I’ll get right to the point, we’re going to be back in Auckland on the 16th July (just over two weeks).  We booked our flights a few weeks ago and I have been frantic with job applications and interviews in the last few weeks.

We’re going to be staying with my parents for a few weeks before moving back into our house.

The big news that almost no one has heard is that I have a job offer.  I haven’t accepted it yet as I’m expecting another one on Monday or Tuesday, but I’m pretty sure I will be accepting it (it’s an awesome step for me).

So the long and short of it is that we’ve got all the loose ends tied up.  We shipped our belongings back home last week, so now all we have to do is pack our bags, get on the plane and head home to start this next phase of our life.

It’s exciting stuff, but my emotions are other positive ones such as satisfaction, relief and slight nervousness at the challenges of my new role.

But we’re certainly looking forward to catching up with all the family and friends that we haven’t seen in yonks.

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Our family and friends will have to excuse me again for a second while I make a post for the “internet”.

[This post probably also applied to getting the Cobra 700af flash to work on the earlier and later models such as the 350d, and 450d as well as the American models such as rebel, rebel xt and rebel xts]

After going to the local market last week I came home to investigate whether the Cobra 700af flash would work at all with my Canon 400d.

I went to ebay and found a number of these items and most of them said they would work with the digital Canon SLR range but only in ‘manual’ mode.

So this morning I went out and picked one up, brought it home and for the life of me couldn’t get it to work.  Just as I was getting demoralised (many people without experience were saying it wouldn’t work) I came across a great forum thread which suggested putting a piece of tape over the back four connectors so only the central one could be connected.

It did the trick!  I actually tried it and thought it hadn’t worked, but accidentally left the flash on long enough to suck enough power from the batteries to light up the “ready” light and then it worked perfectly (alough with the not new batteries it took about three minutes to recharge).

I’m stoked because it seems to produce a lot of light (I had to drop the ISO to 200 to get the right exposure of a dark corner).  Hopefully others have success with this method also.

Btw, if someone wants to scan and email me the manual I know there are hundreds of people there who would like a link to it (which I will put up here).

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