michaelchadwickphotography

Oddly enough, I bought the radio transmitter because I was also having trouble with the wire doing the same thing and being inconsistent with its connection to the side of the camera body. So, my backup on this is to go with a Speedlite and use slave mode on the strobes. It's not ideal, but it works. I'll definitely order an additional radio transmitter as further backup, though. Thanks, everyone!

Since it happens on one camera and not another, I'd lean toward the possibility that it's the hotshoe rails on the camera. I shoot 50+ weddings a year and have been doing so with these camera bodies for several years now (Canon 5D Mark iii) so they definitely take abuse when I pull the cameras up and down quickly with heavy Speedlite flash units on them.

If the intended use matches what you plugged into Getty, then it's the right price to charge. Will they pay that? That's the real question. If they want the rights to use that image without photo credit or further compensation, that price is right. If it's for editorial use and they will give you full photo credit, is it beneficial to you to do so for less money? If you think it will actually generate additional work (it rarely does) then it's worth it to take less. Otherwise, make them pay the full price. They sell houses. They can afford pictures.

I actually did say that I had another camera (yesterday 6:43pm), and that I was wanting to rule out anything else before having to rule out something as expensive as a camera body. I eventually did test with another camera and was unable to replicate the issue. So it is definitely a problem with the camera body (sigh). Bill's suggestion early on ("...because of the camera tilting issue, is a slight mismatch in the hotshoe connections such that pointing the camera down somehow causes the connection to change slightly.") ended up successfully isolating the problem. Pointing the camera down was forcing the remote "forward" for lack of a better description. When I brought the camera back up, then manually pushed the remote forward on the body, it worked. Every time. So, thank you everyone for the advice and potential solutions. In the end, it turns out that the hotshoe isn't holding the remote down closely enough to the sensors, no matter how tightly I screw it on. This wasn't a problem with the Speedlite, probably because it's much heavier and has something of a locking mechanism. I'll have to see if this is something I can fix myself, or if I have to send it in for repair.

Appreciated, thank you for the clarification. I've had too many bad experiences with online forums, to the point where I stopped engaging with them for quite a long time, because of people who were just nasty. I will try your suggestion to further isolate the problem. I was trying less expensive fixes, looking at it more financially than logically, in terms of my order of troubleshooting operations.

That's very judgmental, Ken, and makes incorrect assumptions about my equipment and level of professionalism. I have four camera bodies. What I said was that I wanted to isolate it as a different problem first before I looked at the most expensive problem that it could be. In case you're wondering about my level of professionalism, you are welcome to buy my book on the business of wedding photography and judge for yourself.

I've not yet tried another camera. That will be my last troubleshooting step. I need to verify it's not something other than the camera first, because replacing the camera bodies would obviously be expensive.

Thank you both for answering my rather long original text. In answer to your questions: 1) Shutter speeds are variable and do not seem to solve the problem. It's always less than 1/200th, though. It's not one strobe messing up another (there are two units total). Neither of them are firing. 2) I apologize for the lack of clarity. By "remote" I mean the wireless transmitter attached to my hotshoe. I actually purchased this because the hard-wired version I was using was causing this problem. I thought the wireless transmitter would fix the issue, but obviously it has not. When wired to the flashes rather than using the transmitter, I'm not using the hotshoe. So, the problem exists both when I hard wire through the side of the camera, and when I use the wireless transmitter. It's really, really weird. I think I'm just going to have to see if this happens with different lights. If it does, I'll know it's something with the camera.

One quick note to add: I haven't actually tried this in a setting other than manual. I will test it with Tv or Av or P sometime to see if that helps, but that really isn't ideal. I am used to using Manual mode and would prefer to continue doing so.

Before anyone lectures me, I did do a search and could not find anything on this issue. If someone knows of a post discussing this, please feel free to share it. I've been a professional photographer for over a decade, doing almost exclusively on-location (non-studio) work. I have a set of Elincrom strobes that I would use here or there, but which mostly just stayed in their travel case. Recently, I opened up a studio location and am more actively marketing studio portrait work. I have been having a particular technical problem for a long time, and I just cannot figure it out. I have very logically and logistically troubleshot the issue, without success. I cannot find a pattern or situation which causes this problem. The problem is that my off-camera strobes will not always fire. 1) This happens both with wired connection and with wireless connection. 2) This happens almost immediately during a session, not a long time into a session, which leads me to believe this is not an overheating issue. 3) I never have this problem with my on-camera Speedlite strobes, leading me to believe there is nothing wrong with my hotshoe connection. 4) If I point the camera at the subject, the strobes won't fire. If I point the camera at the floor (same settings) the strobes fire just fine. 5) It doesn't seem to matter what I try to spot-meter the focus on, the strobes will not fire. 6) If I turn the remote on and off again, it works sometimes but not always. This isn't an acceptable solution because I still get the same (ahem) performance issues in front of my client. 7) When I click the test flash button on the remote, it fires every time without fail. When I then raise the camera up to photograph the subject, the camera/strobes don't fire, instead choosing to actively stick their tongue out at me and say "Ha! Your client thinks you don't know what you're doing now. Good luck with your session, idiot!" I have read through both the camera manual and the light manual, and cannot find anything that would lead me to believe that there is some sort of setting I have which is deliberately (almost seemingly maliciously) refusing to send a signal to the strobes to fire. I'm shooting on manual mode. If I overcompensate by jacking up the ISO and stopping down the shutter, then the strobes will fire just to spite me and overexpose the image. There seems to be no rhyme or reason, but ultimately I need these things to fire every time. I want to be at ISO 100 with a medium deep aperture (say, 6.3) but I also don't want those settings to determine whether or not the strobes fire. I want to be able to make adjustments to the aperture as needed without worrying that the strobes will "decide" they don't want to fire. This has to be a setting issue somewhere in the camera. There must be a situation with the camera where you treat a studio session differently than an on-location session. I don't know why that would be the case, but maybe that's the problem. ANY help or advice on this matter would be appreciated. I have lots of sessions coming up for the holidays, and I'm really nervous about the embarrassment this problem is creating.

Depending on whether you use it or not, Adobe Premiere can be used rather easily to make a simple slideshow. Import the images, order them how you want, then drag them all over into the film sequence. Choose transitions such as a slide or fade, and apply them globally. You can even manually zoom, pan, truck, etc. to make the images appear more dynamic, though if you've never done this before the learning curve can be a little steep and annoying.

I don't know if this was part of the venue's contract with the couple or not. They could have said something as vague as "vendors must comply with venue policies" and just left it at that. Their particular waiver is pretty much unique across the hundreds of venues at which I have photographed weddings over the years. So, I don't think it is unreasonable to think the couple had no idea this would be a problem when they booked. The only way I can see to help others avoid similar encounters is to make sure there are very public-facing reviews outlining the venue's waiver demand, as well as indications of their lack of customer service-friendly approach, in as many places as possible where couples go to research venues.

Were you asked to sign a waiver that actually said you could not sue over issues involving negligence or intentional acts? I doubt it. I have commercial liability insurance (2 million worth) and this has nothing to do with that. The venue forced me to sign their own waiver, which without they would prevent me from entering the premises to photograph my client's wedding. These are not the same situations. And, yes, my insurance company named the venue as additional insured for this event. That's standard operating procedure.

Hi Danny, A fair question. Their wedding is this coming September. The venue's ridiculous waiver was sent to the couple long after the venue was booked (as in, several months) and with very little time for the couple to find a different venue on a popular date. I doubt that was an accident on the venue's part. The couple would almost certainly lose their payments already given to the venue, too. The couple was caught between a rock and a hard place. If the venue barred me, the couple would lose their retainer with me while they scrambled to find another photographer, assuming they could even find one 1) with my experience level and 2) who would be willing to sign the venue's waiver. So, I decided to acquiesce (sort of - see previous replies about posting under duress) and will make sure to let the world know (after the wedding, of course) about this venue's policies and attitude. In the vast, vast majority of cases, the venue is the first thing a couple selects. That can even dictate their wedding date. Photography and DJ are typically next, but we are almost always booked after a deposit had been paid to a venue. So, couples are not going to easily be willing to switch a venue because they know they'll lose a huge deposit.

Hi William, Yes, I think it is a better business decision. I'm going to carry a recording device on my person that day and record anything they say to me. I'm also going to be on the lookout for them harassing my clients, and video record those interactions. I agree with your Barrister friend about the waiver's legal value being rather fecal. Nothing would hold up in court if truly tested. An earlier poster said this was likely meant to ward off frivolous lawsuits, which I get. But, this is symptomatic of a larger problem with these owners. There is a label for people like that here in the U.S. I don't want to get too graphic with my language, so I'll just say the label rhymes with douchebag. The groom told me they yelled at a friend of his at a previous wedding because the guy took out a flask and drank from it. Yes, that's probably not good form, but the owner yelled at the guy in front of everyone. Now, I own a flask, but of course I don't drink when I am working. I'm really temped to bring the flask and fill it full of water, just to troll the owner. I mentioned this as a joke to the groom, and he was all for it.