The little things...

It Sunday morning already, that means we're slap bang in the middle of a busy weekend, we currently have nice overcast conditions with a breeze that is picking up. As we will be shooting portraits for most of the day, and many of those sessions outdoors the overcast suits me fine but the strengthening breeze isn't so promising.
So why the image of two flash unites? Well last evening to finish off the day I had a recently completed residential property to photograph. Our client wanted a night shot of the building, so I opted for the old time exposure approach, locking the camera off on a tripod, making one exposure based on the evening sky, a second exposure for the window lights and a third to capture the exterior ambient light around the building. All very simple stuff really, but there were a few areas around the building which needed a bit of extra attention. My normal approach is wait a few extra minutes until darkness falls, then make another longer exposure while walking around painting the required areas with light from a Canon 580EX set to full power. A few minutes post work in Photoshop blending the different exposures together and the jobs done. Last night however I decided to use both the Canon 580EX and a Nikon SB-800. One in each hand, fire one off, then while that unit was recycling aim and fire the second unit, as the units were being operated manually there would be no compatibility issues with synching and any slight differences in colour balance would go unnoticed. The big bonus for me is that I would finish up just that little bit earlier.
Now comes the problem, well not really a problem, just a small irritation. If you look at the picture above you will see that both of these excellent Speedlites have a small button on the bottom left hand corner of the unit. Canon mark theirs "Pilot" it is raised from the units body and glows read in the dark. Nikon have recessed their "Flash" button into the body of the unit and it doesn't glow. With my rather large hands this tiny little button on the Nikon is a bit difficult to press at any time, but in the dark it proved even harder to locate and activate. Just to add to my woes, there is a raised button just above the "Flash" button on the Nikon which changes the unites "Mode". Yes you can guess which button was pressed accidentally more than once.
Off course the obvious answer is to use two similar units, but on this occasion that wasn't possible. It is often not the big differences between pieces of equipment that are important but some times the smallest design differences that catch us out. Both of these Speedlites work well for me on the odd occasions that I use them mounted to the camera. Nikon SB-800 mounts onto the camera just that little bit faster than does the Canon 580EX.