A curious piglet keeps a careful eye on me as I take his photo.

curious piglet

Wittelte, Drenthe, The Netherlands

Phottix have delivered yet another interesting and useful camera accessory - this time addressing the shortcomings of wireless TTL flash technology offered by Canon and Nikon. The Phottix Odin is a wireless TTL flash trigger that uses RF communications, thus providing more reliable triggering and longer range than the infra-red communications used by Canon and Nikon's built-in wireless flash triggering functionality.

While there are many non-TTL wireless flash triggers available, they all require the flash power to be set on each individual flash. The Phottix Odin allows multiple remote flashes to be triggered either in TTL mode, or in manual mode, but allows all parameters to be set from the Odin transmitter control unit, rather than on each individual flash.

This TTL flash trigger was initially going to be called the Phottix Helios, but the name was subsequently changed to the Phottix Odin.

Thanks to Phottix for providing a pre-release Phottix Odin for review purposes, and thanks to Steve for responding to my many questions.

Note that the photos in this review show a pre-release version of the Phottix Odin for Canon. Silk-screen labelling on the finalised version will be slightly different. Refer to the product photos at the bottom of the official Phottix Odin annoucement to see the labelling on the release version of the Odin.



Features

The Phottix Odin TTL Flash Trigger has the following features:

• three flash groups
• four channels
• can use ETTL/manual mode or ratio mode
• each flash groups can be configured for ETTL (with FEC) or manual mode
• each flash group can have zoom set by ETTL or manually
• high-speed sync up to 1/8000 seconds
• second curtain sync
• remote flash wake-up
• compatibility with Phottix Strato 4-in-1 and Strato II Multi receivers

DIY Photography has published a guest post by myself, which takes an introductory look at kite aerial photography (KAP).

The DIY Photography website is a great resource for information on DIY light modifiers, building a home studio, as well as various photography techniques and camera hacks.
The DIYP site is run by Udi Tirosh, a professional photographer. He emailed me some time ago, asking if I was interested in writing a guest post about KAP, so I jumped at the chance.

Head over to DIYP to read my Introduction to Kite Aerial Photography guest post.

KAP self-portrait

Southern River, Western Australia
Canon PowerShot G5 @7mm, 1/1600 sec, f/4

In the Netherlands, the humble bicycle gets a lot more use than in Australia, with many people regularly using their bikes for commuting. There's also a type of bike designed for carrying more cargo, typically known as a "bakfiets" in Holland (probably best translated to English as "cargo bicycle" or "freight bicycle").

Here are a few bakfietsen that I saw while walking around the city of Utrecht.

bakfiets outside a bike shop

Utrecht, The Netherlands

While in the Netherlands in June/July, I noticed the variety of cobblestones that many villages and cities had, with different types and shaped cobblestones being used in different locations. The cobblestones ranged from rectangular, square, round, random-shaped, and more.

While bending down to take a photo of these cobblestones, just outside the Dom tower in Utrecht, I noticed a love-heart-shaped indentation in one of the stones.

cobblestone love heart

Utrecht, The Netherlands

Incidentally, the photo above is the one I was about to take when I damaged the CPL filter on my Canon EF-S 10-22mm lens, but the filter protected the lens itself from any damage.