clauder

I think it depends on how often you really feel the need for a longer reach when you shoot a wedding... I guess your longest lens right now (85mm) might not be enough for certain shots, so how about a 135/2 (202mm with the crop factor)?

 

I think the easiest to find out is rent a 70-200 for the next few weddings and see if you like it/need it/shoot with it often, and if it improves your photos... It's a lot of money to find out afterwards that it doesn't fill your needs

 

so rent it and a 135 and see what you think!

camera gear is NOT an investment, it's an expense! Especially digital cameras!

 

Your personal education and training is an investment, so I would rather try to expand my photographic (and business) horizons and capabilities than sink that money into equipment that is depreciating every time you use it, and which you only want because you feel your current camera doesn't look pro enough...

 

btw look at your lens lineup, you have everything covered twice already, from 15 to 300mm, so why buy another 24-135?! you have 10(!) lenses already... way overkill I would say! Also why is the 30D not good enough anymore?

 

1200$ put into good workshops (not necessarily wedding related, working with other specialists like advertising photogs, or commercial studio photogs can be an inspiration), or a general art education, or even a marketing workshop would be a far better approach IMO (and I still think that photographers should take more marketing and business classes than photography classes!)

 

just a thought, and no offense meant!

not a book, but an online tutorial... (and free at that)

from one of the masters

 

The pictures are really old, but the posing guidelines are still valid!

What kind of peanut slave is it? aren't there digital models that can deal with a TTL-Preflash?

 

I mean that if the elinchrom fires, the peanut takes it as the preflash and waits for the 2nd flash, which of course never happens with the elinchroms... or am I completely out of my mind?

also, reread the original posters rant, he clearly says that it used to be that german (and others) things were better, but nowadays these stereotypes are no longer valid!

 

All your answers about how wrong he is talk about stuff thats more than 20 years old, so hows that for confirmation of his premise?

Porsche, Audi, Mercedes etc being built in germany?! So what about them having factories in China to produce parts for their cars?

 

Come on guys, broad statements like that are unrealistic, we live in a world where most of the stuff is built from parts that get outsourced to a boatload of different countries! Maybe the label should read 'assembled in' whatever country!

 

When you buy a Dodge, or chevrolet, do you really believe that EVERYTHING on these cars is made in the US (or any one single country for that matter)?

Whibal is very good, as are other color checkers (use on the grey patch as ellis suggested)

 

Very easy to do, just pop one shot of the whibal with the lighting in place, and you're good to go (either set to that WB in camera, or easier, use the WB set method of your rawconverter)

I've had mine for some time now, and not one misfire, even under heavy use, with the batteries getting low (make sure you recharge them after every use)

 

only once did they not fire, but that was because the trigger wasn't completely in place on the hotshoe, so easily fixed

 

that might be the only down thing for me (except the power button on top of the unit), there is no mechanism to hold the trigger in place on the hotshoe

I also get a virus warning, in some frame page (extension is .kq)

elinchrom skyports have a very low profile (the transmitter is small and flat), and range and reliability are very very good... a bit cheaoer than the PWs as well

 

the current version doesn't trigger the current generation of Vivitar 285HVs though, but apprently the next iteration will

the skyports are simply perfect for what they are expected to do!

 

they will NOT work with the new (well old but new in production) 285HV though (only with the older 285, which are not safe for hotshoe sync on digital cameras)

Whats going on here, 2 of the very greats of the Lighting forum and PN in general (Gary and Brooks) resign their positions?

 

Anyway, I wish all the best to you guys, I learned an AWFUL lot from you!

That actually sounds pretty good

if you want reliable radio triggers that don't cost as much as PW's, the only thing is Elinchrom Skyports... they work reliably, over a reasonable distance

 

ebay triggers are really hit-and-miss, with frequent misfires, or they don't fire at all, all of this on a random basis

 

someone above said that cheaper is more expensive in the long run, and I couldn't agree more

 

(The optical CLS thing mentioned above works only if there is noone else in the room sing a CLS capable camera, otherwise they can trigger your flashes as well I think... Or does it have channels like radio systems?)

Actually there are 2 things at play here (correctly pointed out above), if your shutter speed is too fast you will have dark bands in you photos as the shutter curtain is not fully open at time of exposure

 

the other thing is that shutter speed has got nothing to do with flash exposure! The flash emitted from the strobe is so short anyway that no shutter speed will make a diffrence. Remember this: shutter speed controls ambient light, aperture controls flash exposure

 

This means that if the images are too bright using your flash (assuming you don't want to balance with the ambient light, and it's amount is negligible, as it probably is in your case), you have to close your aperture, if it is too dark, open up the aperture (leave the flash output untouched)

 

Does that make sense to you? I can try to explain it better if you wish

Don, you're making perfect sense!

 

Actually you don't have to really cover the contacts on the Nikon flash (many people report they don't and never had problems), but you can do so to be sure (electrical tape works well)

 

Only the center point will be used (the sync point), the others should not make contact anyway

 

Just make sure that when you take off the flash the fastening wheel is completely turned up, Nikons have a longer locking pin on the flashshoe that can get stuck on a canon camera if you are not careful

 

Other than that, do this at your own risk, but it should be allright!

Marc,

 

Is that an umbrella they brought or did you schlepp around a shoot-through brolly? :-)

wait what the madness will be on 11/11/11...

I'd say don't give up so fast, this isn't rocket science!

 

You might want to post a picture for us, then we can give better ideas maybe?

 

Oh, and you've found one of the best places to ask for help, so stick to it just a little bit more! trust me, you're gonna be overwhelmed with the results with just a little practice!

Thomas,

 

that's a very good post, very instructive! You should post more often here...

Thanks for all the asnwers above!

 

Basically what i need is the Mac to read the NTFS, and then store the images on another (new) external drive in a Mac format...

 

I have 2 exact copies of each drive (you never know), so i can tamper with one and leave the other backup intact in case something goes wrong

 

It's gonna take some time, but it looks like it is feasible without too much trouble

 

anyway, thanks a lot for all your help!

Hi,

 

I have a question if I want to switch from Windows XP to a Mac... All my images

reside on an external drive (LaCie firewire drive), which is i guess formatted

in NTFS... Now if I switch to a Mac, how can I retrieve these images? Can it

read the NTFS system to get all the images off it? Or do I need to do something

else (consider that burning to DVD is not practical, I have some 80.000 images

of assignments shot over the years, backed up onto seperate external HD's, all

NTFS)

 

Same goes for my lightroom library, can it be used as is?

 

many thanks

thats not true, it will still put the XMP's with the original files, even if you change directories... You can either select the pictures and go to menu photo - XMP sidecar - synhronize sidecar files, or you can turn on an option to always update sidecar files on every edit... the files will be in the same directory than the image files

does anyone else think the userinterface on that site is extremely annoying?!

well first thing, Kelly may have messed up the names of the software (he runs a printshop, he's not a software guru, so please give the guy a break and listen to him, you might learn something!), but still you CAN disable Javascript in the browser! And my site stats show (I run 3 sites, 2 of which have high volume traffic) that about 15 to 20% of the viewers have javascript disabled (and thus will not have your fancy resizing stuff, or whatever it is you want to include), legacy of the early 2000's when people were advised to turn off cookies, javascript and all fancy stuff for security reasons

 

Also I fail to see how Kelly would have embarrassed himself with his comments?! If you don't want to hear what others (who might be just a bit more experienced than you) have to say, why bother asking?! just because a comment is 'not appreciated' (your words) doesn't mean it isn't absolutely valid!

 

btw, most of the people my sites are targeting (including my own photography site) are people in the local horse market that are NO internet or computer gurus AT ALL, and where I live the norm is still dial up (or ISDN), NOT DSL, using screens with the predefined windows screen resolution (which is currently 1024x768, but my hits show about 30% of 800x600)... so if I just said forget it, I'm gonna create a site only for the big 30" screens, with the newest superfast broadband lines and forget about the rest, my businness would be very sick and dying a quick death!

 

So I go the old way, with small and quick loading images, flash (just the gallery is flash) only for people who have it installed (those who haven't, or have javascript disabled get the normal HTML page, without telling them how backwards they are that they don't have the latest n greatest flash whiz bang thing installed)

 

but then of course I'm probably embarrassing myself here as well, and you would prefer me to say 'great idea, you're right with all you're doing'