Community Matters

I’m in Berlin at LinuxTag and was very excited to hear updates on both OpenMoko and the OpenEZX projects. OpenMoko is a project that aims at providing a complete open source phone (including open source friendly hardware), while OpenEZX aims to free the existing Motorola EZX phones like the A780 or the A1200/Ming by providing completely open source software stacks for these phones.

But in all honesty, the talks were both rather disappointing. OpenMoko is way behind schedule for their updates and still isn’t able to provide reliable phone functionality. Lots of cool stuff you can do with the device – but it simply isn’t a phone.

And OpenEZX in a way is even worse. If I try to summarize progress since last year all I can say is “marginal”. It still can’t run most of the hardware including the GSM/EDGE radio in the A1200. It basically can boot a 2.6 Linux kernel and not much more. And here as well there is no phone functionality in sight.

Oh well.

If you want to get better flash pictures, the first thing you need to do is to move the flash off your camera. There are great resources telling you how to do this – Strobist might be my favorite.

Depending on the DSLR and external flash that you own, doing this might be easy. A Nikon D300 with SB-800 allows you to do off camera flash without any additional equipment (within some limits regarding distance and angle, for example).

But real flexibility requires a wireless remote trigger. The gold standard for this is the Pocket Wizard. Which is called the “gold” standard for a reason as it is really expensive. Since I didn’t want to spend USD 570 for a setup for two flashes I went with the ultra-cheap Cactus V2s instead. USD 50 for a setup for two flashes. That’s more like it.

I’ve had them for a week now and used them a few times and am really happy. Reliable, easy to use, sufficiently sturdily built. Highly recommended!