adam_nance

Jeff- Type-o. I meant 2gig. I'm in the United States. :P

;)

Wow! What great responses! And so quickly!

Let's see...

Anton- Thanks for the advice on the good deals on CF cards. High resolution on my

D70 is 3,000x2,000. So I stick with that and so far have had no problems up to an

8x12. I haven't tried to go bigger than that yet. And I LOVE your wedding work.

Excellent job.

Edward- LOL! We shot 8 or 9 weddings in film before deciding to try a career at it

and to take the plunge into the digital world. 2,400 film shots per wedding led to

some very expensive lab bills! (just kidding) 2,400 is the capacity I'd be comfortable

with, not the number I'd expect to shoot. When we shot film, we brought plenty of

extra just in case, and now we do the same with memory cards. It's not uncommon

for each of us to grab 600 or so digital images for a combined coverage of 1,200

digital images and another 360 or so (10 rolls) of film. We're new at this and we love

to click away. Maybe we'll slow down once we're seasoned pros, but for now, our

motto is: If yer not sure, and the moment is there, CLICK!

Steve- What did the 40GB flashtrax run you? About $500? Right now we back up on

a painfully old laptop. A flashtrax might save us the cost of upgrading the laptop

since we don't use it for much else at present.

Jeff- Great point about negative comments likely outweighing positive comments.

And since I can get 1gig cards as cheap as $150, I think you're right, and I'll stick with

CF cards.

Thanks to all!

Adam

A 2GB Hitachi Microdrive is $139 at memorysuppliers.com

A 2GB Scandisk Ultra II CF card is $299 at memorysuppliers.com

My wife and I use two D70's when shooting weddings, and we both like to shoot a lot

of frames. We've been renting cards from our local shop for our past couple

weddings since buying the (new) digital cameras. To comfortably cover a wedding in

FINE JPEGs I would want at least 4GB on each of us (roughly 1,200 shots a piece). To

comfortably cover a wedding in RAW would take something like four times that.

At this sort of volume, these price differences really start to add up--especially when

you start to consider backups! Ugh!

In your opinion, are microdrives are reliable enough to use for wedding work or do

we need to use compact flash? We'll go ahead and make the investment in CF cards if

it's necessary, but it sure would be nice to be able to rely on the microdrives.

For those of you who shoot in RAW, how much memory do you carry? For those of

you who have been digital for years, I can't imagine how you afforded it way back in

the day!

Also, does anyone know a cheaper but still reliable place to pick up memory cards?

Thanks and best wishes!

Adam

The ones already posted are great. I also like JKHphoto.com

These guys must have done something right on their site, because we considered

many options before choosing them to shoot our wedding June of '04.

:)

Jen,

As long as your cousin isn't a professional portrait photographer :) I think those

photos will make her very happy. In this novice's opinion, the point of the top photo

is the dress, and the windows frame the dress nicely. I wouldn't have even noticed

the radiators if they hadn't been pointed out, and I think putting the bride's face

against the bricks might have made it look like a mug shot. The point of the bottom

photo is the bride's interaction with the girls, whom she obviously loves. Dragging

the shutter further would have brought out the light in the background more, but you

definitely got the shot. I'm sure your cousin will be pleased. You done good. Let's

see some more!

-Adam

What kinds of borders are offered by your digital or film lab?

It might be possible to order 8x10" full frame pics by selecting a tasteful black or

white border that will actually leave the full frame image in a letterbox type format. It

will fit in an 8x10" pre-cut mat and frame, and it will not require any cropping. Most

folks are comfortable understanding something like this this given the widespread

acceptance of DVD's and a growing preference for widescreen/letterbox format.

I'm not saying that it's a solution without compromise. But I personally am not

comfortable handing over an album of hundreds of 4x6" proofs that are poorly

framed in order to accomodate a few enlargements designed for pre-fabbed frames.

Maybe I'm wrong...which happens all the time. :)

-Adam

Hm...that's not my cup of tea, and I agree with Mike about the advertisement (even

though I'm not a paying member here...yet).

If you're looking for constructive feedback as well as a quick buck, let me say that the

wedding slideshow had way too much spinning--on an 80" screen, I fear you might

induce motion sickness in your wedding guests. We made a slideshow for our

wedding with a bunch of fading in and out to black which looked really cool on a

computer monitor beneath incandescant light, but when we tested it on a large

screen in a dark room (and thank goodness we did before the actual event) the

bright/dark/bright/dark hurt our eyes.

And as a business, I'm not sure that making slideshows with somebody else's photos

is viable. If I'm the type of person who takes photos, archives them and is willing to

dig through them to find my favorites, why wouldn't I make this slideshow myself

using Windows Movie Maker? If I'm a wedding couple or an event planner who wants

a slideshow of the event, why wouldn't I find a professional photographer who is

willing to make a slideshow? Some of the folks here offer this service for free. In my

opinion, it's quality photos that make a good slideshow, not the skills of the

slideshow maker. And lastly, earning a fee for making a slideshow of a wedding with

a professional photographer's photographs (I don't know if you're planning on doing

this) seems a little shady.

Oh, and it's "cutting-edge" not "cutting age" and it's "utmost" not "up most."

Sorry if this is coming off as a flame. I wish you the best in your endeavors, but this

is a place where people come for feedback, and once I started typing, I found that I

had a lot of feedback.

Best wishes,

Adam

One thing to consider is that you have the opportunity to arrange things so that you

are there to take the photos the first moment the groom sees the bride.

At my own wedding, my wife and I did our portraits before hand for similar reasons to

the wedding you're shooting, and the photographers arranged it so that when we

went to pick up the bride, I waited outside her cabin with my back turned until the

she came up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder. The photographs from

the moment I turned around and saw her and we embraced are some of our favorites

from the whole wedding. In our case, most of the wedding party was standing

around us and our photographers got some shots of them cheering.

Even though the couple aren't waiting until the ceremony to see each other, the

moment they do see each other is likely to be magic. If you can talk them into letting

you arrange the circumstances, they'll thank you later for it. If they are planning to

get ready together, you might try to (very) delecately suggest that they get ready

separately. I thought the whole "can't see the bride" thing was nonsense--we'd lived

together for six years!--until the moment I actually saw her done up and in the dress.

Now I think that's one of the best wedding traditions around. :) They'll thank you for

it.

Best wishes,

Adam<div></div>