jscoles

I'm in charge of a small photography club at my University, and our

club recently got a request from two students getting married for a

"budding photographer" to shoot their wedding for a lot less than what

professionals would charge. They say their experience so far in

looking at professional wedding photographers is that they charge a

huge amount for a lot of cheesy photos. They offered $200 plus film

costs (negotiable).

 

They say the wedding will be fun, simple and relaxed, and that they

only need someone there for a few hours to shoot the ceremony and a

few portraits afterwards. I'm intruiged by the idea, I've never had

the chance to make much money with my photography, but I don't have

any wedding experience. I think the equipment I have will work well

enough (D70, kit lens, 50mm f/1.8D, 105f/2.8D macro, sb-800).

 

I am hesitant about jumping into something like this with no

experience. I guess I'm looking for a little advice on subjects like

these:

 

I assume I should make some sort of contract, but I'm not sure what

kind. Would it be appropriate to request payment up front? Should I

just sell them prints, or turn over the digital images? Is there a

way to protect myself if for some reason the photos turn out horribly

exposed, or something else goes wrong?

 

I was also wondering where I should look for, well, instructions.

Where do I stand during the ceremony? What are all the "traditional"

wedding shots? Should I risk using autofocus at critical moments or

pre-focus manually? What else should I know? I'm sure there are

loads of good books out there, can you reccommend any?

 

I have a few days to respond, so any hard-earned wisdom would be

greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Jonathan

I searched to find this question, but had no luck, so here goes.

 

The canon i9900 shipped to me with 5 different profiles with some

pretty cryptic names like MP1 and PR1, and BJ color profile 2000. I'd

guess they're for different types, but how do I know which is for

which? The printer is set to "let windows choose the best profile",

automatically, so I don't really know which profile to associate when

in photoshop.

 

Another question I had, is it enough to simply embed the printer

profile in the file I print, or do I have to actually convert it?

 

Thanks,

 

Jonathan

I have an 18" lcd monitor, which I have calibrated using adobe gamma.

The only part in the profiling I was unsure about is the phosphors

selection - does this really matter? Where could I find out what

phosphors it has? I then print using a canon i9900.

 

I'm having trouble getting colors on my screen to match those on my

prints - right now, colors in the prints come out too saturated.

 

Here's what I'm doing now:

 

Manipulate photo in photoshop. Go to Image -> mode -> convert to

profile. Select BJ Color Printer Profile 2000 for the destination

space. I leave the conversion options at the defaults - Adobe ACE

engine, perceptual intent, and black point compression, dither, and

flatten image checked. I work in Adobe RGB, and when I convert to the

BJ profile, I see no visible color changes in the image.

 

Then I print. My printer's color management is set to "auto" in the

control panel, which has 5 color profiles in a list below it. One is

the BJ Color printer profile 2000, and the other four are canon i9900

mp1, canon i9900 pr1, canon i9900 pr2, and canon i9900 sp1. (What are

these for? Nice of canon to tell me...)

 

I've also tried manually selecting the BJ 2000 profile in the control

panel, but I get the same results. What should I try next? Use each

of the other canon profiles? (convert the photo to that profile and

select that profile in the control panel?)

 

Or should I do something else different in these steps?

 

If it's really impossible to get good color without a dedicated piece

of hardware, then so be it. However, I'd like to try to get by

without one.

I don't see the link for a photoshop update on that page, is it not up yet?

I gave the buyer the number, and asked her why she needed it; says she has a friend with a year-old 80dx whose serial starts with 208, and she wants to determine the age of mine. Mine starts with 216. Seems like a reasonable request.

I'm selling my Nikon SB-80dx flash on ebay; an ebay user asked me for

the serial number of the flash. Why would she want this? Any reason

I shouldn't give it out? I did buy the "grey market" version from

B&H; they were sold out of USA ones.

I ordered from www.apple.com, they say they'll ship it today or tomorrow, so we'll see what happens.

Are there any devices out there that would let me transfer photos from

one compactflash card to another card or microdrive? I have a 4gb

microdrive, but would like a faster card, like a 512 sandisk ultra II,

for faster buffer performance. It would be very handy to have a

little battery powered device that could offload photos to the

microdrive, like a poor man's laptop.

 

Thanks!

Like <a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=WishList.jsp&A=details&Q=&sku=155148&is=REG>this one?</a>

 

Or, would you get an infrared filter?

I'm ordering a D70 with the 18-70 kit lens, and am looking for a basic

clear filter to go with the lens. I've heard that UV filters aren't

ideal for digital cameras, that an infrared filter would be better.

 

I'm just looking for something to protect the end of the lens,

something in the $30-$50 range. Any favorites?

 

Thanks,

Jonathan

I like Lumiquest's products very much.

 

http://www.lumiquest.com

3/8-16 and 1/4-20 are the two standard tripod screw sizes. Most 35mm camera bodies accept a 1/4" diameter, 20 thread-count screw. Most tripod heads attach to tripod legs with a 3/8" diameter, 16 thread-count screw.

 

Where did you see that specification, exactly?

Thanks for the info. I was using a N80 with a 28-80g f/3.3-5.6 lens.

I just got a hitech star effect 6 filter, cokin p series. I was

testing it out yesterday, and after developing the photos, not only

was I disappointed that I failed to compose/expose a shot worth

keeping, but my new star filter left some ugly "ghosted mesh overlays"

in the pattern of the filter itself. They only appeared in a few

images, and my theory is that the star effect filter is meant to be

used with the camera focused on the light source. Any better ideas?

 

images are in this folder:

 

<a href = "http://staff.washington.edu/jscoles/images">here</a>

Are the 80a, 80b, and 80c filters the same, except for the "intensity" of their effect, c being strongest?

On the subject of the 3021, I have a 3001, but have found the leg adjustments ( where it rotates at the top) to be really stiff. Has anyone else noticed this, or can you recommend a way to fix it?

I really like night cityscapes that have the added blue cast that

comes from using tungsten-balanced film. Is it possible to get

(nearly) the same effect from an 80a, 80b, or 80c filter? It makes

more sense to me to get the filter so the rest of the roll won't all

be bluish where I don't want it to.

I'm thinking of getting a cokin P series square filter system, and

noticed a large price difference between the cokin nd grad filters and

the others, like tiffen and singh-ray. Will I really notice a quality

difference if I spend $125 on a tiffen filter instead of $18 on a

cokin filter?

ok, that's great.

 

One more question:

If I set the camera to a shutter speed that is slower than my flash sync speed, will it automatically enter into slow-sync mode, and fire the flash at the beginning of the exposure? Is there any difference in doing this and in actually setting my camera to slow-sync?

 

Thanks

I just got my nikkor 105mm f/2.8d micro lens, and noticed that the

maximum f/ stop varies when I focus in real close-- the largest I can

have when focused to 1 foot is f/5. Also shifting with this focus is

the smallest f/ stop value - it goes up to f/54 at 1 foot. The chart

in the lens manual for DOF only goes to f/32; so what would the DOF be

at f/54?

Hi. I have an N80, and just purchased an SB-80dx for it. I'm

confused on how the camera's exposure meter works when the flash is

attached.

 

For example, if I turn on the flash in the hot shoe, then go to

aperture-priority mode, is the camera's exposure meter still telling

me what exposure is correct without the flash? If I choose, say f/22

and 1/125 shutter speed, and the camera is telling me that will be

underexposed, the flash does all the work in getting the right

exposure, right? (I'm using the flash in TTL matrix mode).

 

One other question relates to macro photography. I bought a kirk

macro flash bracket, and want to use it and my sb-80 together with my

105d 2.8 micro lens. If I position the flash on the bracket so it is

a mere 6 inches from the subject, but with the head still in the

normal position (not rotated or angled), will the flash calculate the

wrong exposure from the distance information it gets from the d lens?

 

Thanks!

I'm looking to get a lens that will let me take macros, and until

recently, was fixed on the 105d 2.8 nikkor micro. Then, I was reading

<a href="http://www.reallyrightstuff.com/tutorials/macro/index.

html">this article at Really Right Stuff</a>, and thought that maybe

instead of spending $600 on a really specialized lens, I could get a

nice multipurpose 80-200 f/2.8 for a bit more, and use extension tubes

or closeup lenses for macros.

 

Right now, I have a nikkor 70-300g and a set of +1, +2, and +4 Tiffen

close-up lenses, and I hate them. The tiffens ghost horribly, even at

f/45. Total waste of money. I'll get nikons if I go for closeup

lenses again.

 

Anyway, would I be able to take decent, sharp macros with an 80-200

and closeups or extension tubes? And which is more practical, the

tubes or lenses?

 

Thanks!

Currently, I have a bogen 3001 with a bogen 3055 single action

ballhead, which I use with my N80 for a variety of things. I'm really

growing annoyed with this ballhead, I guess that's what I get for $35.

 

Anyway, I'm looking for a replacement, and hoping that I could find a

decent ballhead in the under-$150 range. Are there any out there?

I don't need a monster head for 600mm zooms. I use it mostly for

doing macros, with a 105d 2.8 nikkor.

 

The replacement that I came up with by scrolling through B&H's list in

low-to-high price mode was an $80 bogen ballhead, the 488RC0 Midi Ball

Head. All I have to go on is the picture, where I see screwlocks

rather than the sticky clamp on my current head, and the double

action. (It rotates).

 

I'd really like to get something like the linhof profi-II, but I don't

feel convinced that I need to spend $230 on a tripod head and then

more on QR plates from RRS.

 

Any suggestions, or resources I could look at?

 

Thanks!

I'm thinking of getting an SB-80dx, on B&H it says that with fresh

ALKALINE batteries, the recycle time is 6.0 seconds. I plan to get

some new powerex 2200 mAH NiMH batteries to go with it; what kind of

recycle times will I see with those batteries.

 

Also, I'm curious, "how many" mAH are "in" a standard Alkaline

battery?

 

Thanks

That's funny. Every casio watch I've owned has far outperformed the timexes.