GF1 with PocketWizard remote trigger
The big day came on Sunday as I put my jury-rigged bodged hobby electronics Panasonic GF1 remote shutter trigger to the test. As background, I’ve been trying for 14 months to get my PocketWizards to trigger my little GF1 and finally found the solution last week. Some details here in case you missed it.
Rather than do some lame test in the garden or down at the local pond taking pictures of ducks without their consent, I decided to try it out at the Arsenal v Manchester United game on Sunday afternoon up in north London. In for a penny, in for a pound and all that.
I could now launch off on a diatribe about what a pain it is to get to Arsenal from Guildford as it involves going right through the centre of London, but I actually quite enjoyed it as I have a new motorbike, a Yamaha Super Tenere, which cost me a Leica M9 plus £3500. Sad to see the Leica go, but the bike is amazing.
Anyhow, I digress. Here’s the setup I used:
The "little black box" skilfully mounted to the PocketWizard
As you can see, I’ve stuck the little black box to the PocketWizard using gaffa tape. What I might do is make a smaller version of the circuit as it could actually be quite tiny, a quarter of the size of the one you see above. I can also quite easily shorten the cables as well – not difficult at all.
On the GF1 is the wonderful little 14mm f/2.5 lens. This is a 28mm full frame equivalent. It would be nice if it was a bit wider, but the decent aperture is a real plus. Using a micro four-thirds camera for behind the goal shots results in a much deeper apparent depth of field for a given aperture and focal length due to the smaller sensor, so focus is not so critical.
The setup on pitchside itself was to put the focus into manual mode, and then manually focus on the line of the 6-yard box. Easy as pie. The camera was set to have all power save functions disabled (it still had 1/3rd battery left after just over 2 hours operation). I’d set it to matrix metering or whatever the Panasonic equivalent is, in shutter priority at 1/500th, and with auto ISO set to bounce up to ISO1600. The shutter was set to multi-shot mode.
I then plonked the camera down in the centre behind the posts, much to the amusement of my fellow photographers who no doubt think I’m a total loony to use such a little camera in this situation. Composition was simple enough on the rear screen. Then I just turned the display off, did a couple of test firings, and that was it. Sorted.
I’m very pleased to say that it all worked perfectly, and I was able to get this shot of the match winning goal by Danny Welbeck. OK, so I forgot to level the horizon before sending it in, such was my utter joy that 14 months of planning and sheer hard work (well, a bit of googling and some soldering) had paid off.
The shot was taken at 1/500th at f/2.5 and the ISO had bumped up to 1250. The focus on the players is lovely and crisp, depth of field is good, and all the players bar the keeper are facing the camera. The colours are a little washed out as the camera overexposed slightly due to the dark background. Usually with a 1D I’d put it in spot metering on the focus point but in manual focus the GF1 only spot meters in the centre of the frame. I’ll need to figure that out, but I could just dial in some negative exposure compensation.
So, super result, and a cracking game of football as well. You can see the rest of my set taken using “proper” cameras on the Focus Images site.
Having proven that it all works, I’ve now got a very small remote unit which I can put pretty much anywhere. It’s light enough to go places a pro body and lens cant go. If it is mashed by a flying football it is quite cheap to replace. The only drawback is the inability for the remote socket to bring the camera out of power save, otherwise it’d be absolutely ideal. All I need now is a GX1.
Mounted on a Gorillapod with a Manfrotto 484RC2 head and quick release.
