A couple of X5's turned up second hand & after a quick test I decided to buy them.  My Variolite 900 is now gone and I've just put my Profilite 500 up for sale, so now all my Multiblitz heads will have TriggerHappy remote function control available.  For more see the update at the bottom of the Multiblitz Studio Flash page.

But this time rather that the trigger, its the MIOPS Water Drop Splash Kit, which as the name suggests is an electronically controlled (Smart Phone or Tablet) water dropper.  As with the MIOPS Smart Trigger this can produce some remarkable pictures, but I did find it quite complex to get repeatable quality images!

But I'm getting there - more images from this can be found in the MIOPS Gallery page which hopefully will grow as time goes on with better results & of course as with the smoke and water trails, I can't pass up the opportunity for a bit of image manipulation !

I've always fancied the larger 'V' mount Fresnel Spot, and recently had the opportunity to acquire one, this did however lead to a few surprises, for such a big beefy looking unit.  More on this in my Multiblitz page, within the Photography section.

After my previous attempts at splash photography, where I probably had a one in 20 success rate (capturing the moment) I decided to invest in a MIOPS Smart (especially after reading the review by Michael Sewell) & finally got round to trying it for the first time this evening.  I didn't have a laser pointer but had the necessary components so put one together as I wanted to try out the laser mode first

Decided to trigger my Elinchrom ELC Pro HD 500 head from the camera hot-shoe.  Now given the rather small size of my studio area I put a glass filled with water inside a small fish tank to try and reduce the potential for mess.

Even with the laser going through several layers of glass & a coloured gel with minimum set-up time it work perfectly every single shot.  This was just a trial run, but every single shot was spot on, with the only adjustment needed was the level of delay.

A few more examples can be seen in the At Play Gallery section.  I bought my trigger from UKhighland Photography who provided excellent service and support.

Now I gave up on DSLR's some time ago with my move to Fujifilm X series compacts and have never really missed the bigger cameras, until recently when I found that the cameras couldn't do something I wanted them to do, so time to think of a new camera!  the thing I wanted them to do was to trigger my studio flash units while the camera was in 'burst mode', unfortunately when in this mode the hotshoe is disconnected.  For me the DSLR is a dead format and there is no way I was going back to this style of cameras, so I started looking at other Mirrorless Compact System Cameras (CSC).  perhaps the obvious choice would have been another Fujifilm offering, but I honestly didn't really like anything currently on offer and the brand I kept returning to was the Olympus range.  So to try this out for a reasonably modest outlay a secondhand E-M5 was found with the two part battery grip, which I mated to the 12-50mm lens.  Now I'd be the first to admit that I found the menu system to be far to complex for my liking and the level of customisation is very impressive, and after a few week of ownership I feel I'm still only slowly coming to terms with everything on offer, but it is an enjoyable small camera to use coupled with very impressive results picture wise.  Now this is an older model now superseded by the MkII, but I feel this one will be fine for a few years yet.  I'm also pleased enough with the result to consider investing in some of Olympus's Pro range of lenses and on my shopping list is the 40-150mm F2.8 with 1.4x tel-convertor and the 7-14mm F2.8; the former for studio and perhaps a bit of wildlife action & the latter for landscape and architecture.

I've had a couple of questions about Bowens Flashtubes in the last few days, even though I really know nothing about their products, other than I've used them a few times over the years.  Well I don't want to start a Bowens pages, so contacts for repair in the UK are;

Brian Chapman studio Flash Repairs
Clive Christian - Camera Repairer - also was(is?) the authorised Multiblitz repair agent.

In the EU for flash tubes the German Company Flashtubes EU would seem to be able to supply 'compatible' tubes for many recent models and brands.

With the Multiblitz web site(s) now gone, I've also added to the 'Manual' page as much information I could glean regarding the main Worldwide Distributors as at the time of liquidation, plus some of the Service Centers - this may not be complete, but for the distributors there are links (if available) to their web sites & hopefully they'll offer some ongoing support for spares and the like!
The above is just a Word document with active links for the Distribution & names and addresses for the Service Centers.

Just bought one of these to play with although I don't have a camera which can utilise the advanced functions (yet).  More can be found in the Elinchrom part of my Photographic Section.

Looking online today, I found I could no longer get to any of the Multiblitz Web sites, which is perhaps to be expected.  However, one of the areas that I used quite a bit over the years has been the download section for old manuals.  this has been to answer questions or even when I've been buying older units.  Anyway as I thought this would happen I've added a page to my Multiblitz section for Manuals so there are at least some available copies!  I didn't manage to get them all before the site disappeared, but I've got quite a few, plus I could also try to 'pdf' some that I've got here (if I can find them) of some older units and perhaps some old advertising I may have.

Looking on the Harrison Cameras site as I do now and again, I was a bit bemused to see that all the Multiblitz pages (for flash heads) were blank, but having now seen several reports of Multiblitz going into liquidation this would seem to be the reason why!  So after 69 year of production, with my personal use of their kit covering near 40 of them, they are to be no more :-(

Lighting Rumours reports that an email was sent to distributors in which they said :
"...We deeply regret to inform you that the intention to continue with the Multiblitz company under new ownership could not be implemented last week.
After almost 70 years we must say farewell to the photo industry. We thank you for your trust and the great collaboration during the past years and wish you all the best from your business..."

Always sad to see an established company go, but perhaps not too unexpected in this case.