A smashing day
Yesterday was a bad day. While out shooting a house, one of my trusty Nikon SB800’s fell off a light stand as I was moving it into place, and stopped working. I stuck it in my Peli case and looked at it later on, with a view of being a hero & mending it in a DIY stylee. Armed with a set of mini screwdrivers, and a Youtube tutorial, I set about dismantling it with aplomb.
120 seconds later, I was faced with a selection of circuit boards, snapped cables, and bits of plastic & metal that had dropped out of the casing interior. Honestly, I don’t know how these amateur techie people learn to do this stuff. It’s the same when I need to do something with one of the work Macs. Totally useless. I had to bin this one, and immediately ordered two Yongnuo flash guns off the internet. They look tremendous, built like tanks, and more importantly – they’re less than a quarter of the price of the equivalent Nikon model. I often wonder how Canikon gets away with charging what they do for some of the products they manufacture. Anyway, they’ll be with me tomorrow, ready for a big residential shoot the following day. I’ll report on their performance soon afterwards.
The same day, I was sorting out some lighting kit for a corporate portrait job, and I tried to get a reflector off an expensive Bowens Esprit monobloc head. It wouldn’t budge no matter what I did. This was most annoying, as I needed to put a softbox on it. Again, I consulted the internet to see if it was a common problem. There it was – just lift the lever by force, and screw the reflector bayonet off. Simple. I ended up snapping a screwdriver with the force applied, and it all resulted in the creation of a flash head which is usable with the jammed reflector, but cosmetically knackered, and unsaleable in the event that it needs to go. Not great.
The job has many unseen expenses which can easily destroy a week’s earnings in one fell swoop, and the need to replace or upgrade equipment is a constant pressure. Let’s hope that this was my complement of bad luck for the summer.
