Dear readers as you can see I have several advertisements on this website. These are created based on content in the blog and I would highly appreciate if you click on these advertisements from time to time.

This supports me with some money which I can put in better camera gear...

For example this is the report for the last couple of days:

Date	Page impressions	Clicks	Page CTR	Page eCPM	Earnings
7/10/2007	10	0	0.00%	0	0
7/11/2007	4	0	0.00%	0	0
7/12/2007	9	0	0.00%	0	0
7/13/2007	15	0	0.00%	0	0
7/14/2007	14	0	0.00%	0	0
7/15/2007	25	2	8.00%	30.46	0.76
7/16/2007	10	0	0.00%	0	0
7/17/2007	4	0	0.00%	0	0
7/18/2007	4	0	0.00%	0	0
7/19/2007	5	0	0.00%	0	0
7/20/2007	1	0	0.00%	0	0
7/21/2007	30	2	6.67%	44.88	1.35
7/22/2007	5	1	20.00%	134.64	0.67
Totals	136	5	3.68%	20.45	2.78
Averages	10	0			0.21

Which means I already got 2.78 for doing nothing, just because somebody clicked on some stupid links...

Ok thats the best I can do to remove the scratch on my camera using photoshop.
Basically the scratch causes reflection which darken specific pixels and in return you have the dark line of the picture. Now I can lighten this line with very careful dodging...

The problem is this is really time consuming and took me close too 2 hours to correct.

So I came up with following plan,

1. order an infrared filter
2. replace the scratched element with the filter
3. sell the converted nikon D50
4. buy a nikon D80/D90, this will be around august/September

The reason that I convert the camera instead of fixing is, the IR version have a higher resale value than normal versions.And I'm quite sure i can find an electrician who is able to install me this filter for 50$.
After I read more about this procedure it seems fairley easy, except for the soldering part.

i'm also starting to like the vivitar el cheapo flash.

The bad

- sucks batteries dry
- not many adjustments possible
- very large and ugly
- problems to trigger with the optical trigger

The good

- it does what its supposed todo
- very easy to use
- very powerful compared to the sb-600

Over all I prefer the SB-600 compared to the vivitar. Mainly because I can adjust it in very fine steps and works perfectly with nikon cameras. But the SB-600 cost also 189$ compared to the 89$ of the vivitar, which does what it's supposed todo.

And its wonderful to have a second flash, as you can see with the fish pictures. These shots would have not been possible with only a single flash. it also works very nice to highlight shadows in case of 'teddy' portraits.

Basically what you are going todo is put the vivitar somewhere to provide enough light to fill your object of interest. And use the second flash for removing unwanted shadows or setting highlights.