andre j.

http://www.red.com/

"Typical high-end HD camcorders have 2.1M pixel sensors and record with 3:1:1 color sub-sampled video at up to 30fps. We deliver 12M pixels at up to 60fps and record 12 bit native RAW, or 10 bit over-sampled HD your choice. That?s more than 5 times the amount of information available every second and a vastly superior recording quality. Don?t need all that data for your workflow? Dial it back, and keep all the other advantages of the Mysterium ? Super 35mm cine sized (24.4ױ3.7mm) sensor. You get the same breathtaking Depth of Field and selective focus as found in film cameras. Mysterium ? boasts a greater than 66db Signal to Noise Ratio thanks to its large 29 sq. micron pixels. And 12,065,000 pixels deliver resolution that can only be called Ultra High Definition."

Hello folks, been awhile, but here's my favorite: CANON EF 70-200 L, 100 ISO, f2.8 on a 1D

MKII in about 100 degree temperature... Blessedly, I was in the river too!

All the best,

Andre J<div></div>

Colleen, Asuka has templates in the form of PS files... You just build your pages on those

templates and when you're done you flatten the layers and save them as maximum qulaity

jpegs. The final step is to drag the folder of jpegs onto their file checker software and it

writes a PDF file thatyou upload to their server. Within a month you get your book(s).

All the best,

Andre J.

Ouch! I guess photo.net doesn't do "accent aigus"!

All the best,

Andre J.

Anybody else using Asuka Books as "self-promo" pieces?

We think it will help to put a tangible product in the hands of prospective clients.

Something of substance and quality. We will also be placing a DVD inside the back cover of

the book which will have a slideshow, some clips of our wedding videography as well as of

us talking about what we do.

Here is a link to a low-res pdf of our 20 pg. 5x5 "self-promo" Asuka Book (550 KB).

http://www.SaintPhallePhotography.com/brochure.html

It will be a hard cover, book bound product with varnished pages, around 3/8" thick.

We plan on ordering 40 to start.

All the best,

Andr頊.

Derek, I am carrying two 20Ds with 580EXs with Stofen omnibounces using Lowepro's

wide neoprene strap with the gripper dots... mostly bounce the flash, set on AV or manual

indoors so that it is more of a fill. Brackets would be too much, even one, for me.

Having a wide and a tele on and available at the same time is awesome creatively

speaking.

PWs have 4 channels, so you can have as many cameras set to trigger as you want. They all

must have PW transmitters set to the same channel. Multimax transmitters allow you to

select which recievers you want to go off. Plus transmitters will trigger every unit on the

channel.

They are usually available "used" for a lot less than full pop at this address:

http://www.digitalweddingforum.com/ubbthreads/postlist.php?Cat=0&Board=UBB4

I bought and then re-sold "Defining The Moment" and "Masters of Wedding Photography"

and while I found them interesting as one time view, they certainly are not worth the

money they are being sold for, IMHO. Maybe at $29.95 but not hundreds of dollars. YMMV

My advice would be to get two 20Ds, two flashes, a couple of 6 GB MicroDrives and shoot

RAW...

You'll need two bodies on you for creative reach and backup. The 1D2N is a heavy beast

and costs as much as three 20Ds... You definitely do not need 13 MP full frame for

weddings,

Save on bodies, use two identical bodies for ease of use, and invest in glass!

Shoot a couple of weddings for free to get a portfolio. Get a good website. Network with

vendors! You'll be on your way. Check out digitalweddingforum.com - many of the UK's

best wedding photographers are on there sharing info every day!

Todd, keep doing it! Get a website! Contact Aundrea at BluDomain.com. They have

wonderful templates for $800 that can make you look cutting edge instantly! You will be

amazed at what a site like that will do for you....

If I could use but one lens to shoot a wedding, the Canon EF 24-70 f2.8 L would be it,

HANDS DOWN!

Absolutely YES is my answer.

Several wedding photographers I know use the LOWEL iLIGHT on their DSLRs during the

reception. They wear a battery belt to power it.

http://www.lowel.com/ilight/

One in particular, Bruce Dorn (http://www.idcphotography.com) uses Frezzi Mini-fills with

a 100 watt globe (artfully hidden from view) to continuously light problematic ceremony

venues in a totally unobtrusive, elegant and tasteful manner. the results are stunning!<div></div>

We charge $300 per hour for our creative services (2 photographers) and one of our

delivery options is the digital files (we guarantee 100 per hour of shooting) on disc for

$1.00 each. We do not allow cherry-picking. You just get all files we proof per hour. So 2

hours shooting = min. of 200 files = $200, 7 hours shooting = min. of 700 files = $700,

and so on.

Take a look: http://www.SaintPhallePhoto.com/pricing.html

I own three AB800 monobloc lights and I am looking for a wireless control system.

AlienBees sells a transmitter with 4 receivers for $515.

Pocket Wizard Plus with a transmitter and three receivers runs $718.

4 Pocket Wizard Multimax would run $1180.

Apparently there are cheap radio slaves on eBAY for $40 each?

What are the pros and cons of each system?

I would suggest being totally upfront and honest, and offer some sort of compensation in

the form of an upgrade to an album, a re-shoot, whatever it takes to make them happy.

An unsatisfied client tells 30 people their horror story, for every person they tell their

happy story... Your reputation is all that you have, so go with their flow and make them

happy!

All the best, Andre

Jorgen, if you can stand anymore altitude, a ladder would be a great idea so that you can

get just people and panoramic vistas (no rooftop flooring) and I would suspect that a

polarizer would add some pop to the sky... Some fill flash would work too, especially if you

back-light the people. Sounds like fun!

All the best, Andre

Actually the whole idea of a LightSphere II is that it does not need to bounce, the dome

itself does all the diffusing.<div></div>

For me it's about workflow and budgetary constraints. I have made my choice to go all

digital and have neither the time nor the money to straddle both worlds. I have also found

that debating the relative merits of digital and film is about as productive as arguing

politics with some one form the other side of the aisle: nobody's mind gets changed and

everybody's blood pressure gets jacked up. To each his own, I've embraced digital and

won't look back.<div></div>

What Chris said... DWF has a board just for getting assistants, passing off jobs you can't

do, and yet another board for emergency backups... It's $100 a year, but there aren't any

ads, and no knee-jerk anti-digital posters ;-)

By BEN DOBBIN, AP Business Writer

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - Ending a century-old tradition, Eastman Kodak Co. will

soon stop making black-and-white photographic paper, a niche product for

fine-art photographers and hobbyists that is rapidly being supplanted by

digital-imaging systems.

Kodak said Wednesday it will discontinue production of the paper, specially

designed for black-and-white film, at the end of this year. But the world's

biggest film manufacturer will continue to make black-and-white film and

chemicals for processing.

"It's a shame to see it go," said Bill Schiffner, editor of Imaging Business

magazine in Melville, N.Y. "Digital has done a lot of good things for the

industry but it's done some bad things too. It's making a lot of these processes

obsolete."

The paper is manufactured at a plant in Brazil. Kodak declined to specify how

many employees would be affected by the production shutdown, which is part

of a three-year overhaul to eliminate 12,000 to 15,000 jobs by 2007 and

shrink the company's work force to around 50,000.

As the industry shifts rapidly from chemical-based to digital imaging, demand

for black-and-white paper is declining about 25 percent annually, Kodak

spokesman David Lanzillo said.

John Eoff, owner of Photo-Lab Inc., said his 91-year-old shop in Schenectady,

N.Y., still sells "a fair amount" of black-and-white paper to photography

students and enthusiasts, while professional photographers have mostly

gone to digital printing systems already.

"What we assumed was going to happen is the traditional black-and-white

paper processing was going to remain more an art form than a commodity,"

Eoff said. Other companies, led by Ilford Imaging of Britain, still make paper

and there will be demand for it, he predicted.

In April, Kodak posted a first-quarter loss of $142 million, citing a steady slide

in revenues from film and other chemical-based businesses and higher-than-

expected costs to cover job cuts. This month, it replaced its chief executive,

Dan Carp, with Antonio Perez, who a few years ago oversaw the rapid growth

of Hewlett-Packard Co.'s digital imaging business.

Kodak grew into an icon on the strength of its traditional film, paper and

photofinishing businesses. It is now betting its future in digital terrain ? from

cameras, inkjet paper and online photofinishing to photo kiosks and minilabs,

X-ray systems and commercial printers.

Ilford, the largest maker of black-and-white photo paper, went into bankruptcy

last year, emerging this year after a management-led buyout. Germany's

AgfaPhoto GmbH filed for bankruptcy last month.

Kodak's exit from the business "doesn't surprise me" because many portrait

and wedding photographers "are switching over to digital," said Christopher

Chute, an analyst with market research firm IDC in Framingham, Mass.

"If I'm printing digital photos on any kind of printer, whether it's inkjet or

thermal transfer or dye sublimation, the kind of paper I use is color agnostic,"

he said. "I can print black and white with great gray gradients and use the

same system to print regular color. There's much more versatility with today's

print solutions."

"More photographers and consumers that shoot black-and-white are shooting

digital, they're processing it on regular inkjet paper, and ... the quality is pretty

good," Schiffner said.

We deliver all files as archival tiffs on duplicate disks after one year, and then it's up to the

bride & groom. Our own wedding images are stored on DVD and on the Epson archival

prints we made from the digital files... Like everything else in the universe, if you believe

in entropy, they are already in the process of deteriorating, which is a good thing. If

everything stayed around forever there wouldn't be any room left for anything new...

<P>

Our most popular product is an Asuka Book, digitally printed fine art book. I imagine one

of those ought to last a hundred years or more. Heck there are several Gutenberg Bibles

still kicking around, from 1455!

<P>

Check out <a href="http://www.dclab.com/digital_gutenberg.asp">this article on the

digitization of the Gutenberg bible</a> -

<P>

<i>"Most people will never see a Gutenberg Bible outside a dimly-lit display case. But

now, thanks to high-resolution digital photography, they can view an electronic replica of

the 548-year-old work by slotting disks into their CD-ROM drives. Viewers can use the

zoom tool to enlarge sections of the text or the hand-tooled leather binding. They can

also search for a word in the English translation and, with a mouse click, go to the original

page where the word appears in the Latin text.

<P>

"Technicians from California-based firm Octavo spent four months last year

photographing the Library of Congress's Gutenberg for its recently-released 2-CD

facsimile. They used highly sophisticated photographic equipment. Where consumer

digital cameras are rated at 2-4 megapixels and cannot produce larger prints than 11 x 4

inches, Octavo's camera is rated at 130 megapixels and can produce 6 x 9 foot prints

without loss of quality.

<P>

"The larger the digital image, the more times it can be magnified for analysis - down to

the pen or brush strokes made by the illuminator or the way the ink hits the page,"

explained Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare books and special collections division at the

Library of Congress. "Digitizing the Gutenberg Bible has not only made an otherwise

unavailable text available, but it has made it available in ways that before were

unimaginable."</i>

<P>

Very interesting stuff!<div></div>

Trent,

<P>

<a href="http://shopping.yahoo.com/search;

_ylc=X3oDMTFsM3J2MmFzBF9TAzk2MDc5MjYwBGsDZGlnaXRhbCBwaWN0dXJlIGZyYW1lcwR

zZWMDa2IEc2xrA3RpdGxl?p=digital+picture+frames" target="blank">Click here</a> for

a link to a ton of links.

<P>

If a client orders one, fine! If not, nothing lost!

<P>

I tried a Sandisk Photo Album (under $50) which plugs into your TV and which accepts 2

CF cards and allows the user to select images from one and save their choices to the

other. I thought it might be a faster, more user friendly way for a client to select proofs (as

opposed to online galleries which can be slow even on a high-speed connection). In the

end I decided it was just too clunky, with a lot of wires, a remote, etc... Hi PITA factor.

<P>

My clients seem to like the 30 minute DVD slideshows I create to the music they provide

me on CD. That way they aren't limited to a 5" x 7" lcd frame, they watch it on their

widescreen TV with the subwoofer sound system!

<P>

Al - digital data can easily be migrated to any new storage media that comes down the

pike. Data on a floppy disk (remember those?) can be transferred to a CD and then from

there to a DVD and then from there to a CF card and then from there to an iPod Photo, and

then from there to a USB memory stick and then from there to 2052 Blippity-Do XT.

<P> You'll always be able to get your picture if it's digital - because it's all 1s and 0s....

Multiple copies in multiple places is your best security plan. That way if your house burns

to the ground, you've still got a copy somewhere else (like a safety deposit box, or your

mom's house, or at the office.)