New Projects in the Works

New Projects in the Works:

Note: Please remember that each of the images and descriptions seen in this section have ususally been made with the specific options wanted by the photog, although some are offshoots of inquiry only projects. Use these images and descriptions as a guide. Your mod will be made just as you wish, nothing more. If you have questions, suggestions, or just comments, please pass them along!

Sorry, but there is no specific order when any of these New Projects will apear and be available until images are posted, or they appear in the Recent Items section. Sometimes the design is still in the alpha stage, sometimes it is in beta testing, and sometimes, if it is for a specific customer, final design changes, payment, testing and feedback need to occur before it might be readily available.
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1) Flash Verification Annunciator - When you have multiple flash units being wirelessly triggered, and some are out of sight, some are in softboxes, etc, it is often times hard to make sure they all fired. This unit has a small wired sensor placed in front of the flash unit, and will sound a tone, or blink a series of LEDs to indicate that the unit has fired. All aspects of the blink and tone are adjustable so that each specific annunciator unit will look and sound unique from the next unit. The annunciator unit also has output jacks for an internal relay, and an external speaker. Any combination of blinking LEDs and/or pulsing tone can be selected by DIP switches.

1a) Pre-Flash Ignore Trigger - For Radio or Flash - An offshoot of the Flash Verification Annunciator, the Pre-Flash Ignore Trigger is in the simplest form an optical slave trigger that will ignore the pre-flash, and only fire on the main flash. This circuit can be connected to a radio transmitter, and the external sensor is placed in front of the on camera flash that emits a pre-flash, and the radio transmitter will only fire when the main flash has fired, skipping the short pre-flashes. The sensor can even be placed in front of the camera pop-up flash. The other use for this circuit is to fire an off camera flash unit when the sensor sees the light from another flash that has also fired a pre-flash.

The circuit itself can likely be placed INSIDE a conventional sized PW (Pocket Wizard), and use a shared power supply (needing only the external sensor). The other physical form is to place this circuit in a small stand alone box using a coin cell battery, or a slightly larger box using a 9 volt or 2-AA batteries. Not being a mass produced item, other optional features can include adjustable timing features, LED indicators for trigger verification, a hot shoe for mounting the PW, other radio transmitter, or a slave flash, and a mounting strap.

2) Flash Cycler for rapid sequencing of multiple flash units, either in manual firing mode, or triggered by a burst mode from the camera. The number of flash units to be cycled through are practically endless, as multiple control units can be connected through an I/O port on each unit. This is a function which currently exists on the PW MultiMax model, but limited to 4 flash units, and then 5 PW MultiMax units are needed to get this result.

3) Dual Camera Quick Draw Harness - I got tired of carrying 2 cameras around my neck during the wedding shoots, and both cameras on one shoulder didn't work for me, so I developed and then field tested this past Summer wedding season the Dual Quick Draw Harness. The design is based on a standard over the back criss-cross harness often used for binoculars, although a sliding carabiner clip (Sliding Camera Mount) and flat nylon tube rope is used for the actual camera connection. This allows holding the cameras in both portrait and landscape positions without any problem. The straps are 3/4 inch soft black nylon webbing, parallel in the front, criss-crossed in back, like non-elastic suspenders, but there is only a single point of attachment of each side of the harness at the waist using a quick release clip. Having the straps parallel in the front prevents the wrinkled shirt condition, and keeps each camera from tangling with the other. The prototype of this item has been made and field tested, works great, and pricing and images will follow after I see what this might cost to produce from a strap manufacturing firm.

4) Cell Phone Camera Trigger - With the connecting cable of this unit plugged into a cell phone headset jack, and the cell phone put in "auto-answer" mode, you are all set for a really long distance camera trigger. Just phone the remote phone in advance of when you will be taking images, leave the line open, and press a single digit to trigger anywhere from 1-4 cameras, each connected to one of the 4 isolated relay controlled output jacks, with each output having a separate Pre-Trigger Override Switch . Each of the 4 channels can be individually set to send a feedback tone to the sending phone that the specific relay has momentarily closed, firing the camera.

This item has just been completed as a single trigger unit with hardwired connections for safety and simplicity. Here is the link to the new Cell Phone Camera Trigger.