards at $400, I'll put up with the relatively minor annoyances. But I think I'd like a bit more reliability if I want to use them more regularly for shooting people. Either that or I need to work out what's causing the flashes to not always respond. I actually had to pull one of the receivers apart a few days after getting them to re-solder a connection inside. Maybe I'm starting to notice the false economy of not getting the Pocket Wizards after all. My birthday's only a few months away...

12 comments:

Mike Holley said...

Gordon,

What camera do you have..? I also got a new flash for Xmas - a 430EX. However I have now found that I need a transmitter or a hot shoe cord to use it off camera with my 350D. The official Canon transmitter is £130. I'm interested in the units you bought on Ebay.

Mike

Unknown said...

Very informative post. Hoping fingers crossed for your birthday gift :)

Anonymous said...

Nice job with the lighting and composition both, Gordon. And thanks for the great link to the u-haul macro studio. I'm going to try it myself now. Happy new year to you and good luck with your projects this year. I still don't understand what your theme is or if you're still trying to pick one, but I'll be back on a regular basis to try and figure it out :)

Anonymous said...

"hi, these are great headphones. After reading some of the posts at http://sennheisergroup.com my mind were made up. So I went to the shops and got them :)

Unknown said...

Mike, I'm using a Canon 1D MkII, in this case with a 100mm macro lens.

I had a 420EX flash for several years, but it is almost entirely automatic, with very little control available, other than the on camera flash exposure control (FEC). The 430EX is a much better option with the manual power controls that it has. I got the 580EX for that and also because it will act as a wireless master for the 420EX.

I did buy the canon off-camera hot-shoe cord, but wouldn't recommend it. It is really short & expensive and doesn't give you a lot of options for interesting off-camera flash. I've found it pretty restrictive, other than for a couple of scenarios. Wireless remotes are a much more flexible way to go.

The hot-shoe cord has a couple of advantages, if used with a flash bracket, because it lets the E-TTL work, rather than needing manual mode. It can also be used as a 'flash on a pole' setup, with the flash on the end of a hand-held monopod, but you are still limited in how far away from the camera you can position it.

Unknown said...

I'll post some thoughts on the ebay remotes some time this week when I get a chance.

Unknown said...

For puzzled: I'm still working on the outline of the themes - mostly there :) Not every post will be on the weekly theme, but I think there will be a rotating group of at least two and probably three themes.

Laurie L. Black said...

Very nice, looks like you're getting good use from your "ghetto" light tent. ;)

Mike Holley said...

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for the advice on the hot shoe cord - I was off to buy one at the weekend. You're right about the short lead - 60cm!!

My budget won't stretch to a 580EX right now, so I need other options and I would appreciate your views on the Ebay units. I'm also looking at the Canon ST-E2 transmitter.

Mike said...

How do you like those headphones??

Obsidian said...

My favourite brand of phones captured in a great way!

Anonymous said...

They truly are gorgeous headphones... and they sound amazing for the price! I bought my pair of Sennheiser MX75 sports headphones from Hifi Headphones & Earphones. They are based in the UK. Was very happy with the service and over the moon about the headphones!