documentation

for the most part, you can probably skip this post, although there is a universal truth herein that i get to... eventually.

so we have a little problem. now that we (finally) have two full-time external Speedlites available, we need more power, especially for the bigger, more powerful 580EXII flash. the solution: an external battery pack, and specifically, Canon's CP-E4 Compact Battery Pack. it holds a total of 8 AA batteries inside. combined with the onboard batteries in the 580EXII, that's a total of 12 batteries at play. from all accounts, its a wonderful tool for all-day shooting (read: weddings).

so i did my research, read nearly every single review on B&H (there are a ton), and decided that for the convenience and price, it was worth it. my last step was to try and find instruction manuals or documentation online from Canon so I knew what to "officially" expect. but there wasn't any. i had to Google search "Canon CP-E4 compact battery pack" to even find it on the Canon website (a search on the site gave me nothing). but i figured, hey, nearly 200 reviews with an overwhelming positive response must mean its simple to use and just go. and it also has a handy-dandy tripod screw mount on the bottom to attach it to the bottom of the camera! sweet!

it came in today, and the first thing i did was pull out the one-sheet manual included. the very first note?: (not verbatim) do not attach the battery pack to the tripod socket of any EOS Digital camera except for the 1D-series. otherwise, the electromagnetic interference will cause noise to appear on all images.

huh. well that sucks, because we shoot with a 5DMII and a 7D, and it'll primarily be used on the 5DMII. my next step was to find out what year the one-sheet was printed. perhaps since then, later models have been built to counteract this problem. date: 2007. alright! 5DMII came out well after this, so maybe we were in the clear. but just in case, i called Canon to triple-check.

their verdict? that note still holds true. the 1D-series cameras are built like tanks (true) and are able to negate any interference caused by the battery pack. for any other model, the pack must be at least 2 inches away from the body, preferably in a pocket (it does have a nice stretchy cord) or strapped elsewhere away from the camera body.

our problem? since the flash that needs the battery pack will mostly be used by Jac at weddings (somewhere she'll most likely be wearing a dress while shooting), there's nowhere to really put the battery pack except for strapping it to a dress strap. the pack itself with 8 AA batteries, while by no means "heavy," is probably going to be quite uncomfortable when attached to a dress strap and may cause a wardrobe malfunction (!!).

this is, of course, vexing. we have to have that extra security that batteries aren't just going to die at critical moments and its either the Canon battery pack or a $500 Quantum battery pack. lemme stress that: $500. we've been lucky the past couple of months being able to purchase most of the extraneous gear we needed without coming close to breaking the bank, but i know we cannot plunk down $500 on a battery pack anytime in the near future, not with so many other things that have to come first (like RML stuff and lenses).

so here's that universal truth i spoke of earlier. everyone these days has a website, and for the most part, manufacturers of consumer goods are happy to put their manuals online in PDF format, freely available. Canon makes their camera manuals freely available as well. its truly frustrating when companies leave the small things out or make them impossible to find. i don't know if this battery pack is going to work for us now, but i also know we cannot do without it. we can't risk missing that critical shot or fleeting moment because the batteries decide they're tired.

and thats all.
Tagged canon cp-e4 battery pack fail

hey, @posterous. i'm pissed.

we've been on really good terms up until this point. i've even managed to get a couple of friends to move over to your services. but the last few days have been kinda' hellish, all culminating tonight in a big, huge massive load of FAIL. shall we bullet point?

  • autoposting: its my understanding that you've recently updated the autoposting feature. i'm sure there are some great tools there, but none of them are useful to me. what it has done is slowed down autoposting to a crawl. sometimes its 45 minutes till an autopost appears. it used to be instantaneous. wth?
  • facebook: i don't understand why when i log out of one posterous account and log in to another, i'm logged out of facebook. i even went so far as to write an email asking why this is, because i always log in with an email address, not via facebook connect (or whatever). your response?

Luke --

We log you out of facebook because facebook accouints can be used to log you into your facebook account. 

Cheers, and thanks for using Posterous,

Vince

aside from the fact that was completely unhelpful, i don't even know what that means.

  • auto save/drafts: you know, it never really occurred to me that there's not an auto draft or save function like in EVERY OTHER BLOG I'VE EVER USED. how did i come to notice this? i had a very long, informational, detailed post for our business's blog that i had to work on for two days (because life happens). when i started it, i looked to make sure it was auto saving... and then i found out there was no auto save function. so i left a window of Safari open for TWO DAYS while i worked on the post. why didn't i just do an email, where a draft is automatically saved? because every time i've done that and sent it in, the formatting is all wrong. not just little things, but bullet points and text bolding and italics. i've even tried working in Word or Pages and copying/pasting and still comes out wrong. and when i go in to edit it to try and make sense of it all, it doesn't work. anywho: so after two days of working on this post, i wrap it up, check it two or three times for spelling & grammar, and click over to the "Schedule this post for the future" button. i click that. go in and add my tags. lastly, i go to fix the date and time for when it should post... and the browser window goes blank.

nothing.

white screen. nothing's loading, nothing's moving. frantically, i go back to the previous page, and nothing.

all this to say, you're on very thin ice with me right now as both a Posterous "evangelist" and a regular user.

edit: see that third bullet point? formatting is completely off because i copied and pasted that email response from the original email and for some reason, it carried over. WTH.

Tagged anger FAIL Posterous

simple BBT rant

hey BB&T. i'm sure you may ultimately wind up being quite lovely after all the weird kinks are worked out, post-conversion from Colonial.

but hey man, lemme tell you: its not fun going into a store to buy stuff for LAP with our LAP Business Checking card... and be declined. why? oh, that's right... you've yet to get us the new BB&T branded cards in the mail. in the meantime, while we wait on them, ya cancelled our Colonial branded cards. and hey, we knew that would happen, we knew that after June 1st, they would be cancelled, but hey, i kinda' sorta' figured maybe since you hadn't given us the new cards, you wouldn't cut us off at the knees.

HAHA JK JK JK. joke's on us. but seriously, GIVE US OUR CARDS. we like to keep things separated for tax purposes, and i don't like using our personal finances for business stuff. and since we still don't have our new account numbers, we can't transfer money from the LAP PayPal account to the new home.

c'mon.
Tagged banking BB&T Colonial FAIL

how to lose an election in Massachusetts

not that hard, actually.

Tagged coakley election FAIL MA massachusetts