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Dear Gee Please readers and subscribers, sorry for yet another long stretch of break in the Gee Please updates. We have been reorganizing our staff, from writers, editors, testers and guest writers list.
Rest assured that with these changes, Gee please will be more current and streamlined. Check out the list of upcoming contents on this site after the jump.
We are also making some server-side updates and still doing it as we speak. We are also redesigning a bit of the whole appearance of the site to make it more reader-friendly. We employed some changes in the internal pages to make it easier to scroll and read. Including easier follow of comment replies from the staff.
THE NEW LOGO
On our list of coming contents are:
- A review of the Nissin Di866
- Field Test of the Nissin Di866
- Review of Kimstore Gadget Shop
- First Look on Nokia 5800 Xpress Music
- First Look on SAMSUNG Star
- NOKIA 5800XM Review
- SAMSUNG Star Review
- Shield for your gadgets
- Basic Lighting Tutorial using the Nissin Line-up
We are also looking for additional contributing writers, if you have articles to share, do share it with us by using our contact form.
If you’re a Merchant and you want your products tested as well, we can also do that per your request and arrangement.
To our readers, if you need us to review something, please dont hesitate to send your suggestions to Gee Please and well make sure to put it on the queue for review and testing.
Thank you for continuing to support Gee Please!
The Tricky Flash Sync
What is the Flash Sync? How do I use it? And how do I achieve a high-speed sync?
These are a few questions you ponder about after getting your first ever external flash. First let’s clarify the meaning of “Sync”. Sync is actually a shortcut of synchronization, and synchronization is the way two objects function, move, execute at the same time in it’s simplest sense.
Now Flash Sync is all to do about the Flash Shutter. The Shutter is like your eyelids. It closes and opens much like your eyelids does. However for the Flash Shutter, the wider it is open and the longer it stays open, the more light is captured by the camera sensor. Basically, the camera sensor only sees light, that is why photography in it’s simplest description is a means of capturing light. If the shutter is blinking fast, which is a fast shutter, the sharper the image and the quicker your camera sensor captures the image while sacrificing the amount of light it captures as well.
Therefore, slow-shutter speeds are good for low-light conditions, making fast moving objects blurred, making running water from streams and waterfalls appear silky-smooth and taking night photographs and especially useful on time-lapse photography.
Fast-shutter speeds is good for fast targets to make them appear like you stopped time, or freeze the moment. Good for pictures of sports, racing, active kids and the like. However, you need ample amounts of light to get proper exposure at fast-shutter speeds. You can hand-hold your camera and take sharper images. For slow-shutters, a tripod is absolutely needed.
This answers your questions about high-speed sync and flash sync. It is the relation of your camera shutter with your your camera flash.
The shutter of your camera has its own rating for maximum speed which you can use the flash. Thus your camera also has a limit as to how fast the shutter curtains (eyelids) can be made to move. At higher speeds, a second shutter curtain which is rarely noticed also move to increase the speed capacity of the camera.
The secondary shutter is released before the first curtain has finished moving. This will appear like your camera sensor is shooting through moving strips.
Thus the higher the shutter speed, the thinner the strip is. This affects your flash reliability to properly expose or light up your subject. If the flash fires while the curtains are about to close, the the proper flash exposure is not taken. Thus the timing between the flash and the shutter, which is your sync speed, is essential. They must thus work in harmony.
Fast Sync, notice how the action and the crowd is captured
Slow Sync, notice that the crowd is now blurred by panning the shot.
The maximum shutter speed where the camera sensor is properly exposed when it is wide open is called the “Flash Sync” or “X-Sync” speed. It usually ranges at about 1/200 - 1/500sec. However this varies depending on the SLR/Camera.
Your external flash needs to cope with this value. That is why your reliable on-camera flash fails at higher sync speeds or your camera won’t allow you to shoot at higher sync speeds at all. Most external flash has a “High-Speed Sync” mode, allowing your camera to use any shutter speed. Notice that without your external flash attached to your camera, the camera shutter speed option is limited. Your external flash does this nifty little trick to synchronize with your camera shutter. Your naked eyes cannot see this, but to achieve high-speed sync flash, your dedicated external flash fires a series of several flashes as opposed to what your eyes can see which is a single fire of your flash. This is timed to match the period where your camera sensor is exposed. This multiple fire at high-speed sync reduces the intensity of your flash considerably, so most high-speed sync shots is done best for fill-flash at close range.
Whats with the Grey?
Getting the right color temperature, white balance and the true feel of a photograph is difficult to achieve even for seasoned photographers. Auto White Balance is a hit and miss affair, any PRO photographer you ask will tell you to set your white balance (WB) manually yourself. There are many ways to do this, and one effective method is to use a Photographic Grey card.
A Grey Card is used as a baseline of the level of White Balance the camera should apply. It balances the color of your photos much better. It is letting your camera choose a better exposure level to match the current lighting situation.
One of the best Grey Card is the “Douglas Card”, I am trying to look for the newer version, but there is none available in my area. The Douglas Card is from Douglas Photographic. The Latest version is called the Douglas Mark II. It offers better color balance in many kinds of lighting conditions. At around 20USD, the Douglas Mark II or Mark 2 contains no artificial brighteners which could distort your dSLR’s’ exposure readings.
Douglas grey card
Alcatel is back!
Remember this mobile phone brand? Their most memorable unit was given a moniker “The Safeguard Phone” or “The Soap Bar Phone” since it’s shape reminded the owner of a soap bar. One strong selling point of the Alcatel brand is the price. Now they have come back with better-designed phones, still at the most competitive prices.
At the age of the colored, multi-media, multi-tasking mobile phones, a lot of brands are competing for a piece of the mobile phone market. Alcatel has once again innovated a series of phones that are not too shabby, feature-rich and competitively priced. Their newest model has even forayed to the touch-screen mobile phone competition. The price, as you guessed is a quarter of the other touch-screen brands. Alcatel’s design for their mobile phones now are not bad either, they have even revamped their logo to match the new style of their phones. The lowest model looks even better than the highest model of the other brands, and where can you get a mobile phone at under 5USD.
To reposition itself and reintroduce the Alcatel brand, they partnered with Playboy, yes playboy the mens men brand to release the first ever playboy phone. I just hope they don’t put Hef as the phones default wallpaper.
The actual model name for the Acatel Playboy phone is the Alcatel V770. The phone comes in standard piano black and white models, but the special edition playboy series V770’s come in a plethora of styles and colors. They even plastered the Logo bunny all over the phone. I like the gold version which looks really blinged out, but there is the chrome/silver and pink version as well. Some more other models come in custom colors. All Special Edition Alcatel Playboy phone comes preloaded with the Playboy Playmates images, wallpapers, screen savers and videos.
Alcatel V770
One retailer gave Gee Please a unit for review and testing. I got the white model with the silver trims. It looks expensive. The finish is sleek and glossy. Size is thin and wide, and the first time I held it, I dropped it and dented the corner. Amazingly, the dent is so small for a 3ft. drop. It also didn’t even dazed the phone. The display is quite vivid and bright, it is quite large and the color is crisp and everything is detailed even to the navigation icons.
Navigation is a breeze; it uses the standard icon grid system. The v770 is posed as a music phone, so it comes with a nice-looking ear phone which is not ugly-sounding either. However, the cans use a mini-usb to attach to the phone, I hope Alcatel opted for the standard 3.5mm jack. It also has a microSD slot for more music and videos. For a basic phone it is really great.
Alcatel v770 Playboy Phone
My qualms with the Alcatel v770 however is that the camera is not too great. No front camera for video calls and no dedicated controls for music playing aside from the keypad. It does not have a standard 3-column keypad layout as users are accustomed to with the other phones. Rather it has four which is hard to text on. The 4-Column keypad is not even qwerty. Another annoying thing is that your messages can’t be saved on the external card, rather on the built-in memory which limits your number of saved messages. Once the message memory is full, you cannot receive further messages until you clear out it’s message memory.
Stronger points of the Playboy phone is it’s display which is vibrant even under direct sunlight. Sound for Alerts and Music is quite loud which won’t allow you to even miss a text message or a phone call with it’s loudness. Navigation is quick and responsive. The phone signal is also quite strong wherever I am as compared to my other mobile phones. The built in mobile web browser is quite fast and renders mobile sites very well. Like accessing Yahoo Mobile is so quick and accessing your mail is like accessing it on the standard Yahoo Mail on your Computer. Not to mention the battery life that juices up for five to seven days on standby on actual test. Overall for quality versus price, you won’t lose on the Alcatel v770 or the limited edition Playboy versions. Don’t expect to be like Hugh Hefner though, he is “The Man”, you only have “The Phone”.
Alcatel v770 Playboy Phone
Alcatel v770 Playboy Phone
GP Gold Achievers
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- Sony Motion Controller is Called PlayStation Move, Launches Fall 2010 (Hands On!) [Playstation Move] March 10, 2010
- Sex, Blood, and Post-Its: A Short Film Shot Entirely On a Scanner [Film] March 10, 2010
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Recent Comments
- Chris Administrator Gee, Please...: Hi Worried. Yes, most Nissin Di866 depending on where you bought it from has some...
- Chris Administrator Gee, Please...: Hi Ricky, Not unless your Metz Manual flash is set to trigger at TTL, then it...
- worried: i just bought mine last saturday, to shot for my brother’s wedding… it was very noisy...
- Ricky: Hi, firstly, good job on this informative review. I’m looking for a 2nd slave flash for my Pentax...
- Chris Administrator Gee, Please...: Hi Sorry for the long wait, as you can see we haven’t updated the site yet,...
- Migs: Sir! I have two questions. 1) I have a Canon 430EX II, planning to buy Di622 which will serve as my slave....
- Jack: Hi, I just bought a Nissin Di622. When I try yesterday the unit with my Canon 7d as slave the di622 work but...
- Chris Administrator Gee, Please...: @Michael: It will work off-camera via ttl triggering. @Long: The red glass...
- benting: hello newbie here. which do you think is a best buy? two nissin di622 or 1 nikon sb-600? and i really...
- long: my red glass have broken and scattered to pieces…do i need to buy a new flashlight or can change the red...
