Safety Bay is a popular location for kite surfers. To capture the movement and speed of this kite surfer, I used a slow shutter speed, and panned the camera.

a kite surfer speeding along the water

Safety Bay, Western Australia
Canon EOS 50D, 24-70mm f/2.8L @70mm, 1/40 sec, f/22, ISO100

While on a remote mine site in the north of Western Australia recently, I was able to take some photos while being shown around the site.
Here's some nickel ore, ready to be dumped into a crusher. The lighter pile in the foreground is low-grade ore, while the darker pile behind it is higher-grade ore.

mixed ore

Kimberley, Western Australia
Olympus uTough 8010 @5mm, 1/640 sec, f/3.9, ISO80

We have had a couple of extra boys in the house for the last week, while friends of ours were overseas. On the weekend, I snapped a few photos of the boys, and here's some results.
For lighting, I had a 580EX on the hotshoe, reflecting off the wall behind me and off the ceiling.

Craig

Canon EOS 50D, 24-70mm f/2.8L @70mm, 1/80 sec, f/2.8, ISO200

Michael

Canon EOS 50D, 24-70mm f/2.8L @70mm, 1/80 sec, f/2.8, ISO200

Craig

Canon EOS 50D, 24-70mm f/2.8L @43mm, 1/80 sec, f/2.8, ISO200

Last weekend I got my KAP rig (kite aerial photography) airborne for the first time. KAP is a form of aerial photography, where a camera is suspended from a kite line to allow aerial photos to be taken, with the camera either being triggered by an intervalometer, or controlled and triggered via radio control.

Here's a self-portrait taken during my first KAP attempt. Also in the frame is my 12 year-old son Ashley, another keen photographer.

KAP self-portrait

Bob Blackburn Reserve, Seville Grove, Western Australia
Canon PowerShot G5 @7mm, 1/400 sec, f/4

I didn't have the kite and camera very high, or airborne for very long, as I was pushed for time, and the wind was quite gusty. The photo below is stitched from 7 individual photos taken with the KAP camera.

Bob Blackburn Reserve and Armadale Aquatic Centre

image stitched from 7 photos

Bob Blackburn Reserve, Seville Grove, Western Australia
Canon PowerShot G5, f/4

Phottix released the Strato 4-in-1 trigger just over 12 months ago (read my review here), and have now released an updated and improved version called the Strato II Multi (also known as the Strato II Multi 5-in-1 wireless trigger).

The Strato II Multi includes all the functionality of the Strato 4-in-1, but also provides a number of improvements and additional functionality.

Thanks to Phottix for providing a pre-release Phottix Strato II Multi for review purposes.

Note that the silk-screen labelling on the pre-release version shown in the photos in this review shows "Strato Multi", but the name of the finalised version will be "Strato II Multi".



Features

The Phottix Strato II Multi is a multi-function device that can be used as:

• wireless flash trigger
• wired shutter release
• wireless shutter release

and it provides the following features:

• 4 channels
• 4 groups (transmitter can trigger one or more groups simultaneously)
• TTL pass-through on the transmitter
• remote flash wake-up
• backwards compatibility with the Strato 4-in-1 receiver