Yesterday was a good day!

Yesterday was a good day! Mid morning there was a knock on the door and a Post Office parcel van was outside. I opened the door, got my parcel and found it was the copy of 'The Moment It Clicks', the great book by Joe McNally, that I had ordered from Waterstones last Friday. Less than half an hour later there was another knock on the door and another Post Office parcel delivery. This time it was my Pocket Wizards! Needless to say I was very happy to get the book, but getting both the book and the Pocket Wizards on the same day was great!

I didn't know which to look at first, but once I opened both, I knew it had to be the book - the Pocket Wizards didn't come with batteries and I didn't have any in the house!

I picked up the book and flicked through it. On seeing Joe's great pictures, I knew that I was going to enjoy the book and hopefully learn from it. Instead of my usual skipping back and forth through books of this nature, I decided to read it properly and I sat and read the Foreword, Ackowledgements and About The Author sections. Unfortunately by the time I'd read those it was time for me to go out, but at least I was ready to start on the book proper on my return!

While I was out, I picked up some batteries for the Pocket Wizards and when I got home, I fitting them, turned them on and checked they worked by pressing the 'test' button on one and watching the LED flash on the other. At this point I realised that the wizards were supplied without cables, so I couldn't connect them to my flash guns..... Now I was getting frustrated!

Then I realised that I did have some cables I could use. I have two sets of the cheap eBay bought radio flash triggers and they are supplied with a lead for connecting the transmitter to a flash sync socket, for those who don't have a hot shoe connector on the top of their camera. It so happens that the cables have the 3.5mm jack plug that the wizards use - problem solved! I wandered round the house testing the wizards and they didn't fail to work wherever I was. In comparison the cheap ones fail as soon as I put one wall in between the transmitter and receiver! I have yet to try the wizards in a real situation, but I'm very confident they will perform as expected.

In the end I didn't start reading again until the evening and as I write this, I have read almost half the book. It is very well written and is easy reading. Fortunately there are footnote explanations of the terminology used by Joe, otherwise I'd have been stumped by terms like 'gatefold' and 'double truck', never having heard of those expressions before. I'll continue to read this evening and when I finish it, I'll re-read it, slowly, studying the images and making sure I understand how Joe achieved the images - ensuring it clicks!