ed_gerken

Wow, great repair work and good tips! The very few times I attempted such a repair, I only had a couple traces to repair,

not the entire junction. Instead of risking the flimsy strip, I soldered to the nearest junction with the finest insulated wire I

had, then I tried to fit the extra bulk back inside. I'd use tape to beef up the breakline so it hopefully didn't worsen. It worked

well enough for a break or two in an older camera. Not so sure if I'd even try it today. Masterful work, there!

-Ed

I've had reloadable film cassettes wear out the felt over many uses. It won't show up in the camera, but can put a recurring

leak when the film is handled, loaded or removed from the camera. It's probably not the issue here, but I mention it as

something else to watch for.

-Ed

Oh, the auto-manual switch on the lens- In manual, it's always stopped down to the shooting aperture. In "auto," it is wide

open till the moment of exposure. It means "auto stop-down" only, it's not a form of automatic exposure. You still need to

meter and set the camera manually for every shot.

-Ed

I think I'll order one in case there's ever a fake robbery here of all my fake money. We'll watch the fake video and nab him! ;

^)

-Ed

Yes, the finder gets dark when metering at small apertures. Click to a higher shutter speed so the lens is not stopped down

so far. F8 is plenty small, unless you're trying for maximum depth of field.

These stop-down metering cameras are usually a bit limited in exposure range. They will be off in dark, low-light situations

and may only read so high with a fast ASA in bright light. A hand-held meter will probably be more accurate, but that's an

extra step for every picture and another thing to buy and learn.

Make sure your ASA/ISO dial is set for the film you're using. Weak batteries, corrosion in the battery compartment; dirty

meter switch, ASA or shutter meter contacts; loose meter-pin engagement when the lens is mounted, variations between

lenses, sloppy apertures or f-stop adjustments on lenses; sluggish or inaccurate shutter speeds; out-of-spec, aged electronic parts. Any or all of these things could cause fluctuating or variable

exposure readings.

Till you learn more about the camera and the problem, go more for mid-range settings of both shutter and aperture. Prefer a

higher shutter speed of 1/500 or 1/1000 to a tiny f16 or f22 aperture.

-Ed

Since it's on the bottom left, look to the top right as you held the camera to take those photos. Memo holder, or film pressure

plate mount has punctured through?

If it's a rollfilm camera, perhaps you loaded or unloaded in bright light and maybe the film was not wound tight enough. Also

possible it snuck in at the lab when they were souping the film.

If it's camera-related, it will be in the same spot every shot. If it's film handling issues, it will change position along the roll.

-Ed

Roger Smith , Apr 10, 2009; 03:02 p.m.

All you have to do is hit return twice.

It's magic.

Joseph's posts seemed both convincing and better formatted.

The above is a direct copy, so all your magic returns are in there.

No go! I can have one or 50 returns. I keep telling you people it deletes them. Where's my caveman? I give up.

-Ed

Ok, I'll give it a shot. (here's two spaces, followed by two returns)

My point was perhaps this is what happened with David. (Here's just two spaces. But I appreciate the tip. (Two of each again)

-Ed

How about 8 of each, spaces and returns? Nope!!

My reply above should have been broken into no less than seven paragraphs. As soon as the preview is shown, all the returns have been removed and it's displayed (and posted) as a single long paragraph. Might be a browser issue, but since it used to work, I figure it's on Photonet's end. I'm using Mac and

Safari.

-Ed

For what it's worth, I like paragraphs, and use them in my replies, but for some reason they are combined just as David's

posts are. It used to work properly but changed a few months ago.

Skipped line and a new paragraph.

Another skipped line.

Skipped four returns that time.

Let's see how this looks. Cut the poor guy some slack.

It may not be his fault!

-Ed

Just as an aside for those who might pose questions with legal import, Google picks up rather quickly on Photo net threads

and are searchable by anyone. You may think it's an almost-private inquiry to a faceless crowd, but if an issue brought to

light here is later contested in the courts, it would not take much searching in many instances to bring things out that one

party or another might regret and the opposing litigant could quote.

As has been stated here over and over, this is not a free legal advice section, particularly as regards to copyright law. Which

incidentally, might compete with the tax codes for obfuscation. The primary difference being there are no "copyright police,"

the image creator must do his own due diligence to properly protect his art. There's no one to protect you from mistakes you

might make and an attormey can't always correct prior poor judgement.

-Ed

At first I thought you meant straight-on copy work, like shooting for color seps to go to print from artwork. For paintings and

such, there's special considerations to eliminate reflections, flash may not do it. I had a whole special technique to deal with

it. Displayed as wall-hangings or in a gallery setting, it's probably more like conventional interior photography.

If you sent out portfolios, but did no call-backs, you've been too easy to ignore! ;-) Steady, quality mailouts get better

response over time than one-hit wonders.

Feel-good, save-the-planet photography probably pays feel-good wages. If you can take that home as compensation, you're

probably in!

-Ed

Great advice, Adam!

-Ed

We're an image-based society. High-power photos and ads are everywhere. The images have to come from somewhere.

Check out the Drudge Report. He can find an image to convey his headline, where does he buy them? That's just one example.

As old doors are closed, new ones open. Until we're upgraded to Light 1.1, all the old techniques still work, just apply them to the new

markets.

The plethora of compact consumer digitals have pushed the megapixel race beyond comprehension and image quality is

down. Shouldn't take much to make the pitch that your images will far surpass what Aunt Matilda might capture. When I shot

weddings, I'd do the setup and get my shots, then step the heck out of the way and let the barrage begin. I never had a

competition issue between my shots and those of the guests or relatives. When I shot alongside other pros, I more often

heard afterwards that my shots were preferred by the bride and groom. The "DIY" shooters never bothered me and still

shouldn't. I'm in the "there's more to it than auto-everything" camp.

Give them something the others don't. It's already been stated, but bears repeating. And a spell-check won't hurt in conveying a professional appearance. Like it or not, you're a package deal and you need to build trust and confidence in every way possible.

OTOH, I got out of weddings 10 years ago. Might be I couldn't stand it long enough to find out if I could still compete.

-Ed (who, speaking of professional appearance, wonders why his carefully composed paragraphs always end up in one long lump of words!)

Funny you should ask! Just today I crawled out of semi-retirement in photography to shoot a house exterior for billboard

advertising. $200 for 28 images and about an hour's time, including travel. He had his mom and a friend or two try first and

was getting desperate, but still reluctant to call some currently active pro out of the yellow pages. LOL! I made him grovel a bit, just because he was being cheap, that's when he finally tossed out the $200 figure.

There's a group of log cabin vacation rentals near here, the owners rent them out during the months the homes are unlived

in. The rental agency hired me for several years, gosh, that's been three decades, I was just getting started freelancing. They'd give me keys

to 5 or 6 of these log mansions and I had free rein on how to shoot. I charged a whole buck a shot back then, but it still paid

pretty decent, as it didn't take long to burn a roll or three. It sure taught me a lot about shooting interiors. Most important is

mixing flash to match with the views out the windows. There was no internet or BBS. They used print advertising and mailed

out actual 3x5 prints to people who inquired. Last I heard, they were still using my photos, but they must've had to update

then since then.

Currently on Craigslist for South Dakota, there's a recurring Help Wanted ad under Photography for someone to shoot room

interiors with a panorama attachment. They're offering $40 to $75 per shoot. Might be easy money for someone, but doesn't

sound all that entiicing to me.

-Ed

It's probably not worth the effort. In order to claim a donation, the receiving entity must be non-profit. A city-funded library

might meet that requirement. Next up, the donation is deducted using Schedule A Itemized Deductions of your IRS forms. If

you elect to itemize, you use the figure from Schedule A instead of the "Standard Deduction," which varies according to how

you file, that is, the Standard Deduction is $5,150 if filing as Single, $10,300 for Married, etc.

In other words, you need to show more things on Schedule A than the Standard Deduction for it to make any difference.

Basically, unless you have huge medical or other allowable itemized expenses, most folks are way better off just using the

standard and never bothering with keeping track of all the receipts and the work of filling out another complicated IRS form.

Now comes the kicker. Assuming you actually can use Schedule A to earn a greater deduction than the standard amount,

and you are taxed at the 30% rate, your final tax is reduced by one-third of the amount. So, unless you're giving a sizeable

amount, or have other allowable items, it's probably not going to improve your tax picture one thin dime.

You didn't specify how many prints nor their size or materials cost, so I'm assuming it's at or below the $100 figure you

mentioned. If it's $100, you'd "save" a whopping $30 on your taxes. If the accountant bills you for the

advice, you might end

up in the hole on the entire deal.

Perhaps the library would provide a statement of value and you would use that to determine the amount. That's what the museum here does.

They may take your cost or use their own method of appraising value and may even have someone on staff that provides that info for any

and all donations. Maybe you also paid for framing, that might also make the figure higher.

Since I'm self-employed, I fill out the long form 1040A and Schedule C. It used to have a direct line for Donations, where we could take the

cost of our

annual tithe to the local museum and charities. That line is no longer on that form. I still keep track of the amounts, but I

can't deduct them. Perhaps 1040EZ is different, but I doubt it. I think that if you itemize on Schedule A, you then need to use the 1040A long

form, so it may change the way in which you're used to filing. You'll have to take a look at the forms and decide for yourself if it's

worth the bother.

I'm not a CPA, I do my own taxes and I never stayed in a Holiday Inn Express, so do your own checking into my advice! ;^) You can always

call the IRS hotline and see if they can help guide you.

-Ed

I sold a few book images, mostly school textbooks. Average was $30 to $50 per image for just one or a few images. An

entire book of many images where you are the sole or principal photographer would be up for some discussion between you,

the author and/or publisher.

-Ed

In my experience, most people do not have the concept of cropping an image to "fit" an 8x10 or other common format that

does not happen to match the full-framed original. I therefore remove the quandary for them and enlarge/crop as needed to

fill the chosen print size. Early on in my career I printed a few full-frame enlargements (resulting in a 7x10 print for 35mm)

but most folks didn't like the resultant wide, white borders on the long sides of the print and didn't want to have to buy

custom frames to avoid showing them. Unless cropping caused the loss of important details on the sides, I enlarged to fill

the frame and sold only "standard" sizes. I tried to keep this in mind as I shot and avoided "filling" the frame in the camera, giving me

latitude to make a more pleasing crop later in the darkroom.

-Ed

I've always built my own web pages, "Templates" are not in my vocabulary. For better or worse, my layouts are my own style

and no one else's. When AOL quit webhosting, I went with go-daddy. Five bucks a month for a huge webspace (compared to

AOL anyway!) and my own url.

-Ed

That's a bit of a tough one to answer to make it apply to your own local and extended (internet) market. I'd say you have a lot

of internet competition, but who's still doing it locally may vary widely depending on where you live.

My own photo business more or less got its start with the copying of old family photographs. My family ran a smalltown

newspaper and we liked to reprint old photos showing the town's history. I'd copy a photo for someone, and if it had historic

value, I'd provide the service at no charge, if I could have permission to reprint the image. In 35 years, there were only two

customers who declined to give permission. In one instance, due to a fire, my copies are now the only ones available of an

historically significant collection. I gave my set of negatives to the owner to replace those lost originals. For me, the history

of the old images and their preservation was always more important than chasing a dollar.

In the early days, I made a 4x5 copy neg, later on I went to 35mm and macro lens. Around the mid-90's, I began to also offer

digital scans and photoshopped restorations. Over the course of several decades, I eventually accumulated enough images

to publish a few local photo-histories. I jumped on the then-new digital technologies and self-published several books and

CDs. These titles have been very popular over more than a decade. They have more than paid me back for all those "free"

copies I made over the years.

However, even with over three decades of offering a photo-copying service and now being known as the town's

"historian," I haven't received a copy request in well over four years. I have always relied soley on word of mouth, and my

folks sold the newspaper eons ago, so maybe that is the reason for no new business. Most people living here these days

simply have no idea that I provide such a service.

What "paid" for my computer, scanner and printers back in '94 was doing the photography and layout for a book on fossils. I

charged by the hour and earned enough to pay for it all on that one job. The history stuff that came after I finished that job

was all gravy.

Nowadays, however, I think the technology has progressed to the point that almost anyone can tackle a simple copy job

themselves or just about any photofinisher provides a similar service. A Google search will turn up dozens of people like

yourself and I who offer digital retouching and reprints.

Not to say you couldn't make a go of it, but it's my opinion the "need" for such a service is not nearly what it was just 10

short years ago.

Similarly, the technology has allowed many photographers to sell their own art prints locally and on the internet, so again

you're facing a lot of competition. If your images and quality of work is there, you stand as good a chance as anyone at

making some sales. I'm toying with similar ideas myself to get back into "profitable" photography. In my case, over the

years, I always have had a steady job and repeat photography clients, so any sideline copy work or publishing income was a

bonus and not required to pay the bills. But, more than once a good sideline job arrived in the nick of time to help out

financially. So theoretically at least, the more services you can offer, the better off you'll be in the end.

If you want to pay for your computer and peripherals with some outside work, I'd do like I did and look for a larger job, like

book or website layout or some such thing that is beyond the scope of the average Joe who has a digital photo setup. Run-

of-the-mill copy and reprint work is likely too easy for people to obtain from many sources. If not too many businesses are

chasing it locally, you might have a go if it with proper advertising and word-of-mouth once you're established.

-Ed (Don't know why, but the forum made my post all one long paragraph!)

"The top meter window is great for setting up candid shots without drawing attention."

Very true. I found people don't expect you to shoot till you actually lift the camera to your eye. I pretended like I was fussing with my gear,

but I was actually composing a candid. I used the meter window atop the prisms on my F2 cameras a lot to pre-set exposure and I'd guess

focus by the scale on the lens. An advantage of the F-series, you could also unmount the prism and coarse-focus as a waist-level.

-Ed

If by terms you mean in regard to rights to the image, typically print sales are restricted to display only. The image can't be

sold for publication or duplicated. Which also means the retailer couldn't slap your print on their color copier and pass them

around nor sell the copies.

When I see framed prints for sale, there's always a contact for the photographer, be it a business card or other listing of who

took the photo and how to contact them. It might lead to other work beyond the sale of prints.

-Ed

My slightly older "confuser" choked on your flash-based site. All I got was a very dark green line of text on black telling me

to upgrade. I had to crank up my monitor's brightness to even see that. You should aim for a lower common denominator for browser

compatibility, as very few people would pursue the link any further

than that.

If you want to have flash graphics, start with a straight html site and offer the viewer a choice to move to the flash-based

extravaganza, but be sure to leave enough content on the html site so people can at least get the basics.

A striking or compelling image does not need the latest web geegaw to sell. A logo, a few nice photos, a background, contact

info and who-am-i should make your front page. Add the links for those who want to delve further, but get some eye candy

up quickly without a lot of fuss. Visitors don't want to see progress bars or blank pages.

Getting into search engine results takes time and/or effort. Once your site's online, you need to submit the url to all the major

engines. Merely submitting a url is not enough, though. Your site's search ranking does not increase till you get other sites linking to yours.

That takes content; somebody found

your site interesting and posted a link to it. It's sort of the online equivalent to word-of-mouth. But, people won't beat a path to

your door in the first place if they find the site doesn't work for them or it never shows in a Google search.

I use Google a lot to check out a person or website to see how reputable, qualified or professional they might be. I even search out myself

and my own websites to see what pops up. Try it and

you'll see what other people might be finding as they search for more info on you to gauge if they want to hire you or not,

Don't rely on just the web. All the traditional methods of self-marketing still work, start locally with business cards, or a small

printed sample with contact info tacked on community bulletin boards and maybe try some print advertising in the local

newspapers. Getting out there is as much or more pounding the pavement as a keyboard,

-Ed

You're not losing 20%, it's only a 10% reduction. Do they explain why they need to change the agreement? My guess is their

costs are relatively constant but still increasing, while income is down, same as for many other agencies. They need the

higher share to compensate and keep their profits on a more even keel.

Perhaps you can counter-offer for a 5% change. They need sales to keep going and if your images are selling, they need

you as much as you need them.

-Ed

My old Olympus D-600 has this problem and no manual setting to override it. By luck, my smaller strobes recycled quick

enough at low power that they often would fire for both the pre-flash and the main. But it wasn't a very reliable workaround.

When I shot studio flash with a Nikon D100, which didn't have a PC socket, I made a little reflector for the built-in flash to aim its light

upwards or

towards the slave sensors. There was usually still enough light to trigger at least one of the multiple main flash heads. Otherwise, I used the

PC adapter for the hot shoe as others have suggested.

-Ed