I shoot with two major types of cameras – Nikon and Sony. The advantage of the Nikon line is that it is, frankly, the best available for nature photography. The autofocus system is the fastest anywhere and, while their lenses are rather pricey, there is a noticeable improvement for the cost. The Sony line, on the other hand, has the best low light capability (more or less, this is debatable) and is *much* smaller. So, the Nikon is the system I take for the serious shoots and the Sony system is what I use as a backup, when I am doing non-serious photography, or when I am just tired of carrying all the weight of the Nikon stuff.

Last summer, I was surprised to learn that the flash system I use (PocketWizard) was constructed such that I could use the Nikon units on the Sony system. This is amazing because off camera flash is how I get the good looking macro shots. I ran some tests at home and it worked, so I took the Sony system to the zoo along with my PocketWizards and Nikon flashes. Then I went to use it.

Well … “works” is apparently a loaded word.

The flash did fire. That’s true. There was no way to adjust the flash power except manually on the flash. That’s okay though. However, even in the few shots that did work out okay, the top 1/3 of the photo was black. This is weird because if it were a flash sync issue, I’d expect it to be the bottom, but I suppose the electronic shutter is, somehow, faster than the radio trigger to the flash unit.

Anyway, I only got one good macro shot with the flash. This is it – cropped from the partial photo.