French Brown Photography

I recently purchased some ebay flash radio triggers (Cactus or PT-04 style). At the price of $20 for a transmitter and receiver, they seem to be a steal compared to the competitors prices.

However, once they arrived I quickly realized that they do not play nice with my Canon 430EX Speedlight. For some reason the receiver was randomly triggering the flash. These misfires are very annoying.

After some internet research, I found a number of modifications people are doing to these. I picked two relatively easy modifications to try out first.

First I extended the antenna on the receiver (you can also do this on the transmitter). You need right at 6″ of wire as the antenna inside the receiver is just about .98″ long. You solder this wire to the lower spot where the antenna attaches inside the unit. I also cut a notch in the unit so the wire could pass through easily.

Second, I improved on the grounding system inside the receiver. I soldered a small length of wire from the negative battery terminal (* in above picture) to the negative hotshoe terminal (+)

After these changes, I set my channels to 1 ON, 2 ON and I have only had 1 misfire in about 30 flashes or 40 minutes of use.

Lastly, to improve the stability and profile in an umbrella stand, I drilled a second hole in the bracket so that the bracket can sit flush with the unit. This keeps the unit from rotating on the bracket, but you retain that function if you wish.

Hope these simple mods can help you out!

I recently learned about a new processing technique that gives very interesting results.

Here are some more examples

Here is a good how-to

One of my friends Scott Hotaling spend the summer traveling across the US. I wanted to share this amazing shot that he took.

“Storm in the Valley”, Yosemite National Park, California:

Gear: Canon 5D + 17-40 L, Circular Polarizer, 3-stop Hard Grad. ND
Technical: 3.0 s @ f/16, ISO 100

PLEASE VOTE FOR ME HERE!!!!!

UPDATE – I won second place for my water drop shot. Thanks for all who voted

Three of my pictures have been nominated for best shot in July at NSOP. Its an honor.

You can see the other nominated shots – HERE

I often visit a photography community named New School of Photography (or NSOP). Every month we have challenges where a photographer must try to shoot a specific theme. July’s theme was Anti-Gravity.

Luckily, I took a picture yesterday that fit the challenge pretty well. There was a spider hanging onto a single thread of web. He was violently shaking up and down in the wind. Frankly, I was pretty lucky to capture the shot.

Here are the other submissions for the NSOP July Challenge

Unfortunately, I was unable to photograph the universal anti-gravity machine shown below: