mark_lapolt___new_haven__c

How do you go about getting a 'grant for technology?

While packing for a wedding in March, I forgot to pack my diffuser. The wedding was at a hotel's reception hall, and there were near-blizzard conditions present, so I decided to check in and stay the night once I arrived. When they gave me the key card for the room, they gave it to me in a folded card envelope that had one all-white side. I went back to the front desk begged a couple of rubber bands from the clerk slipped the card envelope on my flash head, and proceeded to have a great wedding.

You're in CT, so I'm sure you've heard of Expect Discounts...They had a sale about this time last year selling off what I'm sure was a surplus lot of this circular folding stools that you used to see every wedding photog toting around. I got the flyer on a Friday went to go buy a few on Sunday, and they were already sold out.

 

Let me know if you find any.

Both.

I shoot film, so prints are still a natural for me. I have everything printed to 4x5, and when I shoot 35mm, I take that into account in my framing. I also shoot medium format, so the 4x5 aspect ratio is a natural for my 645. I proof in an 8-up 5x5 album that allows me to rotate the photos so my clients don't have to turn the book for proper orientation, allows me the freedom to use my square format gear when the fancy strikes me, and I can put everything in one album.

 

My lab scans my film and gives me complimentary Kodak Proshots (at least until they discontinue it) thumbnail CDs, which I use to order reprints with the Proshot Lab software. I also upload the thumbnails to collages.net for online proofing and reprint fulfillment.

 

Best of both worlds. The reprint orders I get through collages more than pay for the event sites, and the proof book is a big selling point because a lot of photogs in the area don't include one, and people love having a book full of prints to hold in their arms and flip through.

The Sigma has essentialy been replaced by the 24-105....the IS makes up for the f4 in most situations. I'm keeping the Sigma as a backup however.

Nadine...

 

That's often why I break out the Ol' manual focus body. It's much easier to zone focus with my MF gear.

Another CT photog? Where are you based out of? The lighting question was more of a general question, or at least I thought it was, but to fill in the blanks, my equipment is:<br><br>

 

Canon EOS 3 body <br>

Canon 24-105 f4L<br>

Sigma 28-70 EX f2.8 <br>

Canon 50 f1.8<br>

Canon 85 f1.8<br>

420EX with ST-E2<br>

Had my season opener last night, time to shake the rust off. I've real busy

this off-season with a lot on non-photography related matters, but I beefed up

my equipment a little, picked up a couple of lenses, and tried to stay behind

the camera as much as possible.

 

Still, the season opener is always hard for me. Feels like my first wedding

ever, every time. Why does it seem like every year the receptions halls get

darker, the DJ's get louder, focus locks slower, and there's less and less time

for getting those special romantic shots of the Bride and Groom.

 

How do you all shake the rust off after the off-season?

 

Bonus question......What are some of the ways you handicap your AF? When the

lights go down, even the focus assist beam falls short of providing quick

autofocus, I try to move in as close as possible, shoot at f5.6 or smaller,

prefer the wider angle, and prefocus. Sometimes I even whip out my Manual focus

film body. What are the rest of you doing when it's just too dark to autofocus?

Ed Greene....

 

How did you balance the color temp of the light fixtures to the flash? Did you white balance off of ambient and gel the flash head?

Question for you the group on storage of paintes scenic muslin backgdrops. I

have a couple, and have recently added two more. I've been storing them thus

far, rolled up tightly in the shipping tubes my 10' rolls of backgroup paper

came in, but I'm out of tubes.

 

Does anyone out there know where I can get a couple of 10' cardboard tubes to

store these backdrops in?

 

Thanks

Have them printed on business card stock. You can upload to any of the major online printing sites. By that I mean outfits like overnightprints.com or vistaprint.com.

Does anyone have a source for those wax paper like bags for holding reprints?

The ones I'm referring to are open on two adjoining sides, and can be had in

matching print sizes (8x10, 11x14, etc)

 

I've browsed through my Album's Inc catalog, but they don't have quite what

I'm looking for? Any suggestions? Michael Co. perhaps?

I've used the current canon Off Camera Shoe Cord 2 with great success on my AE-1P and several T-90's with Sunpack auto flashes (144D and 433D).

I had the same problem with an album I was using for my personal work. Not fancy enough for proofing, the DF albums Jumbo 500 held 500 4x6 prints, was three ring bound, archival, and expandable (within reason).

 

Of course, DF is no more, so no more Jumbo 500's.

<sigh> Only the good die young.

Civil Unions have been recognized here in CT since (I believe) last October

(2005), and this week I've accepted my fist civil union booking.

 

It was a last minute booking, their photographer had to bow out due to

illness, and they were recommended to me. I had the day open, so I took the

job. I did make the effort to explain to them that it is my first civil union

booking, and they did not seem to think that a problem.

 

Photojournalistic wedding photography being what it is, most of my approach

won't change too much. I shall continue to take my lead off of the couple, and

observe their interactions, both with each other, and their assembled family

and friends, capturing moments and emotions as the day unfolds. My

only 'concern' is with the formal portraits.

 

My clients are two women. I did a quick Google search on Civil Union

Photography, and a lot of the sites I saw showed an interesting pattern. In

most of them, one bride was dressed in a traditional white wedding dress, and

the other in what I can only describe as business attire, usually a black

skirt and blazer, with a top of some sort, color coordinated of course. This

was more so the case with younger female couples, and sets up clear 'roles',

and the formal portraits followed those 'roles'.

 

The photos I saw of female couples who were not thusly attired seemed

to....for lack of a better word....flounder a bit. There was little in the

photos to suggest two people in love, as if the photographer (or his clients)

wanted to downplay the romantic aspects of the day.

 

Given that I don't have a long history with the couple, and don't know them

well, I realize that I'll have to feel out their relationship as the day goes

along. It would be a great asset to me however to hear some posing ideas, so

that I can at least have something to fall back on if inspiration fails to

deliver. So, I was wondering if anyone out there had some interesting posing

ideas to share for a civil union between two women.

Seasoned landscape photographers know how to read light. I�m not one, but I do OK sometimes. It�s easy for me to look at a photo and read what�s �wrong� with it, not so easy to see that before the photo is taken.

 

Some advice, it�s free, so take it at face value.

 

1. To produce and even sky start with an even sky. Keeping the sun behind you, or over on shoulder slightly, will avoid that sky on one half of the frame from appearing brighter than the sky on the other half of the frame.

2. Interest. A bland empty sky is boring. Even using deep red or yellow filtration to produce steely gray skies won�t help you unless you have some interest in the sky. Look for clouds and cloud formation, and use them to your advantage as you frame your shot. The filter will deepen the sky, but do nothing to the white clouds, but if your clouds are dark�.no amount of filtration is going to get them white.

3. Expose for the shadows. Your vertical composition is not �wrong� Very nice landscapes have been done vertically, but the challenge is occupying that vertical space with interest. By exposing for the shadows, you preserve shadow detail that gives your foreground interest. It also gives more exposure to the rest of the frame, helping to produce those white clouds if you�ve got any in frame.

 

Regarding your polarizer question��you first have to ask yourself why you are using the polarizer, and be aware what the polarizer is doing. Without getting to deep into physics, let�s say that light exhibits certain wavelike tendencies. One of the properties of a wave is polarization. You can have vertically polarized waves, horizontally polarized waves, and everything in between. A Polarizer is a filter that only allows light that is aligned (or polarized) a certain way to pass. That�s why a polarizer filer can rotate, so you can select the orientation of light that reaches your media through the lens. When you say �polarizer�s work best at 90 degrees from the sun� you are correct. But only if your intended result is to reduce how much of that sunlight reached the film, and only if your polarizer is rotated �90 degrees out of phase� with the incoming sunlight. There are two light sources in any outdoor photograph, the sunlight and the skylight. If you were trying to reduce the influence of the sun in favor of driving exposure with the much weaker skylight, you can use a polarizer to help. You would be better off putting the sun behind you if you could. I use a polarizer a lot to control reflections and specular highlights when I shoot the ocean. I also use it for color saturation when shooting color. When light from multiple different sources reflects off of an object, color saturation can suffer, especially when those light sources have different color temperatures. I use a polarizer to help reduce the effects of those multiple light sources, and thereby improving color saturation.

It's normal, under a lot of circumstances for the sky to become lighter in tone as it nears the horizon. That's likely what you see as the 'halo' around the trees on the right-hand side of the frame.

On the left...well...if you look at the shadows cast by the trees, you will be able to deduce that the sun is almost directly to camera left, which is likely what's causing the hotspot on that side. Your red filter is going to accentuate that by making the blue in the sky to take on a darker tone.

 

I'm betting that you used a fairly wide aperture to compensate for the 4 stops of light you lost stacking a Red filter and a polarizer. That combination on the FD 28 f2.8 might stick out far enough to cause the vignetting you see in the upper corners. Likely, it's there in the lower corners too, but since there's very little detail present in the scan in those corners, it's tough to say.

 

My $.02, others may have other opinions.

Do you have a scan that you can post so we can see?

 

Red and green are opposite one another on the color wheel, so a red filter will serve to lighten any red tones and darken any green tones. Could be some odd interaction with the foiliage on the trees if there were any red tones in the sky like there would be at sunet/sunrise.

Thanks to Mary, we all know where everyone is located....I'd like to

take it one step further and see if we can't get a little networking

done.

 

I'm in CT, New Haven County. I cover most of the state, but usually

stay within Fairfield, New Haven, Hartford, and Middlesex counties.

I'm part-timer myself, shooting around 1/2 dozen or so events per

season along with the odd off-season job, and Holiday portraits. I

get the occasional inquiry for service on Long Island, but prefer

not to have the hassel of ferry travel, etc.

 

I'm looking for other part-timers to network with so that we can

share job leads, back each other up, compare notes, etc, etc. No

formal partnerships intended, just honest cooperation. Maybe meet

for coffee every quarter or so.

 

Any other denizens of the Nutmeg State out there? Offline me or

respond here.

Mark LaPolt - New Haven, CT

Ditto...if if goes in the proof book, it goes online.

 

(For those of us that still do proof books that is)

Thanks for all of the great responses every one. I think I'll go for the E20 anyway, even with the RAW preview issue. I priced out moving to a true DSLR, but since I have no autofocus lenses (I shoot film with Canon FD and Bronica gear), I'd have to go for body, fast general coverage zoom, and flash, and I can't pull that together for less than twice what an E20 runs on the used market.

 

Still, I think I'll try to get in there and straighten the pins on the E10. Even if I break them off, it still won't cost any more to have Olympus fix it, and the camera will still work on the SmartMedia cards. That way we'll have one for me and one for the wife.

I've had an E-10 for about 9 months now, and while no top of the

line DSLR, it certainly fills its role in a way the no other camera

in its price range ($300 used) can. However, I've suffered somewhat

of a setback in the form of a couple of bent pins in the CF slot. I

can run the camera on SmartMedia cards, but they top out at 128Mb.

 

So I'm looking to replace the camera, and thinking about stepping up

to the E-20. One of my biggest problems with the E-10 is the way it

handles RAW files. Image playback/review of RAW images is limited to

a 1/2 sized thumbnail. Does anyone know if the E-20 has the same

limitation? Can you view a full sized RAW image on the camera's LCD

even (dare I hope?) allowing zoom operation?

 

TIA

Mark

Marc...

 

Yeah...the 54 MZ-4.....I've been toying with the idea of checking that out. It'll do TTL for my Canon and Bronica systems with the right adapter. Plus, when used on a bracket, it has the advantage of keeping the secondary reflector above the lens

I'm a dedicated film shooter and experienced part timer, like many on

this board. While I love to shoot film, I realize that the future of

this business is digital, arbitrary quality arguments aside. So last

summer I went out and bought a digital camera, so I could get in the

swing of things, develop a workflow, etc.

 

I ended up buying cheap. Or should I say inexpensive. I picked up a

used Olympus E10. Not the best camera for event work, but a great

step into digital. It was inexpensive (<$300 from KEH), shoots RAW,

has a great lens, and even a standard PC socket for syncing to my

studio strobes and other lighting equipment. Itﾒs a good little

camera to start learning digital on. Later on I'll likely pick up an

8MP Canon.

 

Over the Xmas season, I bought the companion TTL flash for the

camera, and while reading the manual I discovered that Olympus seems

to have thought of something that I don't think any other

manufacturer has: A built in two-flash combo. The shoe mount flash

sits high enough that the popup flash can still fully deploy.

Furthermore, there's logic built into the firmware of the camera that

drives the main exposure with the shoe mount flash during bounce

operation, and provides fill with the pop-up. A very similar

arrangement to the high-end Metz units with secondary reflectors, but

in a shoe mount setup. There's a night and day difference between the

bounce flash alone, and the bounce with the fill-in from the popup. I

can post some before/after type shots if there's interest.

 

I still need to do some more experimentation with various

combinations of camera orientations, flash bracket operation, etc,

but my question is, has any other manufacturer figured this out? I

know your high-end Canons and Nikons don't have room in the

pentaprism for a pop up flash, but the prosumer units I've seen can't

fully deploy the pop up flash when there's a shoe mount flash in the

camera.