Wired or Weird or Wobbly

Now that the new legislation has gone through and photographers in Australia are legally able to take star trail pictures, waterfalls, and other long exposure subjects - with the appropriate license of course - more people will be heading out with their tripods and cameras.

The problem of triggering the thing off without shaking it will still exist, however. The day of the old cable release has largely died - only the Fuji and the Leica enthusiasts will need the old mechanical type - but some form of electrical release is still needed by everyone else.

You can do it with a simple switch - Hahnel make perfectly good wired releases, as do Nikon and Canon. The advantage of these is certainty of action and freedom from battery power. The downside is that some people tug on them or forget where they are in the dark...and pull the whole camera crashing to the ground in a pile of fragments. This is rarely a good thing.

Wireless remotes that run on IR impulses are sweet little things, about the size of cockroaches. You point them at the appropriate spot on an IR-equipped camera and press the button. You can't expect them to work at too great a distance, however, and you need to remember that you will lose them due to their small size. If you can't find it in the camera bag, look down the couch cushions...

Radio remotes are the go - Hahnel and Promaster make quite a range of these. They say they'll work out to 10o metres, but the transmitter is really tiny so maybe a little less range would be safe. In any case, you escape the wire trap, they work around corners and in bright sunlight, and they don't cost the earth. if you want to do timed exposures or interval work, there are even fancier versions with this sort of thing in-built.

Highly recommended for anyone working with long exposures.