equal pay for equal work, and lightning strike shutter trigger

This is a personal anecdote based on the conceit that there are some jobs that women simply do not do. I encountered an exception.

Finally! I encountered a female delivery person.

I don't like to shop and I try to get out of it much as possible. So quite a lot of deliveries to my apartment. And so far every single delivery person has been male except for yesterday.

The UPS deliveries have all been male. Everything from Amazon is delivered by men they often use a cart for boxes to other apartments.

Pizzas, day or night are all delivered by young men. I've tried GrubHub and they too are all delivered by young men. A few weeks back I was ill and ran out of essentials and could not go out so I bought groceries to be delivered and a young man made one trip up carrying more bags than I could possibly carry. His strength is impressive. Previously I tried out Jet grocery delivery and a tall and muscular young man delivered a very large oversized box heavier than I could lift.

Delivery after delivery, male, male, athletic muscular male, young male, male, male, male, and finally yesterday a tiny near weightless box was delivered through DHL by a middle-aged female.

And there goes my theory.

Maybe not. The box weighs only a few ounces. And she spoke right off and complained about the overtly unhelpful office downstairs. So I commiserated. We hit it off and had a few laughs. She was not in a rush.

So that's that. My delivery theory is partially blown.

Unrelated to all that I am delighted to learn a few things. This might interest you.

The lightning strike shutter triggers that photographers use are really only needed for daytime. Had I known this I could have captured a whole bunch of really great strikes one night last week that occurred right in my field of view. One after another, really fantastic strikes. My camera just sat there taking photos every minute to keep the thing going while its infrared failed for the the lightning. All of them. What a bummer! So I read more trying to discover the cause of the failure.

Here's how to get the lightning shots at night. This is really cool information. Most cameras have a shutter setting on manual that will keep the shutter open for up to thirty seconds for night time shots. Beyond that the setting says "bulb."

This term comes from old school camera equipment involving a cable release operated by a rubber squeeze bulb attached directly to the shutter button, but now the electronics are different and the cables are different while the vocabulary remains the same. To get lightning at night you set your shutter speed manually to "bulb" even though there is no actual squeeze bulb, and attach a cable shutter release to one of the camera's ports. Several types of cables are available and each camera uses a different type port. Not all Nikons are the same, and Nikons differ from Canons.  Now you can set the length of time electronically, or sit there and hold it open, or lock it open for however long that you want. The amount of time is determined by experimentation. This changes nighttime photography dramatically.

So that's the first thing.

I looked at these cables on Amazon and saw by the photograph of the cable the end does not attach to the shutter, rather, it plugs into the USB port. And that bummed me out because my USB port on my camera is broken so I didn't buy it. So I thought by the photograph of the cable.

But I was mistaken. The cable does not plug into the USB port, rather, it plugs into the GPS port and that still has me baffled. I have no idea why. It has nothing to do with GPS, It's just another of those electronic mysteries to me presently. I haven't figured it out. But now that I know,  that makes the cable available to me for nighttime photography, and specifically for nighttime lightning.

So that the second thing.

I discovered this by accident through buying a PatchMaster lightning strike shutter trigger that I read about online deep in comments to other strike finders. They get great reviews. Unfortunately from Turkey. Reviews rave about impressively fast delivery through DHL. People are amazed how fast. Three days. On eBay quick delivery is guaranteed. But that was not my experience. My package took a very long time to clear customs in Turkey, two places, in Germany, two places, and again at Cincinnati. All the layover stops really gave the package the full once over. I suppose matters have changed.

And that whole time after mistaking the cable for USB I was worried about it not working with my camera because of the cable. Each camera takes a different cable for its own port, and now my cable will not fit my port. Finally I tried the GPS and it fit! That's how I learned that the shutter cable fits the GPS port too. So I can use both. All that extended worry for nothing, and I don't have to buy another camera for its USB port.

I wouldn't have minded, My Nikon model is now 1/3 its original cost. I can buy another with no problem, and we photographer types usually have two cameras anyway pre-fitted with our two favorite lenses. You see pictures of photojournalists with two cameras all the time. It's a thing. So I wouldn't have cared. But now I don't have to. I can save for an FX full frame camera instead of another same model DX, although I do really like this camera.

So that's the third thing.