I am looking for a place to attach the water shock absorber. I have a couple of ideas now. I can connect the shock absorber right at the high pressure nozzle of the pump. It would give me an opportunity to connect a pressure gauge. That would force me to replace or modify the high pressure tube, which, to my surprise, is made out of heavy plastic. The plastic holds 15 bar pressure. Impressive! Another possibility is to attach it to the input of the OPV valve. It is a less attractive option because of the lack of space around that area.

The second option is an Allen screw that looks like a screw on the E61 head. It might be there for the same reason too. If it it the case, then I should be able to use it either for a water temperature gauge mod, or use it for the pressure gauge and shock absorber.

I also disassembled the shower head and discovered that it is a bit different. I think it is a simpler design than on the Silvia.It might be less efficient as well. I have not way test that. I do not have a SIlvia.

I am posting a few pictures of the Audrey head here.

Three-way Solenoid Valve

Three-way Solenoid Valve Label

Assembled Shower Head

The difference between the Silvia and Audrey is visible on the following picture. On the Silvia, the shower head has a removable disk below the shower screen. On the Audrey, the disk is not removable. The small black dot on the right of the deep part of the head is the water orifice.

Shower Head with the Screen Removed

Finally, a little bonus for phone junkies like me. I used the Audrey water container as a light modifier for taking the pictures above. I am using a Nikon SB 28 with a PocketWizard Plus II, You can see the flash at the top of the picture and the Wizard in the left bottom corner.

Audrey Light Modifier for Off-Camera Flash

Live view gives interesting advantage for manual lenses. At 10x magnification it is possible to achieve very nice focus without having to change the focusing screen on the camera. I already wrote about that in the past, but I cannot stop enjoying it and this is why I am repeating myself. It is very good for macro, but if you are planing to use external flash, it is likely that your subject will not have enough ambient light on it. It would make you live view window dark. Here comes another obscure setting called expo simulation. If you set it to “disabled” the camera would use all the light it can to show you the live preview and will not take into account aperture and shutter speed that you have dialed for shooting with external flash. BTW, the menu item controlling exposure simulation is just above the live shooting mode menu item.

So, if you are to use external flash for macro and focus using live view magnification, disable the silent shooting and the exposure simulation. It would save a few hears on your head

7d Menu Choices

This is what happens. I turn the camera on, connect a PocketWizard to the PC port and fire a shot. Flash goes off, as designed. Then I pop the on-camera flush up and make another shot. Now the on-camera flash flashes, but the PocketWizard is not activated. I fold the on-camera flash back in and fire a shot again. Now PocketWizard is not working! I think it is a firmware problem. Or may be it is a defective camera?

Simple, eh?

I tried this flag myself. It gives interesting light, but, as any other light source, it needs some getting used to. Here is a sample of a flash bounced of the celling with a foam thingy attached.

Example of light produced by the Foam Thingy

Black flag

The flash head was pointing up bouncing light off the celling. The flag was about 2 inch long fastened to the bottom of the flash head. The celling was low (about 9 feet) and the subject is very close (about four feet). As you can see that the majority of light on the face is  ambient room light. There is some directional flash light coming from the top.

Here is another way how it could be done, but if the wall is not completely white, white balance would be very tricky

Source - http://www.nwprophoto.com/tempint/uf.jpg

It is like a large beauty light. There are two drawbacks to this setup IMHO. Fist, it must be loosing a lot of light in reflections between the two umbrellas. Second, as any beauty light it would have a sweet spot where light would look just great and ugly anywhere else.

It It might be interesting to see how it would work with a shoot-through small umbrella. The light pattern would be exactly opposite to a Westcott brolly that has transparent plastic in the senter and white diffuser around it. It creates a hot spot of direct light in the middle surrounded by a soft hallo. This setup would make diffused light spot in the center surrounded by a hot ring of light.  As I picture it in my head, it must be rather ugly, but it is interesting to try anyway.