brandonhamilton

Iv never heard of a fixed lens "pro-sumer" camera before. I use my original D100 as a backup, which is a prosumer level camera.

Might just be me, but the slideshow is a little goofy. Sometimes I get 4-5 images in a single second.. WAY WAY too fast of a transition.

It is always my practice to photograph the ceremony, not participate in it. I'm never farther forward than the front most row of people, and always do my best to stay completely out of the way and silent. I have gotten GREAT close ups of the ring exchange, as well as a great closeup of the ceremony kiss, from the back of the main isle with my 200.

Before I would jump to any conclusions, I would print one first. Looking at 100% digital crops on your monitor, and looking at an 8x10 print are two different things!

Shooting RAW is no different than shooting JPG... you just focus, compose, and release the shutter :)

I have the 28-70 f2.8 and don't think it is very good at all. Pretty soft all around. I guess you really can't ask for all that much considering it's price however.

Nice! The only thing I would personally change, is your slogan/logo in the top left. "Picture Perfect by Steve.... photography". I would ditch the word photography there undernieth. It seems a little redundant and unnecessary. "Picture Perfect by Steve" all by itself is better.

 

I also agree that your front/home page images aren't the best choices. You have some "GREAT" shots in your gallery, why use just the "good" ones? I think some of your best are in the lovestory section myself...

Frank, you just gave the worst advice I have ever read on these forums. Congrats!

If you knew they wanted that, why not rent a fisheye for the day? I don't know how you can accurately modify a normal perspective picture to look like a fisheye...

I have two packages

 

1) 6 hours shooting, 60 prints, bla bla bla, $1000

2) 6 hours shooting, no prints, digital negatives and permission to print, $1,350

 

Then I have a list of alacarte things they can choose from, if they wish, and they are

 

1) extra hours of shooting

2) extra prints

3) engagement session

 

That's about it. The packages are super easy to choose from, and they can simply add more prints, add extra shooting time, etc. I myself, don't do albums.

Wedding photography has 100X more to do with experience, than gear.

Joyce. Spending 20 minutes reading on the internet would provide you quite a bit of knowlege about how aperture, shutter speed, and ISO work and how they affects your image. I would do a couple of google searches on aperture, and soak in all you can. Running the camera is the super easy part!

Everybody has nailed out some good ideas. The site is kind of.. "all over the place". There doesn't seem to be an aesthetic theme... just colored text and a black background.

 

I can add two things.

 

A)It's a rule of thumb when creating your page names, to never use spaces or capital letters.

 

B)is that the main page has TONS AND TONS of wasted black space, all over. Didn't you notice that you have to scroll down over 100 blank lines to get to the bottom?

If it doesn't make a difference to the bride and groom, then it doesnt make a difference. Wherever he fits best within the particular group of people he will be posing with.

Obi - yes, I am 100% sure. I was (and always for this type of stuff) using single area AF, using the center AF sensor only.

 

Dennis - thanks, that helps. I am also completely confident that this is an issue with the lens. This weekend im going to break out all my gear and try and get to the bottom of it...

I don't know if the D50 can do it (my D2x can) but you can always grab a used SB-80 and can use D-ttl. (the camera has to support D-ttl)

The shots to me look decent to me at best. None were horrible, but none of them got me to take a second look, either. Honestly, the site design was so wacky, it left a bad taste in my mouth before I even found the pictures...

 

keep shooting!

Thanks conrad, that was a good read, but i don't see how that would work for me shooting from 10 feet...

Did she do all her own post shot work when she was shooting with velvia? did she do all the dark-room, chemical, and printing steps on her own?

 

A digital negative, especially a RAW file, requires similar adjustments before they are finished. The unprocessed negative is what you get, You still may have to fine tune white balance, color, overall exposure/brightness, sharpeness, saturation, etc.

 

She needs to get into photoshop, and spend a great amount of time reading online through some post production techniques.

This thread remindes me of this one wedding I shot, and it came down to the cake cutting / feeding moment. You know, where the bride stuffs cake in the groom's face and vica versa.

 

As they were lining up to shove the food, I looked over my shoulder and found a SEA of P&S cameras ready to go, maybe 30 or more. From the moment they started moving their hands till the moment they were done, it was one gigantic, NON-stop series of flashes coming from the P&S cameras. I think I got off 3 shots, all of them completely blown out white from other flashes hitting the scene.

 

Marc, do you really announce to everybody in the room to "not take a picture" till the photog has gotten his shot? Even with something as fast and spontaneous as the cake face smash? I don't see how that is possible...

So I think I have uncovered a focusing problem when I mount my nikkor 17-55 DX

lens on my D2X. I don't have a problem with any other lens (70-200, 28-70, 50).

This is what I found.

 

I took some pictures of some kids last weekend at a basketball game. The

portraits were their stereotypical "individual" pictures, kneeling on the

grass, one hand on the basketball kind of shot. Ill post a picture here so you

can see the image I am referring to.

 

Now, the shot looks totally decent at web size, after some nice selective USM,

but it is far from "in focus". If you were to look at the 100% crop, you would

find her face to be VERY unsharp/soft/OOF, but her KNEE is perfectly sharp (the

one sticking up). Even her right hand on the basketball is far more in focus,

which is 4 or 5 inches closer to the camera, and her knee is maybe 8 or 9

inches closer.

 

The camera was set on single servo and Single Area AF, always set on focus

priority. All I did was kneel down, focus lock right square in the middle of

her face, recompose a little bit, and take the shot. I had my sb800 mounted on

my bracket, and it was shot somewhere around 1/200th, f5.6, ttl flash, iso 100,

and somewhere in the middle of the 17-55 range (not sure, don't have exif data

right now). This to me seems like the most basic / surefire way of taking said

portrait. I probably have a hundred thousand shutter releases that I have done

in a similar fashion, with different bodies/lenses, and never had an issue.

 

This same symptom occurs if I am not using a flash, and also occurs when I use

the 17-55 in my garage studio shooting with my Alien Bees monolight. I swap

the lens out with my 50 1.8, and BAM, far far far better results. It doesn't

front focus like this ALL the time, but a very high percentage... id guess

something like 40%?

 

This is happening a lot with this lens. I never encounter this with my 50 1.8,

or 70-200. Is it "front focusing"? I know this is not a technique issue,

because I have been shooting like this with many different leses, on many

different camera bodies, and it appears that it just isn't focusing where it is

supposed to.

 

So my questions are:

 

1) what do you think is going on here?

2) is there a focus test I can perform? Can you outline how it is done?

 

I heard about one using a ruler and a pen? Can anybody provide me with some

nice techniques for actually TESTING for this type of focus issue?<div></div>

" personally use a simple ruler and a pen as test object (or anything else just available) next to it for focussing in the same way as the printed test chart "

 

CAn you briefly describe this? I think I need to do a focus test with my D2X and 17-55dx.

"Technically Photoshop's version is not "CS2" it is currently 9.01 (or 9.02 soon)."

 

Actually that isn't true. The actual NAME of the product, is "Adobe Photoshop CS2". The VERSION, is 9.0.

Don't listen to these nay-sayers...the D100 is a great camera! The only downsides to the camera fit right in line with its price, and they are:<br><br>

 

1.) Mediocre view finder, but no worse than the D50 or D70. <br>

2.) Small Buffer,but will work just fine for shooting the grand canyon. You would run into issues trying to shoot a very fast sporting event for example where you needed many many frames in a small amount of time<br>

3.) small LCD. But personally, I only really use it for the histogram and highlight blinks

 

Even though the D100 is based on older technology, it can still take fantastic pictures! Considering you can get a brand new D70s for $600, I wouldn't pay more than $300 for a used D100. The price of the lens however, you are on your own. I have no idea.

Photoshop, indesign, illistrator, etc. are all seperate programs that don't require eachother to work. There are different suites that include different programs, but if all you need is photoshop, then all you need to get is photoshop.

 

Technically, the only difference between the academic version of photoshop cs2 and the retail version you buy in a retail store, is the price.