Here it is my weakest link, my deepest confesion, the truth behind my madness. I have a problem completing things.
Where, you ask, does this confessional come from? Well I read this blog post by Brian Auer on Epic Edits, My Weakest Area of Photography….

A big part of it is just recognising that most of the fears and concerns are things you are projecting on other people and they aren’t often or normally true. Easier said than done - a friend of mine, Craig Tanner, teaches some great workshops on just these topics, out of the Radiant Vista (http://www.radiantvista.com) on Street Portraiture and also the ‘Next Step’ workshop, which has a similar sort of theme (but more so)

My biggest weakness is trying to work more in projects. All my more successful images are one of a kind, disconnected greatest hits. I’d really rather move towards more consistent bodies of work that actually hang together and make a bigger point than each individual shot. My bigger weakness is coming up with the ideas and perhaps the underlying real problem is that I never stick with them long enough, always moving on to something new.

My main technical weakness is not taking my tripod with me often enough and not archiving/ tagging/ tracking images carefully or backing up regularly. I do the NAS thing and throw everything on to a RAID array, but offsite or DVD storage doesn’t happen frequently enough.

I think my two biggest issues are half technical and half creative. Over the last year, I’ve learned a lot about working with light thanks to David Hobby. That’s great. I’ve been shooting more and more people because of it (something that, a year ago, I absolutely hated to do). But, with that minor part tackled, I’m starting to realize that I have real problems with posing people and, like you, capturing the emotion in a scene. I’m not a very outgoing fellow, so sometimes it’s difficult to tell people, “Look, just do this” or to know what positions look best for a person in a particular scene. I’m getting a little better at it (and I’ve started cutting photos out of magazines to use as reference and idea) but I still have a long way to go.

Second, I’m getting to the point where I want to create scenes instead of just capturing ones already in play. And I’m realizing just how hard it is to come up with good ideas that look good on screen or in print. I’ve started writing some of these down and letting them percolate, adding new bits to each one when a brainstorm comes around. It’s a slow process, but I’m definitely getting a better feel for it.

the whole thing with triggering the flashes is probably the most confusing thing about the whole deal - basically there are 2 ways to do it, either using some kind of wireless TTL technology where the camera “talks” to the flash using superfast pulses of light and does automatic metering, or manual. each manufacturer has their own protocols for this and they are not interchangeable.

when you talk about manual triggering, both cables (pc, HH, whatever) or wireless transmitters - all they are doing is physically completing a circuit in the flash that allows the capacitor to discharge and the strobe goes off. You could do the same thing with a paperclip by touching the center pin of the flash to the outside of the foot (although I wouldn’t recommend it!) so there is no “brand specificity” - all that happens is when the shutter is pressed, a pulse is sent that “closes the circuit” and pop goes the flash. You have to set the power output on the flash itself etc, since there is nothing from the camera telling it how much power to put out (like in ttl)

The whole point to this is that you can use any flash with any camera in manual mode (barring older flashes which use high voltages that can fry newer electronics) but using something like an sb800 with a canon camera is simply a waste - why? because you are paying all that money for the TTL features of the flash that will only work with nikon’s ttl system. sure you can still use it in manual mode, but you aren’t *gaining* anything over an $80 fully manual flash. (other than optical slave mode, but that’s a separate issue)

So anyway, in summation -
- if you’ve got plenty of budget go with all “on brand” flashes (580exII for canon)
- if you’ve got medium budget, go with at least one brand flash for when you want on camera ttl functionality (it happens and the rest cheap manual flashes (vivitar, sunpak or one of the older SBs, like the sb-26 or 2b-28, which are essentially just manual flashes for all practical purposes anyway)
- if you are really on a shoestring just go straight up cheap manual flashes, probably with ebay triggers, since plenty of people seem to be using them with no problems ( I think I just had some bad luck myself with ‘em)