Spent sum(money)

This morning I was Barney McGroo (due) to go to my passport interview, but they said on HFM that there was a signal problem between Wellingborough and Bedford and the trains were either going to be very delayed or cancelled. Then an electric check bloke came about 9am to check the electrics so we had to switch everything off.

On HFM they said Midland Mainline had told them that people shouldn't try to travel by train today unless absolutely necessary, so since the electricity was off so I couldn't check whether the trains were being cancelled or not, I decided to phone the passport perks and re-schedule the interview. They said they would cancel the pinterview today, but said you can't book a new one until 24 hrs later so I should phone again tomorrow - annoy-chee.

While I was waiting for the electricity bloke to finish dishwasher cleaner I just sat in the front room and read my Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife trust magazine I got yesterday. When we got the electricity back on I put HFM on again and they said that all the trains were cancelled so I was glad I did cancel the pinterview.

Totally annoy-chee how on the day I actually need to use the trains they be cancelled. I listen to HFM everyday and they have the train reports throughout the day everyday, and there haven't been any problems for age-chee until today.

I received my Miranda 24mm f/2.8 lens in olympus OM mount, which I bought off ebay recently, so I tried that out reversed on the camera. You have to pull a little lever on the mount of the lens to make it stop down, so this means you can't really have one hand to hold a flash and one hand to stop the lens down and one hand to hold the camera and press the shutter. So I looked on the pinternet for reverse lens advice and read some general macro tips. After a while I eventually found the website/blog of the guy from the DPReview Nikon forums who inspired me to buy a 24mm lens for reverse mounting. He uses a bit of milkjug and the popup flash. So I got an old milk bottle, cut it up and made it like how he has his. I did a couple test shots indoors and it worked fine. However, when I went outside to take photos of spiders/flies it didn't work.

So I decided that I really need to get a macro bracket. I did some more research on these and came back to the same conclusion as I did when I was researching macro flash brackets before - the Wimberley F-2 Macro Flash Bracket seems to be the most flexible (since I am using variety of different sized lenses and also may switch to Canon in the future).

After getting Ben from school, I looked at the costs for the Wimblerley macro flash bracket for quite a while, looking at the costs from the US and also Europe (which hopefully would mean I wouldn't have to pay extra VAT when importing). The cheapest I could find was about £140-£150, either direct from Wimberley in the US or from a dealer listed on Wimberley's website who are based in the Netherlands. Quite a few retailers listed on Wimberley's website, including the UK dealer didn't seem to have the macro flash bracket for sale.

However I later came across the UK dealer's site again when doing a google search for Wimberley Macro, and it came up with a page that I didn't see when browsing their site before. They didn't have the macro flash bracket listed, but they did have Module #1 and Module #4 that the Macro flash bracket is made from (luckily Wimberley's site tells you this). So I ordered both those parts from the UK dealer, worked out about £130, so slightly cheaper and no need to worry about currency conversion rates or tax/customs fees.

I just ordered the one bracket for the moment, which I intend to use to get the flash with a mini softbox style attachment above the subject. If it works well and I think I could do with another flash, then I can buy another one. I think I'd also need an extra plate for both the arms to grab onto if I had 2, the extra plate is another £70 or so! Anyway, one arm will hopefully do for now and still works out quite a bit cheaper than Nikon or Canon's close-up flash systems, and will work on any camera model.

Food
Breakfast: Strawberry jam toast sandwich; cup o' tea.
Elevenses: American style chocolate brownie; coffee.
Lunch: Cheddar cheese with salad sandwich; satsuma; grapes; slice of all butter madeira cake; caramel rocky; cup o' tea.
Dinner: Roast lamb; mint sauce; gravy; potatoes; peas. Pudding was swiss roll; custard; peach slices. Coffee. Clare kindly gave me some easter egg chocolate from an easter egg she hadnae eaten yet.