Photographic Equipment.

Yongnuo RF-603C Triggers.

These things are easily the best photographic accessories I've bought. They work as remote flash triggers, or as remote shutter releases, and therefore add a whole new dimension to photographic possibilities.

Getting the flash off the camera is a must in most situations, and these cheapo triggers make it easy. They aren't without their faults mind you, as they could do with a locking ring to lock them in place, and the on/off switch sits under the flash gun when in use, but that is hardly an issue really.

The units are transceivers, so they don't care whether they are on the camera, under a flash gun or in your sweaty hand, they just get on with it.

They are manual units though, so when firing a flash you'll have to adjust the flash power yourself (no harm in that, that's how you learn things) but TT-L units are now available, and still at a good price.

For me though, it is as a remote shutter release that they really come into their own. Taking photos of yourself using the self timer is ok as long as you can get yourself to where you want to be within the required 15 seconds or so. These things change all that (as will a normal remote shutter trigger of course) and their range is huge, firing the camera and/or flashes from practically the next county.

I've had mine for at least three years now, and they go with me on every bike ride, have got wet and been dropped, and they still all work perfectly. They also work on all my cameras, the 450D DSLR, and the G7/G11 and G1 X.

The price? Compared to the big name remote flash triggers these things are an utter bargain. I paid £24 a pair for two pairs, but a quick look on Amazon now shows they can be had for under £20 a pair, or about a fifth of the price of a big brand named trigger. I see the TT-L jobbies can be had for £48 a pair too, so when it comes to boosting your creativity and broadening your scope, bang for buck, these triggers are hard to beat.

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Canon G1 X.

I am a fan of Canon's G series Powershot cameras, they have all the control you could want and are solid lumps with good build quality. They might be screwed together tightly, but reliability can still be an issue however, and when my G11 decided it was tired of propelling its lens in and out all the time, I needed a replacement compact camera, having apparently just gained a doorstop.

Finances dictated a used buy would be prudent, and that actually makes choosing what to buy a tad difficult. Another G11? (cheap, but more of the same) or a later model? (G12, G15 or G16). Hmmmm. But there was another option in the shape of Canon's G1 X, and that looked very interesting indeed.

Launched in 2012, the G1 X sat alongside the then also new G15 rather than replacing it, and it promised to move the compact camera segment on by quite some margin.

The headline act was undeniably the large sensor – six times bigger than the sensor in the previous G12, and only slightly smaller than the APS-C sensor in Canon's consumer DSLRs. There was also a larger, higher quality lens fitted, so good image quality looked to be a dead certainty.

There were one or flies in the G1 X's ointment though – macro performance being one, but the biggest issue had to be price, a whopping £700 on release. Even allowing for the inevitable discounts you still needed a strong bank balance to stomach a G1 X purchase. That is big money for a compact camera.

But, here we are a few years down the line and the G1 X makes for a compelling used buy, well I felt compelled anyway, and sure enough, I took custody of a good condition used example in March (2015) for just under £300. Still a chunk of money, but also comparable to used examples of the G15 or G16.

So, am I pleased with this gert lump of a 'compact'? Overall, I'm delighted. It is a typical G Series, both in design and thankfully, build quality, and anyone used to a G Series would feel right at home navigating the various buttons and menus. It is larger than other G models though, particularly front to back, as that large lens doesn't fully retract. That also means the camera is supplied with a lens cap you have to remember to remove, but mine came with an after market automatic jobbie fitted, which is much recommended for reducing faff and potential loss of the cap. 

Given its large size and heft, calling it a compact camera is a bit of a stretch, it's more like a mini bridge camera, therefore it isn't particularly pocket friendly, and it only just fits in my trusty bum bag in fact.

Image quality is, as you'd expect, superb. I'm no pixel peeping expert, but the detail in the photos is astonishing and the images crisp and sharp. A very welcome improvement can be found when exploring the upper reaches of ISO performance too. The G1 X boasts a whopping top ISO of 12,800, at which things are a little noisy it must be said, but down at the more commonly used ISOs, noise is noticeable by its absence. Certainly a huge improvement over my old G7 and G11.

So what else is there? Well the lens has a 35mm equivalent 28 - 112mm range, useful enough although a bit shorter reach compared to other G models. The rear articulating screen is a three inch high resolution effort and the flash is now a pop up affair rather than being built in to the front of the body.

So all is sweetness and light then? Well not quite. The macro performance is pants – proper pants. It really is rubbish. Select macro on the dial and you will still be measuring the minimum focusing distance in yards rather than millimetres, it's that bad. In fact, if I know I want to get in really close to something, I use my old G7 instead. Of course, with the better image quality you can shoot and then crop right in, and you can also stand even further back and zoom in as that sometimes works. But if you take a lot of macro shots, give the G1 X a swerve, it really is tripe at close up work.

Other than that, I love this camera and if it failed today, I'd have another G1X in the post by nightfall.

I'm a bit out of the loop with the latest developments in the world of cameras, so don't know how the new range of compact system cameras compare to the more traditional compacts such as the G Series. But anyone in the market for a used compact should give the G1 X a look, it is a quality piece of kit, and if Canon had kept the price under tighter control, I'm sure many more would've been sold.

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Manfrotto Magic Arm and Super Clamp.

Scuff mark on the central 'knuckle' is the souvenir of a scuff on a kerb.

Dead handy piece of kit this if you like getting unusual points of view, or 'rig' shots. Getting a photo from some clever angle is bread and butter to the likes of the GoPro and other action cameras, but if like me you don't own a GoPro, or need the extra image quality that a DSLR will provide, then a Magic Arm will open up a few options for unusual angles.

Magic Arm shot from the bike that donated running gear to the Carrera. Would've been better to have been pedaling and so blurring the chain and cassette too. Camera was upside down to avoid getting the arm in the shot.

Basically the set up is made up of two parts – the Super Clamp which as the name suggests, is the clamp, into which slots the Magic Arm itself. You can buy these items separately, and a Super Clamp on its own can be a handy thing as with a tripod screw adaptor, you can mount a camera (or flash unit) straight onto the clamp itself.

Once you've got your clamp in place, and the camera on the other end of the arm, you simply adjust it all to whatever position you need and tighten up the central knob nice and tight, and all joints become locked. Use the self timer or better yet, a remote shutter release, and away you go.

HDR shot taken from a single RAW file.

Vibration is of course the curse of these shots, and you need to capture speed without actually going fast. So you select as slow a shutter speed as you can to obtain movement, but not so slow as to make every image a vibey blur fest. Low tyre pressures help smooth out the ride, and whilst the photos might look like you were really bozzing along, in fact you really only need to be pottering at little more than walking pace.

It can be a little daunting hanging your photographic pride and joy upside down off the bike and potentially into harm's way, and you can feel the balance being a bit wonky too depending on where you place everything. You need to be wary of kicking it while pedaling, or wiping the camera off on a parked car, tree or kerb, but it's all good fun. You can of course hang the camera or flash off anything that you can clamp to – upside down from a tree, upright off a gate, or whatever you can find.

Magic Arm vanity shot.

A versatile and fun bit of kit for the GoPro deficient among us, but at about £120 for the arm and clamp, not cheap.

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