Self standing Monopods & fisheye portrait flash setups

This morning I went on the internet, catching up on my emails and dpreview since I haven't checked them the last couple of days. I also had to go to Spar and buy some white bread since we didn't have any and Clare and Brian were both out all day until 4pm.

After lunch I did some japanese learning and went on the internet a bit more, mainly researching on monopods with legs so they can stand up by themselves like a tripod. I found 4 different options:

• Manfrotto 678 Monopod Universal Folding Base (ca. £30) + Manfrotto 679, 680, or 681 monopod (ca. £30-£50). This appears to be the same as the Manfrotto 682B Self Standing Monopod (see below), except that you can choose which monopod you want, and get a cheaper one to lower the cost a bit.
  
• Manfrotto 682B Self Standing Monopod (ca. £80). Quite expensive, and reports I read said that the legs rattle around and are quite noisy when folded up inside the monopod. A couple of people also said that mud and grit can get in the space where the folded up legs are stored and make it very difficult to get them out.
  
• TrekPod (ca. £70). Looks to me like it should be more stable than the Manfrotto and Giottos offerings, but reading reports about it, it didn't sound very stable. There is currently an ebay auction for one, where they say they are selling it because their new camera is too heavy for it, so I don't think it would be able to cope with a Pano head and DSLR. A couple of Amazon reviews also said that the magnetic system it uses to attach the ball head to the stick isn't very secure and their cameras fell off.
  One of the reviews said that the legs close together to make the bottom of the monopod, and the rubber on the feet wears off very quickly when using it as a walking stick (which it's designed to be used as). Due to it's design as a walking stick rather than a monopod, it's smallest length is also quite long, so not suitable for clipping on to the side of your bag, which is what I'd want to do.
  
• Giottos P-Pod (ca. £70). Looks to be the most flexible, you can add the legs to the top of the monopod and then lean it over for a low tripod support for macros. It comes with a built in ball head, for some this may be useful but I think I'd probably rather just mount my own heads direct to the stick.
  

With all of them I have no idea how stable they would actually be for using as a tripod and taking 360° panos with a pano head and DSLR.

After dinner I went on de Blob, went on the pinternet a bit more, watched the Gadget show and took a couple more pictures of Ben with the fisheye to test flash setups.

I found that when using the onboard flash the camera's PC connection won't trigger a flash. I also tried mounting a hotshoe to PC adaptor in the hotshoe, but that doesn't work either when the pop-up flash is up. So for outdoors shots I would need to use a shoe mounted SB800 and another SB800 connected together with a PC sync cord. But inside I can use the onboard pop up flash with CLS to trigger a SB800. Then I can use my other SB800 placed somewhere within the room bouncing off the ceiling or wall to light up the room if needs be.

Indoors setup:

Fisheye portrait flash setup for indoors
Originally uploaded by djeyewater

Example pic:

Sad Ben
Originally uploaded by djeyewater


Outdoors setup:

Fisheye portrait flash setup for outdoors
Originally uploaded by djeyewater

Example pics:

2 hats Ben 2
Originally uploaded by djeyewater

2 hats Ben 1
Originally uploaded by djeyewater

Food
Breakfast: Pecan and Maple syrup crunch cereal with cornflakes; orange juice.
Lunch: German ham with mustard sandwich; a few Beef (tasted more like Paprika) flavour crisps; apple; mince pie; cup o' tea.
Dinner: 2 x Tortillas; Fried beef mince with peppers and mexican flavouring stuff; Rice. Pudding was: ice cream; tinned pear half; strawberry sauce; toffee sauce; chocolate sauce; 2x wafers. Coffee.