timberwulf

Make sure you have a contract signed by both you and your neighbor spelling out exactly what your neighbor is getting for their money.

 

Look at the threads in the New Wedding Photographers Start Here thread.

 

Make sure you have backup camera, lenses, flashes, etc so if something fails it's not the end of the day.

If they hired you to shoot the event, do you really retain copyright (see work for hire)?? Was that part of the

agreement?

 

That said, no ticky no washy. Nothing goes to them until you have been paid and the check clears. Your only

leverage right now is your work product - if you give that up, they have no pressing reason (short of a court

order resulting from an expensive lawsuit) to pay you. :)

Great dedication there man - I know your customers appreciate it, even if they don't know just how bad you feel. Hang in there and best of luck. I hope you feel better soon!

Mike did a much better job of talking about using low ISO than I did. hehe, totally agreed Mike.

I have the Nikkor 12-24 f4 (~$900). It's cruddy wide open, but a couple of stops down and it shines. I hear the Sigma 10-something is just as good. A little correction and you have a great shot.

f11? That seems way too small to me.

 

You don't want to be shooting at a wide open aperture, but if you are two to three clicks above it you'll get

good results out of your lens and avoid adding even more time to the exposure. With an f4 lens (the Nikkor 12-24

- which most certainly has some sharpness issues around the edges wide open), I've had great success at f5.6 for

example.

 

If you're on a tripod, you likely could go down to ISO400 without any ill effects, but then, I don't shoot a D40. ;)

 

Definitely experiment. Go to manual mode and use the histogram to adjust your shutter time until you have the

shot you're looking for. Be aware that in a dark environment, the screen will look brighter than the image

really is - so make sure you use that histogram to avoid under exposure.

 

Have fun!

Some great answers in here. I have to agree with Marc and Bob B specifically. I usually also "see" the image in black and white before I take it. Past that, sometimes while going through the images after the event I might see an image that could be enhanced by black and white. I ask myself specifically:

 

1. Is the color critical to the composition (flowers, etc. were mentioned).

2. Will the loss of color reduce the focus on the image's subject? For example, a detail shot where there is a white gold ring with a gold inset in it - the loss of the gold inset detracts from the ring's natural beauty).

3. Are there interesting enough shapes and patterns with dramatic lighting on them to provide interest to the image?

 

As to the room full of fluorescents, adjust your white balance and gel your flash. :) Admittedly though, there are times where you have 3 or even 4 competing light sources, all of which are a different temperature. That can cause an ugly situation if there is a lot of background and your flash didn't quite make it.

PJ style or not, one thing I've taken to doing when random people are dancing is to approach each dancing couple and give the man a light tap on the shoulder, then smile and hold up the camera - they're always happy to pause and will both turn towards you to smile while still holding their dancing pose. These shots have simplified trying to get good dancing shots (granted I still shoot candid dance shots) of most of the dancing people without it taking too much time or having to ditch poor photos of couples that maybe the bride/groom really want a photo of.

 

The rest has been said. Definitely go for that story line. I'll usually try to get a few shots of people filling their plates if there is a buffet, or the waiter/waitress setting plates of food on the tables if it is a served dinner.

The last wedding I was in was as best man for my brother. Granted, this wedding was a huge production, with hundreds of guests - not the small, intimate wedding you have mentioned. That said, however, I know that I had to work very hard to keep everything organized that was my responsibility - I wouldn't have even had the time to consider doing a reasonable job taking photos too.

 

As mentioned, I really really think you'll be better off if you ask your brother to have you be one or the other. I posit that it is very hard to do a good job on two things at once - and you don't want to short sell your brother by giving him a mediocre job with both jobs - best man and photographer.

I usually just went into the darkest room I could find, popped the back, and hand rewound the film. :)

It would definitely be nice to see a portion of the artist's face and sax cropped out at full resolution. Resizes really don't tell you much.

I have 8 Sandisk cards that all perform flawlessly.

 

Buy a new card or try the potentially faulty card in another camera and see if it is doing the same thing, or RMA your current card. It's hard to blame something until you've troubleshot it.

hehe! Glad it was that simple. :)

 

I have ProShow Gold myself and have liked it a lot the few times I've used it. I've started wanting to do more slideshows now that I have it.

I have to second what John said. *DO NOT* start showing up to random weddings and photographing them!

 

Practice around the house. See if you can get a hold of backups for your camera, lenses, and flash - a failure on the big day will leave you high and dry. Also be prepared to lose a friend if something goes grossly wrong. People get a little weird about things like this.

Michelle - FX is just Nikon's acronym for what we are calling a "full frame" sized digital sensor. There are no FX lenses, the D3 should work fine with any AI capable lens (with some caveats here and there I'm sure). Assume D lenses should work just as great with the D3 as with any other Nikon camera.

 

The DX format, on the other hand, indicates a sensor that is smaller than the size of a frame of 35mm film. Some recent lenses are made for the DX format, meaning they produce a smaller image circle that will not always cover all of an FX sensor or all of a frame of 35mm film (producing vignetting at various levels depending on the lens/zoom setting of zoom capable lenses).

And you've hit the nail on the head there Bakari. Marketing is all about what *your* audience responds to. If you find that email marketing works better for you, by all means latch on to it with a vengeance! Just make sure you're always measuring the cost-benefit ratio and keeping a keen eye on its effectiveness. :)

Sorry, I realized you meant the D70 didn't seem to drain the battery while in standby as much as the D200 did. However, the D70 also generally uses less power overall as well, and has less paths for the crystal to take, which may result in less overall drain. The D70, in my experience, still drains the batteries while in standby mode.

The D70 *does* have that problem. I'm looking through my D70 backup without a battery right now and observing it.

The viewfinder is covered with liquid crystal in order to display the data you need on it. If you don't have a battery in it, the crystal can't be kept in line, and the viewfinder darkens. This is just the way it is, there is nothing you can do about it. ;)

 

Buy another battery and just keep a fresh battery in it. That said, what purpose do you have of trying to look through a camera that is completely and utterly worthless without power?

It's not so much a problem with downloading as it is with spam filters/blocks. Be aware that some users will never see your message, as many filters get very aggressive with HTML rich email.

 

If you're going to do this, and you're serious, send it by snail-mail. They're guaranteed to get it, and they'll cherish it a lot more as something that took some effort instead of a quick email you dashed off on a whim. ;)

 

Just my personal opinion. YMMV.

Sorry, one more thing - keep experimenting!! You never know unless you try. :)

I have to agree that the first thing my eye went to in the image was her face, and with the DOF that didn't work well for me. The head really does have a feel to it like it was cut out with a pair of scissors. The hand being so large also adds an almost cartoonish aspect to it that really doesn't compliment the feel.

 

That said, this is all my personal opinion, and I'm not your paying client. ;) The important thing is - did the bride like it??

Do you have an example of an image to show us to help with getting answers? :)

heh...since each shooting session goes into its own dated and subject labelled folder, I don't worry about file names. I do, however, have the camera set to ds2_* to differentiate its shots from the d70 as well.

Generally, I provide the number of images it takes to tell the story of the wedding. That may be less, it may be more. Generally, I find it comes out to the number I gave above for a normal wedding. I've given more out for longer engagements, and less for shorter, I don't strive for a particular ratio.

 

I also subscribe to the school of thought that says that too many images will dilute the overall effectiveness of the product. :)

 

As for JPG2000, the post above says it all. If giving clients images in that format will potentially cause them problems, I don't want to do it. People have enough trouble using their computer as it is. ;) It sounds pretty interesting though, perhaps it will gain better acceptance in the future.

 

Florence eh? I recently moved to Dallas actually, need to have Mary update my name. :) I will be back in Tucson for a wedding (my brother's, I'm a participant, not a shooter) in late September though.