kevin_kolosky

For many years I did a considerable number of weddings on a part time basis in addition to my law practice. No problems. I suggest telling potential customers the truth about what you are doing, and let your portfolio speak for what you can deliver. If you are good it shouldn't matter too much.

If he wants to do excellent landscape photography he should consider a view camera.

<p>The first question I would have is whether or not you are exposing and developing your film properly.<br>

Generally speaking the amount of exposure controls the low values and the amount of development controls the high values.<br>

Are you sure you are developing your film long enough?</p>

<p>Whatever happened to good old "WEDDING" photography?</p>

<p>When I was shooting a lot of weddings I had this happen all of the time. At first it bothered me, but after I thought about it I realized that a lot of these folks were friends and relatives of the bride or groom and I didn't want to cause any friction, so I learned to let it go.<br>

Bottom line. Make your shots better than theirs and you will sell them.</p>

<p>If you are talking about a key stop for a sunny day, I have been using this formula for the past 30 years and it has worked well for me.<br>

Just use F16 and the speed of the film<br>

So, for example, You are shooting in a sunlit area with ISO 100 film Set f16 and 1/100 of a second and shoot. A bit hazy - stop up to F11, a bit cloudy stop up to F8. Lots of clouds F5.6. <br>

Works very well. I shot hundreds of weddings without a meter using this method.</p>

<p>I think its fine as a candid shot, but immediately after exposing it I would have removed the tableware and had all three look at me for a more posed shot, which I suspect would be the more desireable of the two, especially to the elderly lady on the right.<br />As for the lighting, you generally take what you can get at a reception if you want true candid shots.</p>

<p>what you really need to do is read the ratio and determine whether your medium, whether film or digital, can handle that ratio. If not you will either have to add some light to the shadows or subtract some light from the highlights. <br>

Most of the time if you are shooting where there is direct sunlight your exposure will have to be for the sunlight because you cannot get rid of the sun. If your main subject is in shade and you are shooting for the sunlight exposure you will probably have to add some flash in a synchro sunlight mode to bring up the shadows.</p>

<p>If you are going to be doing a lot of head and shoulder portraits don't get too hung up on a real large softbox. When I was doing a lot of portraits I was using the smallest softbox I could get, which was a Westcott that was about 16 x 16. You don't want the light to be so soft that your portraits are flat (e.g. you need to be able to bring out the planes of the face). With a large softbox its hard to feather the light properly, and you will have a lot of bounce that you may not want or that may be hard to control.</p>

<p>Are you going to be there for a long time? I mean, is this going to be your home for a long time and do you intend to be serious about making a business there.<br>

If so, dig the basement down another two feet in the area where you are going to have your studio.</p>

<p>Very simple<br />1. make sure that the amount of light shining on the background is 2 stops more than your exposure on the subject. So, if you meter the subject and your exposure is f8 then the meter reading of the light shining on the background should be f16</p>

<p>2. you should also use 2 lights shining forward from the background towards the floor. You need to use a lens shade to protect the lens from flare. The exposure from these two lights should equal the exposure you are using on the camera. These lights will whiten the floor so that the white background will look uniform all the way across the photo. If you have them , Umbrellas work well on these skim lights.</p>

<p>I think it depends on where you are in your career.<br>

If you are at a point where demand for your work (with an emphasis on the word "Your") is inelastic, then you do what the client wants you to do.<br>

Once you are well known and people come to you regardless of price of regardless of your so called rules, then you do what you want to do.<br>

You will know that when you start raising your prices considerably and people keep coming to you. Once you start to hear little whimpers you back off just a bit and continue to enjoy your success.</p>

<p>Flash will only freeze movement for the period of time that the flash puts out light. If you have a rather slow shutter speed you will get ghost images that show movement for the period of time that the flash was not putting out light. Try this. Put your camera on a tripod with the flash on. Have a person walk at a normal pace about 10 feet away from your camera. Use various shutter speeds and make photos. Keep making the shutter speeds slower and slower. At some point you will start to see movement.<br>

With regard to meters in cameras and meters in flash units.<br>

No matter how sophisticated these meters are (e.g. what type of patterns they read, etc.) the plain and simple fact of the matter is that they are reflective meters that are based on a certain area of the gray scale. Many are based on 18 %, and therefore are designed to give a proper exposure such that whatever the meter is reading comes out at a medium gray. With flash, the flash meter decides (based on the parameters you tell it you are using) how much light to put on a subject to give medium gray.<br>

But as has been noted, the inverse square law states that light falls off considerably as the distance is increased. If a person doesn't understand it, just use your meter to see it. Measure a distance 5.6 feet from your flash and take a reading. Then walk back to 8 feet and take a reading. You will see a difference on about one f stop which is 1/2 the light, even though you did not double our distance from the flash. In fact, if you did double your distance from the flash - 11.2 feet, your meter would show a difference of 2 stops, which is 1/4 of the light.<br>

So, here you have a camera and a flash seeing white. The meters give an exposure to make that white gray (give way less exposure and light than what you really want). Plus you have the inverse square law working on that background, which is already receiving less light than it should from the flash, plus the light from the flash is falling way way off because of the distance.<br>

That is why, when I am doing a wedding indoors in a church, I want to know what my ambient exposure is first. My overall ambient exposure. And I am going to find that out by either taking a meter reading with a reflective meter on a gray card, or by using an incident meter that measure the light falling on the meter rather than the light reflecting from a subject.<br>

And then, I am going to decide what amount of light I need to add to my particular subject that I want exposed well. If I am using a manual flash I will meter it with a flash meter. If I am using a metered flash I am going to pay particular attention to the subject that is being metered and adjust the flash accordingly to take into account that the flash is metering for a medium gray exposure, unless of course I have a meter that is taking a very broad number of points and and evaluating them, but then only if my subject is contained in a small space.</p>

 

<p>Try feathering the light. And use a bit of a reflector on the shadow side.</p>

<p>I would definitely agree that you need to raise the light a bit so as to have a loop of light below the nose. But in addition, you need to move that light to a postion that is at least 45 degrees to the subect in order to bring out the five planes of the face. <br />And then, you need a reflector of some sort on the other side to open up the shadows. The area underneath her chin should not be as dark as it is. You could also hide a reflector above and to the side to give some shine to her hair.</p>

<p>Back in the "old days" when I was shooting a wedding every weekend with film cameras (hasselblad) I never used a meter, and I suspect that if I were shooting them today with Digital cameras I wouldn't use one either. Far far too many opportunities for those meters to make a mistake.<br />Anytime I was shooting inside I knew it was time for 400 ISO film and f5.6 at as slow a speed as I could handhold, which was usually 1/8th of a second. Maybe sometimes a 1/4 of a second if it was really dark and I still needed to handhold. If it was really really dark it was time for the tripod and 1/2 second. And then of course use the flash for the subject.<br />That was called "dragging the shutter" back then. I don't know what you would call it today. But it somewhat took care of that inverse square law problem by allowing backgrounds to have detail even though the flash didn't get out there into those backgrounds to lighten them up.<br />Generally speaking, you basically have 5 or 6 exposures during a wedding. (bright sunlight, overcast, shade, indoors with lots of light, indoors with medium light, and indoors with very little light). If you memorize them you can shoot on manual and you won't have to worry about meters.</p>

there is a way to do it without having a densitometer or understanding log exposure and gamma. you do need a light meter and an enlarger.

 

1. Find zone 1. Easy to do. On the shaded side of a building meter a gray card. stop down 4 stops (zone 1) and make an exposure. go 1/2 and one stop on each side and make expsosures. develop the film for the manufactures recommended time. proof the film to see which exposure gives you a tone thats just a very tad lighter than film base plus fog. If its the one that you metered, then use the manufactures ISO. If its one of the others, you have to use a different ISO in your meter (if its one that let in more light you have to use a lower ISO and if its one where you let in less light you have to use a higher ISO)

Leave everything alone. Don't change a thing.

 

2. Put a white card in Sun. It should have a bit of texture to it. meter it. open up 3 stops (zone 8) (using the ISO you determined from your first test) expose 4 negs that way. Develop the first negative again per manufactures recommendations. Go back to your enlarger. Proof that negative for the exact same time as you did the proper zone 1 negative. develop the same way with the same developer using the same temperature, etc. It must be the same.

look at the proof. If the proof is too light (doesn't show much texture) you probably developed too long (i.e you made the negative too dense) so develop the next one for a shorter period of time of say 20 percent. proof it exactly the same. look at it. when you find the one that has good believeable texture that is your developing time for highlights. You now have a negative that gives you zone 1 by exposure and zone Viii by development.

 

The reason all of this works is the fundamental theory of the Zone System, which is that the zones of 5 and below are not affected as much by a change in development than the high zones of 6 through 10.

The zones of 5 and below are pretty much controlled by exposure unless you really underdevelop the negative drastically, but the higher zones are very much influenced by the amount of development they get.

I always found that a noncorded Lumedyne on a pole worked better for what you are talking about. I used mine with an assistant, or if the budget didn't call for it, I would find a kid at the wedding to help out.

 

You don't need to worry so much about getting the right exposure for the secondary light. All you are using it for is to lessen the contrast and add direction.

If you will be in the Minneapolis area you can come over and use mine. I have a McBeth here that works real well.

Back when I was shooting weddings I never took a retainer becasue I never wanted to have to give it back in the event I could not fulfill the contract. I always advised my clients that the business consisted of me and only me, and that if something happened to me, even if it was at the last minute, they would have to find someone else. I always felt that becasue of that fact each party (them and me) were taking the same amount of risk.

first thing would be to purchase a good flash meter that will also measure ambient light.

 

I don't know that I would trust the markings on the vivitar dial.

 

when you bounce light you will usually be working with rather large apertures unless there is a considerable amount of ambient light present. again, spring for a good meter.

I don't understand. If Kodak says there is plenty of Azo, why would you have it made elsewhere?

I agree with the large format camera if you can get ahold of one, but I would add that you need to be careful also of what type of lens you use. If you have great depth in the group, be very careful about using a wide angle lens. You will be tempted to do so, but in doing so, if there is sufficient distance between the people in the front of the group and the rear of the group you will end up with the folks in the rear looking way too small in relation to the folks in the front.

 

Kevin

always expose for what you cannot control, and then control what you need to control in order to bring the photo in balance. If you have a sunny day outside and you have large expanses of window, you need to expose for the outside exposure and then bring your flash into balance with that exposure.

 

Kevin

Lyle

 

This is a public forum. I hope you understand what the words libel and slander mean.

 

Kevin