rayt

<p>Destination weddings in a foreign country are never a good idea. You don't know the legal requirements and running afoul of the law can be a nightmare. Especially in a third world country like Mexico where corruption is the norm. You may have your gear confiscated. You may wind up paying a fine (well really a bribe). You may wind up in jail.</p>

<p>$5K is not enough. $50K is not enough.</p>

<p>One of my exchanges students is getting married in Germany and they want me to photograph the wedding. I will under the condition that NO money changes hands and I am an invited guest with an actual invitation with my name on it. I have made four trips to Germany and even with that I don't trust my knowledge of foreign rules. Germany is certainly a whole lot more civilized than Mexico.</p>

<p>This is one of those events or opportunities that I would pass on without a second thought.</p>

<p>I use on camera flash because getting power to "studio" strobes is always a hassle on a football field. Running cords over the grass is not allowed so that limits the locations of the lights. I tried the railings on the bleachers, not good. One creatin even unplugged one of the lights and stole a radio which I later found on the ground.</p>

<p>Using a high voltage pack which provides 300 volts to the flash has suited me well. There is no voltage conversion in the flash which is a fairly significant source of heat inside any flash unit. By moving the conversion outside of the flash heat issues are significantly reduced.</p>

<p>The external pack also allows for sub second recycle time when not using full power. I am also able to get over 800 flashes with a single battery pack. I do not carry any batteries in the flash.</p>

<p>A lot will depend on the venue and how it is set up. What works for me may (will) not work for others.</p>

<p>My biggest problem with outdoors is that the ceremony starts at 7:30 and the sun sets behind the speakers platform. People in the stands have to shield their eyes during the first 45 minutes of the ceremony because of the sun. That really adds to the problems.</p>

<p>I have taken many graduation ceremonies, indoors and out. Not the easiest to accomplish</p>

<p>1. Not everyone is going to cooperate. They will not stop, they will not turn, you have to be on your toes. Find a location that is best suited, in my case about 45 degrees to the left of the presenter. The students enter from the left, handed their diploma by the presenter on the right. You have to pick a side where the tassle is not obscuring their face. In the above situation over which I have no control the tassle is indeed on the right side of the face, the side facing me.</p>

<p>2. The camera battery is not an issue as I use a grip that provides additional battery power. Make sure you have an additional camera with a flash. Or get a grip that provides enough power to last the entire ceremony. Alternatively you could change batteries just before the diplomas are handed out if you know the battery will last 250+ shots.</p>

<p>3. Flash power (as in battery life) will be an issue. If you use flash you need an external pack. I use a high voltage pack so the internal electronics to convert from low voltage to high voltage does not contribute to the flash heat. Flash overheating has never been an issue.</p>

<p>4. I have done several in a football stadium, one where I used two AB 800's clamped to the lower hand rail of the bleachers. Radio triggers naturally. Anywhere else and the lights are too far away. Did it only once and never again. Shadows always occurred when a student that just got their diploma walked in front. Even without that shadows were still an issue. An on camera flash avoided the problems although the light was a little flat. You can't control that. Indoors with flash clamped to the walls, and higher up, bounced, this was not an issue. So I only use AC powered flash indoors where I can bounce off the ceiling.</p>

<p>5. Parents will purchase few, if any, of the graduation pictures. They all have their images from their P&S cameras.</p>

<p>6. Use manual exposure, moderate DOF so that focus is not as critical. Even then you will suffer a few blown images from flashes from others.</p>

<p>7. Lights on the field are not an option. Chance of tripping is too high as the students walking do not look at their feet are instead looking up into the stands.</p>

<p>8. Be prepared for weather. If the weather does not cooperate the ceremony may be moved indoors. Even if outdoors sometimes weather can move in. Happened to me once and I was soaked. I could not take pictures for the last 20 minutes of the ceremony.</p>

<p>Graduation is about the students receiving their diplomas and the relatives living vicariously through their sons, daughters, grandsons, grandaughters, nieces and nephews getting something that some of them don't have. They are not there to get their pictures taken.</p>

<p>And yes, I have free roam of the entire area for graduation.</p>

<p>David:</p>

<p>Read that paragraph from GRC carefully. The drive has to be visible through DOS and many USB drives will not be visible through DOS as they require a driver. Only drives connected through PATA or SATA on the motherboard are visible to Spinrite. Spinrite boots itself and does not have the advantage of the OS drivers to see the drive. Even when it can only partitions that are working are available. Lose the partition and there is no hope for Spinrite.</p>

<p>I know as I have the program and tried it on a failing laptop drive. The program did nothing but consume a lot of time. If the servo track is hosed on the drive there is no recovery from Spinrite as the servo track cannot be written. Even the low level format can no longer be done. All Spinrite does is read a sector multiple times to get good data, and if the sector is problematic, relocate the sector to the relocation area on the drive.</p>

<p>Given that the controllers on all PATA and SATA drives have intelligence in the drive to relocate bad sectors automatically, if Spinrite is reporting bad sectors the drive is hosed big time as the relocated sector is now failing. The relocation table is probably full and that is why the drive is reporting an error. Anytime an ATA drive reports an error it is time to get rid of the drive. No amount of fudging by Spinrite is going to resolve those issues.</p>

<p>Spinrite was a worthwhile tool when drives where MFM/RLL and could be low level formatted. There was no dedicated servo track platter and servo information was on each individual platter. That allowed servo track information to be rewritten to account for misalignment that occurred over time on the drives. It was necessary because actual stepping motors were used to move the heads on the drives. Current ATA drives use magnetic coils to position the heads and can do so much more precisely than MFM/RLL drives. The electronics can micro adjust the position of the head and actually do so based on the data read from the servo track.</p>

<p>It certainly won't hurt to try Spinrite but in my opinion it will do no good. It will not harm. Just waste some money.</p>

<p>Spinrite will not work well on a ATA or SATA drive. It was only good during the days of MFM/RLL drives which could be low level formatted and servo tracks were on each platter. Now servo tracks (alignment tracks) are on a single platter and everything has to line up very precisely. All Spinrite will do is tell the sector is bad and mark it in the relocation table. If something has happened to the drive to make it unreadable then Spinrite is not likely to be of any help. If the drive partition cannot be recognized by the OS, then Spinrite will NOT be able to access the partition on the drive.</p>

<p>You can try freezing the drive as this shrinks the bearings and may free up a non-spinning drive. Another method is to hold the drive horizontal and rapidly, as quick as you can, twist horizontally and stop suddenly. This sometimes breaks loose the platters if they are not spinning. Also I have had success in simply smacking the drive hard, on the flat side, on a table from about a three inch height.</p>

<p>You could also remove the drive from the current case (tough with some WD cases) and transfer the drive to another case. If the drive is SATA hook up to the power in your main case as this will provide more current than USB can provide and might just get a platter spinning. Transferring to a new case is a good option when the interface electronics in the case have failed.</p>

<p>Last resort is a data recover company. They are expensive and the success rate is not really as high as one would hope. If the platter is physically damaged, as in skid marks from the head, kiss all the data goodbye.</p>

<p>You also need to ask yourself what are the consequences of losing the images. If these are from past weddings are they really that important? If they are treasured family images then only you can judge. I would be sick if I lost all my images but I would not be down and out.</p>

<p>As for backup use one of the offsite backups such as Carbonite. It is only $5.00 a month, cheap when you consider the consequences of such a loss. Yeh, I know, not much help now. Merely stating for future consideration.</p>

<p>Use what you know. A wedding is not the time to experiment with new equipment and lenses. I would also not advocate sharing equipment. Use your equipment as best you know how.</p>

<p>I often pair with another photographer at weddings. It makes it much easier as the duties are split. Also in our case our methodology is marked different, she is more creative, I am more traditional. It provides a good mix.</p>

<p>Establish what each is going to do, responsibilities, before the wedding. Don't be getting in each others way. During formals or other such events when you both will be in close proximity establish who is in control with the other acting as a gopher. My partner and I swap roles for each wedding but during the wedding only one is always in control.</p>

<p>And one final point. Synchronize the clocks in your cameras as precisely as possible. This will make sorting through the images much easier during post processing.</p>

<p>Bride and mother. Outdoors on the water (duh), slight overcast and hazy with bright sun located to the back of the mother.</p><div></div>

<p>Never, ever use flash when the player is taking free throws. That will get you talked to faster than anything else (well unless you step onto the floor).</p>

<p>Speedlights are strobe lights, just smaller than the bigger strobes.</p>

<p>HS gyms are poorly, almost all of them as Henry stated. I use on-camera flash almost all the time. There have been a few times when I have used line powered strobes, in this case AB800's. I clamp them to the top of the bleacher rails and use radio transceivers to activate. The lights are aimed to bounce and provide direct. Sometimes it works. But it does take time to set them up and take them down. You are also restricted to a much smaller area of the arena.</p>

<p>My preference is ISO 800, f3.5 or better, 1/200 of a second. I let the the flash freeze the motion.</p><div></div>

<blockquote>

<p><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=3687314">David Haas</a><br>

I think that the bigger issue should be - Did she have a backup?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Why do you say that? The wedding is over. There was no need for a backup. After the fact in my opinion that is not a relevant issue. Had the bride been litigating over missing images because of failed equipment then a backup (or lack of) would have been relevant.</p>

<p>The bride was angry over bad images. We never saw the images that were supposedly bad. The picture shown was OK, not terrible.</p>

<p>And the<em> judge</em> was an fool. He would ask questions then not allow the defendant to answer. He gave the plaintiff time to speak but did not give the defendant any time to present her side of the issue. In a real court the outcome may have been very different.</p>

<p>Unfortunately some people will see this show and think it is OK to sue their photographer because they can. Regardless of the skills, or lack of skills, of the photographer Joe Brown did a major disservice to all photographers that ply their trade and skills at weddings.</p>

<p>In the US there is an option for insurance called "agreed upon value". I state what the value of the equipment is worth and insure for that amount. The amount determines the rate that I pay. There is no depreciation. If the equipment is stolen I get a check for the agreed upon value. This is the same that is used for jewelry, art and other items where a fixed price is not available. For proof of ownership it was necessary for me to provide the serial numbers. That type of policy may be avalaible in your country.</p>

<p>As for insuring you OM stuff I would say it would not be worth it. The equipment is old and was particularly valuable to start. Now it is worth even less. It may cost you half the value of the equipment to insure it for a year. The economics just don't make sense to insure the equipment.</p>

<p>Given a choice between making $500.00 doing a bare bones wedding, or getting $0.00 doing nothing, I would take the bare bones. Work is work.</p>

<p>The market is driven by the consumer. No longer are photographers required to have film processing skills and that alone changes the metrics. Digital has changed everything. Not only is the processing easier using a computer, the intelligence of the cameras when on P mode are really quite remarkable. You also have to consider cell phones and P&S cameras and the quality of the images that people are used to seeing from these cameras. To them that is the norm.</p>

<p>You may be the slickest photographer in the world. But if some chap is doing 20 $500.00 events while you are only doing one $5,000.00 during the same time period who is making the money?</p>

<p>I try to charge what I can but sometimes have to accept what I can get.</p>

<p>Because most will never wear the dress again and will leave the dress in a sealed box in the closet until they finally realize they will not wear the dress ever again. At least trashing the dress can be fun and provide an additional use for the dress.</p>

<p>I'm a guy and I approved this message.</p>

<blockquote>

<p ><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=835765">Ed te Pas</a> If anybody is interested in the first image effect, I sell this as an action (LOL).</p>

</blockquote>

<p >Is that your new and improved CellPhone Simulation action for PS?</p>

<p>Back in the film days I used to take three camera bodies to weddings. At one wedding I had all three cameras failed. Yep, I was diligent in that I brought backups. But the planets aligned, the moon was in the seventh house and Jupiter aligned with Mars. Whatever I was severely stuck. After much frustration and the loss of a roll of pictures I was able to get one camera unjammed. That single camera served the rest of the wedding.</p>

<p>As others have said the camera was/is not the issue. I could photograph a wedding quite nicely with my Sony DSC-F717. A lowly 5 mpix camera that many would regard as a P&S as it has no raw support or interchangeable lens. It is the operator of the camera that determines the ultimate results unless the camera is one of the Thane Cameras (use the web).</p>

<p>Also don't expend too much energy on this effort. The most you will be able to recover is what you paid. You will still have bad pictures. Don't let the emotions get to you. My wedding pictures are fading and I cannot find the negatives. After 35 years they only remind me that I am getting older and fatter. Watched the wedding film once.</p>

<p>Remember, sometimes it is like mud wrestling with a pig. You both get dirty but the pig likes it.</p>

<p>Well perhaps part of the issue is perspective. I know a photographer in Texas that does weddings and people just think she is fantastic. She has one low end Nikon camera with no backup, a couple of average lenses and the lower end Nikon flash. Many of the images suffer from color balance issues, are not focused properly and exposure is off. But the people that get the images love them. I think the images are terrible and if I paid for them I would be angry.</p>

<p>I suspect the people that are using her are used to cell phone cameras and really cheap P&S images. Almost anything is an improvement over those images. I can take a better image with my cell phone than many people can take with their P&S. But then I know what can be accomplished and what to look for in an image. I suspect all of you do also.</p>

<p>I say this because pursuit of damages in small claims court may result in nothing. You may get a clueless judge (and there are a lot of them), who takes pictures with a cell phone and sees nothing wrong with the images. It will come down to personal judgement. Being unable to see the images I can make no judgement. Email me the link to the images to satisfy my curiosity.</p>

<p><strong>Moderator Note:</strong> Ray--Richard can e-mail you by clicking on your name. Please don't post e-mail addresses in threads--thanks!</p>

<p>You can order something from B&H Photo and for $2.00 more you can get a sample book of Rosco gels. They are small, about the size of a portable electronic flash. Works well for gelling the flash to just about any color that you desire. You just take the book apart and use the small samples over your flash using small pieces of gaffers tape.</p>

<p>Flash gel is not white balancing. It is only correcting the flash output light to match existing light. You still need to white balance the resulting images. Having your flash gelled with CTO to match incandescent when your camera is set to daylight is going to cause white balance issues that will need to be corrected. Neither replaces each other, they only complement.</p>

<p>I have been in a similiar situation. Only I was the "Uncle Bob". Not my fault but was instead the result of the bride. The bride was to become the wife of my nephew.</p>

<p>She asked me months before to photograph her wedding. I said I would. It was necessary to fly to Texas and rent a car so there was some expense involved. When I showed up at the wedding a couple of hours prior to the start all was good. Then I see another photographer show up. Hmmm, not good. So I talk with the photographer and she indicates that she is just a friend taking some pictures. We talk and work out what each will do to stay out of each others way. Not bad. The other photographer says she really likes to do candids and is not so great at formals. No problem. I will do formals, she can do the rest. Turns out the other person was an hour late and did not get to the location for the preparation shots.</p>

<p>Ceremony starts, very restrictive so we have to remain at the back of the church. After the service is over we have 15 minutes to take formals. My wife and I take over and control the situation and get the formals. The lighting was bad with a brightly lit background (incadescent) so I have to gel my flash. The other lady is using the builtin reflector on her Canon flash with the flash pointed straight up into a 30 foot wood ceiling. No way she is going to get decent images. I don't care as we agreed I would take the formals.</p>

<p>Then we go to the reception. I then find out that the bride is paying this "other friend". The other photographer was not entirely honest. Then I am informed that since the other photographer is being paid that I am to stay out of her way. Fine. I pack all my stuff up and leave the reception. I am not going to interfere with another photographer. I was not going to be an Uncle Bob although I fear it was too late.</p>

<p>Turns out the images from the other photographer were, shall we say, less than good. The formals were horribly off color, the background was blown. I would have tossed them all. The reception photos were plaqued by interfering items, bad posing, focus issues, bad backgrounds and all manner of lighting issues. I would have hung my head in shame at the images. The other photographer was truly an amateur and was using this wedding of her friend as practice.</p>

<p>To say that I was ticked off about the whole event was an understatement. Partly because I was lied to by the bride, but that I was also lied to by the other photographer. I was also dissappointed in the pictures the bride received from the other photographer but perhaps she deserved what she got.</p>

<p>I was originally not going to give the bride any of my images but my wife convinced me that not giving the images would be bad and was not worth the problems later in life. So I relented and provided the images. I also made a video DVD of some of the images, with music, for the brides mother and father (divorced). The mother called me twice in tears thanking me for the DVD. The father sent me a card thanking me and stated those images may be all that he receives.</p>

<p>So, be very careful about photographing for relatives when another photographer is involved. I learned my lesson. Never again will I do such an event involving relatives and another photographer, regardless of their skill level, without a specific contract and list of responsibilities.</p>

<p>My biggest issue using a flash attached to the top of a camera is redeye. Moving that flash up about 4 inches makes a big difference. Diffusion of shadows is not an issue.</p>

<p>Buy a flash.</p>

<p>Some extra batteries (NIMH) for the flash. An extra battery for the camera.</p>

<p>Buy a couple of extra 4 gig memory cards (should be good for 800+ pictures).</p>

<p>Use program mode on the camera as this is your first wedding.</p>

<p>Ignore those that say you should not. If you have been doing babies and families for 5 years and the people are happy you will do OK.</p>

<p>Have fun.</p>

<p>How about getting a W4 and changing what you are having withheld each paycheck. Getting a large refund is nothing more than giving the government the <strong>mis-use</strong> of your money for the year.</p>

<p>Long gone are the days where negatives were held hostage and any reproductions required expensive equipment and chemicals. Almost everyone today has a computer and on that computer is the ability to manipulate images. Give someone an image and it can and will be scanned. Now even though the original files were never given a digital copy of the image will exist. It cannot be stopped. Holding digital files hostage is a business model that is dissappearing. "Real professionals" (yeh, define that) need to adapt their business model to the real world.</p>

<p>I know of many professionals that have adpated and now offer a package of high resolution images on a DVD at a significantly reduced rate. They are not concerned about their "brand and image management" because they are already established. That is why they are chosen. Not because of their package offerings but because of their skill as others offer the same package.</p>

<p>To bluntly state that no professional photographer would offer such a deal is shortsighted and narrow minded. The times are changing.</p>

<p>I build my own calibration profiles. I use the X-Rite Passport taking an image of the product in each different lighting situation (if possible). I then build profiles for each situation and apply those to the image. For $100.00 it really is, in my opinion, a useful product.</p>

<p>Recycle time will be a little better because the external batteries can provide more current to the voltage step up circuitry. The real advantage is the number of flashes the batteries provide. For batteries I find the Panasonic Enelopes to be very good. You want to use nickel metal hydride cells and avoid nicad, or gasp, alkaline (only to be used in an extreme life or death emergency). For emergency spares carry some Lithium cells in case your rechargeables run out of energy.</p>

<p>To get really fast recycle times you need a high voltage pack that provides high voltage to the flash bypassing the conversion process. With my high voltage pack I get 2 second recycle time even with a full discharge. Of course there is that annoying cable from the flash to the pack.</p>

<p>To really appreciate fast recycle time one has to journey back to the 70's when the Honeywell Strobonar 800 that used a 510 volt battery. Recycle time was very quick, about a second in the unit I saw. The batteries were expensive but did last quite awhile. I drooled over being able to get one of those units but they were priced out of my reach.</p>