A small reminder of how big things have gotten. Mind you, in the modern world the Pentax K20d is a diminutive little rascal, a mere meerkat to the lions and tigers and bears and hulking Nikons and Canons oh my! that roam the youth sports sidelines, cruise ships, and weddings of this once great land of ours.
Yet next to the Canon Powershot G10 it looks like the big fish in the small pond. What begets this flash of insanity, this megapixel miniaturization? It's that little, yellowed, different Promaster flash that the Canon is sporting. One of the biggest challenges of small sensor compacts is the low light performance. You can wait for the ceaseless march of technological progress to fix the problem for you, constantly upgrading to the next best thing since film cameras, or you can stick a flash that's older than the Internet on top and strobe your way to a high IQ.
As you can see, I chose the latter. This dance duo has been pumping out some tasty pixels lately. Mostly of the cats, because they don't care. I've been bouncing off the ceiling too and trying to drag the shutter for some nice balanced lighting.
All's not well in the castle though. The Promaster's thyristor (sounds like an as-seen-on-tv excercise machine) appears DOA, causing the flash to operate at full power all the time. And the Promaster's trigger voltage is an eyebrow-searing 289V, while sensitive modern digital cameras are supposed to fry their brains at higher than 6V.
Or so they say. I've used the Promaster on the G10 for a short while and have not seen any brains fried or the acrid smell of burning silicon. And I've yet to find one well-documented case of "Old flash kills young camera" stories online. Just heresay, like that jolly old bloke the stuffs his corpulent self down chimneys once a year.
Were the Canon mine, I'd risk a fate worse than death and weld that damn Promaster on. But since it's my brother's, I've gotta behave. Off with its head.
Yet next to the Canon Powershot G10 it looks like the big fish in the small pond. What begets this flash of insanity, this megapixel miniaturization? It's that little, yellowed, different Promaster flash that the Canon is sporting. One of the biggest challenges of small sensor compacts is the low light performance. You can wait for the ceaseless march of technological progress to fix the problem for you, constantly upgrading to the next best thing since film cameras, or you can stick a flash that's older than the Internet on top and strobe your way to a high IQ.
As you can see, I chose the latter. This dance duo has been pumping out some tasty pixels lately. Mostly of the cats, because they don't care. I've been bouncing off the ceiling too and trying to drag the shutter for some nice balanced lighting.
All's not well in the castle though. The Promaster's thyristor (sounds like an as-seen-on-tv excercise machine) appears DOA, causing the flash to operate at full power all the time. And the Promaster's trigger voltage is an eyebrow-searing 289V, while sensitive modern digital cameras are supposed to fry their brains at higher than 6V.
Or so they say. I've used the Promaster on the G10 for a short while and have not seen any brains fried or the acrid smell of burning silicon. And I've yet to find one well-documented case of "Old flash kills young camera" stories online. Just heresay, like that jolly old bloke the stuffs his corpulent self down chimneys once a year.
Were the Canon mine, I'd risk a fate worse than death and weld that damn Promaster on. But since it's my brother's, I've gotta behave. Off with its head.
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