bill_b2

Start selling wedding/reception design services and decorate or accessorize all you want. If the people don't want it, so be it.

 

Or suggest the need for a volunteer Community Decoration Committee to help out with different events, public and private. I'm sure there is untapped talent wherever you are waiting for an opportunity to show their stuff. Have an annual decorating contest, evaluating events from the past 12 months.

 

Try some colored gels on strobes or floods to tart up some plain walls.

 

Drag the shutter on many flash shots to get rid of the backgrounds.

 

Get closer to the buffet line subjects so the pix do not show the buffet equipment. Same for other shots.

 

Shoot from high up or down low to isolate the subjects from the background.

 

Shoot wide open to reduce depth of field, fuzzing out the surroundings. May need to get a high speed lens(f/1.4).

 

You want magic? Get a Cokin filter catalog. Just don't hold me responsible for the outcome.

 

Bill

You may be overrating creativity. After all, you are participating in a ritual. Rituals tend toward the stable, the known, the expected. The formulaic. That is why they are not confused with "happenings," to dig up a term from the past. Trying to be creative for your own reasons, such as alleviation of boredom, is not necessarily consistent with what the clients want.

 

That said, there is certainly nothing wrong with improving or changing your shots, keeping in mind the client's needs. Start by looking at the shots from your last wedding. Ask yourself on each one what would have happened had you changed the f/stop, shutter speed, shutter dragging, amount of fill, white balance, angle of shot, focal length, subject distance, media format(APS sensor, full frame digital, 35mm, 4x5), tilt and swing a la LensBaby, subject siting(under arch, leaning against tree, etc.), subject pose, props(ones you bring or available, such as teddy bear, photo of parents,etc.), and any combination of these that you can imagine. You will have endless possibilities.

 

Try variations in cropping and post-processing. Pick a couple of candids and work on them as if they were your only shots. Make them beautiful. Then ask how you could have shot them differently to reduce processing time.

 

Try new albums and presentation concepts.

 

Add a package that is 3-5 times as expensive as your current top price, with 1/2 to 1/3 the number of shots. What will it look like?

 

Look at some championship scrapbooks. Find out who does the most creative ones in your area and partner with them on albums.

 

Look at the multitude of wedding shots online. There are many excellent photographers who are not interchangeable with others. See what would work for you.

 

Instead of bracketing for exposure only, do creativity bracketing, too. See if any of your new shots are appealing to clients. If so, that is good for business. If not to them but you like them, you are saved from boredom. Then you may look into seeking out clients who like the new shots. This may mean you start hanging out with Goths, Trekkies, Renaissance fairgoers, etc. Let wedding planners and florists know you are looking for cutting edge clients in addition to the bread and butter ones.

Also, if your shots are at high power in rapid succession, the SB-800 will stop firing to protect itself from overheating damage.

For the sky, try automatic exposure bracketing(-1.0, -2.0, or whatever works in tests), pop, pop, pop, then use HDR merge in PS CS2. Don't worry about the flash recycling quickly enough on the second and third shots, they are just for a good exposure of the sky. Choose the better one. You can test this ahead of time to find the right exposure compensation(NOT flash exposure compensation), assuming the same lighting.

 

See if the Quantum has a telephoto reflector available. If not, see if a Better Beamer can be fitted to it.

Guys watching sports, women in foreground pouting.

 

Garter ceremony, best man leering at bride's leg, maid of honor leering at best man. All exaggerated, of course.

 

B & G sitting back-to-back, mad at each other and others behind them smooching.

 

B & G sitting formally facing camera, other 2 standing behind them making halo and horns signs.

 

Guys with back to camera, arms around shoulders, holding up beer bottles, women facing camera looking disgusted, hands on hips.

 

And, of course, B & G getting champagne poured over them by the others.

 

Women looking at baby items in catalog or catalog of houses for sale. Guys looking horrified. G looking up, hand over heart, like a heart attack.

 

Box of sports equipment with B indicating it has to go away, G is horrified, others are laughing or siding with gender mates.

 

Corny? Yes, but corn is one of our biggest crops!

Place a wireless flash sync on the SB-800, either via the hot shoe or the sync terminal. It's ready to go. www.weinproducts.com is a longtime provider of the devices. There are others, too.

 

Camera would be in Manual flash, adjust Flash Exposure Compensation for the built-in flash as needed. SB-800 in manual, adjust as needed.

Use the same settings as for the D70. The manual will tell you how. Just sit down and read it. Is there something I'm missing?

 

Your lens will not be slower to focus on the D200.

 

Panning with the subject and using continuous focus should help reduce focus problems.

 

If need be, post test shots here, telling what the problem is and giving us the settings.

Thomas,

 

Cap the lens hood, instead. Optech makes a series of neoprene Hood Hats to slip over variously sized hoods. The polarizer should be far enough within the hood to be protected. Go to http://www.optechusa.com/product/detail/?PRODUCT_ID=16http://www.optechusa.com/product/detail/?PRODUCT_ID=16

Try searching on all the words: free merge pdf files

Anupam,

 

Sorry, but no light loss with closeup lenses. The loss that comes from magnification occurs because of the camera lens moving away from the sensor/film plane. That is why extension tubes reduce light and closeup lenses do not. No formula for it, but the real macro enthusiasts will probably post something to give the details.

Closeup lenses do not reduce light.

 

2 element closeups, meant for telephotos, can be very high quality and are not cheap. A telephoto is often helpful, anyway, to give a good working distance. The working distance is from the front of the lens. The minimum focus distance is from the film or sensor plane in the camera body. A big difference with telephotos. The closeup manufacturer specs will tell you the minimum focal length lens they recommend for their products.

 

Quality closeups are very convenient, great for low light situations, and give good quality. They are not a substitute for a quality macro lens. The vice versa is true, too. Low light macro occurs more than you would think. Early morning dewy plants, butterflies, etc. When you are stopping down to counteract the very reduced depth of field, and trying to maintain a shutter speed that will freeze the action, and any motion is a big motion at macro distances, the ability to avoid sacrificing any light becomes very important.

Good, if this forum will have, or the people will be directed to, a brief, introductory camera-buying tutorial and links to the digital camera reviews. Otherwise, I am concerned the assistance they receive here may be too piecemeal or technical. They often do not know what to ask.

 

This is a good site. I'm glad you are working toward making it better.

 

Bill

You could build a scaffold to support you and the camera above the table. As tall and wide as you need to be out of the way of lighting and anything else. Scaffolding can be rented or purchased.

 

You could also turn the tent and the objects 90(or whatever) degrees, instead. That will depend on the object, of course. Then you just shoot straight ahead. You will learn how to affix the objects to a support. This is very advantageous if you do not have assistants to adjust the lighting or the object. You just walk over to the table instead of climbing on and off the scaffolding.

UBS is a large international bank and wealth management firm. www.ubs.com

 

Do photography exhibits showing the destitute alleviate poverty? To the extent that viewers become more informed of the world, see things they do not want to exist, and take positive action, then yes. The benefits may be so indirect as to escape attention. The viewer of today's exhibit may be affected by it to vote in an election 12 years from now. Another viewer may decide to locate a new manufacturing facility next year in an area seen in a photograph. And yet a third viewer may withhold a planned donation, believing the problems in an area would not be alleviated, and give instead to another charity whose work elsewhere looks more promising.

 

The photographs taken by Walker Evans and others in the FSA did nothing directly to alleviate poverty. They were part of the public relations effort to rally support for governmental relief actions. To the extent the photos helped make the actions politically acceptable and to the extent those actions were successful, poverty was alleviated.

 

Sorry for a convoluted answer, but that is the way it is.

Thanks to Michael for introducing me to the work of Fazal Sheikh. His work, along with that of Walker Evans and many others, was in the Tate's "Cruel and Tender, The Real in the Twentieth Century Photograph." Also sponsored by UBS.

Hurray for UBS and Yale.

 

I look forward to seeing more digital performances of scores created as film negatives. Walker Evans was no stranger to technology, as evidenced by his work with the Polaroid SX-70. He evidently did not mind having books printed with his photographs. Or them appearing in magazines, such as Fortune. And not as contact prints tipped in.

 

His work shows us the distance between us and others, and the closeness. As it always has.

First come, first served. First booking with payment gets the date, unless you led the second bride to believe that you would hold the date for her.

 

Tell them that dates are not held after a consultation, only after a booking with payment.

 

If first bride books and pays today, cancel the second bride's consultation with an explanation, referring her elsewhere if you are comfortable doing so.

Gary Fong has it. If it is worth having, it is worth buying, wouldn't you agree?

Michael, it may have failed because the screw was torqued too much. Ask Canon about this. That could weaken that ring over time.

Try this: Remember that the camera focuses on a plane that is parallel to the front element of your lens. If the subjects are not in a straight line that is parallel to that element, one or more may be out of focus unless you stop down to maybe f/8, f/11, or f/16.

 

Also try focussing at 70mm and then zoom wider for the shot. Does not work well on single-ring zooms if focus is not locked.

Texasphotoforum.com is an advertiser here on phot.net. Check out their Weddings Forum and the Dallas/Fort Worth Forum. At the very top of the DFW Forum is a thread about locations. Several other threads address this.

 

In the Weddings Forum, do an Advanced Search, Not a plain Search, for dallas, looking in Search Entire Posts, NOT Search Titles Only. After you see who's who, you can also search on the individual photographers, such as cmalana(Carlo Malana).

 

You will have to register to see the threads and posts. No charge. It has exactly what you are looking for.

"Also, what do you recommend for the amount of fill?" Use the amount of fill that you have been using if that has worked. My answer is not as flip as it might appear, considering that camera/flash combinations vary, not to mention how and what photographers meter for. On a D70, which syncs to 1/500th and minimum ISO is 200, I have used -1.7 for fill in outdoor social situations.

 

Think about darkening the bright afternoon light with a neutral density filter to get the f/stop and shutter speed combination you want, especially if you like to use a fast lens wide open for shallow DOF.

Other possibiolities:

 

Lower the ISO on the flash by one stop to get more exposure.

 

Tape some Kleenex on the sensor. One or two layers.

 

Do the flash manually. For the sensor to accurately read the subject, the flash would have to be too close to the subject to light it. If far enough away to light it, the subject is too small for a good reading.

 

If digital camera, no need to mess around with the lighting. Just use manual flash and check the test shots.

I believe Mike's referral should be to http://www.planetneil.com/index.html

How hot? What weight? Flexible? Need the specs you want.

 

You may need to buy a Brimstone fabric softbox, deconstruct it, and make your own. Brimstone is proprietary to Photoflex, may not be available elsewhere.

 

A theatrical lighting supply company might be able help. They deal with heat issues and fabrics, scrims, etc. all the time.

 

An auto performance or custom paint/body shop may know if something like this is available or could be fabricated(silver/chrome on Fiberglas fabric, maybe).

 

If fabric doesn't have to flex, might be able to stiffen fabric, prep for smooth finish, and use silver or chrome spray paint.