savagesax

Without seeing a photo I would strongly suggest using a second flash unit aimed at the background. This will light up the background and the persons profile will pop right out. The only other option that I can think of is shooting at a very slow shutter speed and a higher ISO. 800 to1600 ISO and at a 15th of a second, perhaps F 5.6. The flash should/will stop any minor movement of this person, however try to remind the person to remain still. If the background is really dark, like shooting at night, well the results probably won't be what you are looking for.

Wow. Going to order a few. Amazing value and endless creative potential.

Interesting story! I have a lens in need of repair and I found him on ebay offering to fix cameras. He responded right away, so I will ship him out the lens. I now have complete trust in him.

OK, an update. I sent in the lens. I won't say which repair place I chose for now, until I see how the results come back. The man is a factory trained Leica tech. I also decided to buy a 90mm lens KEH. For those that don't know about KEH they are fantastic for used gear. If you order a lens or something and they rate it as a 9 or so, you can expect the lens to be close to a 10-. The lens was rated as no haze, no fungus and no dust. I paid about $375 I think. It comes with a 180 day warranty. So after the first of the year I should be in good shape to go out and play! Enjoy the holidays folks! Again thank you for everyones posts. I'm learning a lot. bob

Great information. Had no idea about the coatings. The tiny spider web look is between the front element lens. Does anyone know if these 2 elements are cemented? I'm hoping that the 2 lenses simply need to be recemented and it's not fungus, which often can't be removed. I'll give Steven a call tomorrow. He's pretty close by. A continued thanks for all of this valuable information. OK, another silly question. I have a pile of Canon pro lenses. I found that you can get an adaptor to connect a Canon lens to a leica rangefinder. Has anyone ever tried this? I'm aware of course that everything will be shot totally in manual, but I was wondering about the quality. I know it would look pretty goofy using a 200mm canon on an M2! Would the quality pretty much suck? lol As all of you can see I am totally new to this leica scene, but at the same time I can't wait to start shooting.I Enjoy the rest of the weekend and thank you for all of your support.

As I've said I've taken apart Hasselblad lenses and replaced shutters and the springs. Removed oil on the blades, all of that. However there doesn't appear to be a place on the front to use a Spanner tool. This leads me to believe that you have to take this apart from the inside. Then I worry about lining up the lenses, don't have a focusing machine. There is a ring in the rear which indicates the need for the Spanner tool. Seems like I need to leave this job for the pros! Which I will. It also looks like there are at least 4 lens elements. It's really an engineering marvel the way these are made, going back to the mid 1950's.

Wow, thanks Stephen!

Aol just keeps hanging up. Another try to post his picture... didn't work...sorry folks. My New Years resolution - dump AOL!

A few posts down Stephen Lewis posted his cool camera. Well thats the same as what I have and it's a much better picture. Stephen, I hope you don't mind me using your image! bob Look under "Your favorite Leica and lens to fondle."

Here's the lens. Forgot to post it!<div></div>

Well I googled the heck out of this without a result. I have to take the front element apart of this lens. There's a serious mark right smack on the center and in between the 2 front elements perhaps? Are these 2 elements cemented together? If not well I think I have fungus. Looks like spitter webs, but very small. How do I do this? I've taken apart hasselblad lenses so I will feel somewhat comfortable with some needed guidance. If I mess it up, such as if it is fungus, well the lens is from 1958. I picked this up along with an M2 for free so I can't complain! I can always hit up ebay or KEH and get another one. If other readers have references for leica gear that would be fantastic. In advance, thanks folks for your help. If anyone can refer me to a repair place near Burbank, CA that could be of use too. I called the Leica USA repair center and we are looking at a waiting list of 3 months and they have no idea of the cost. Well needless to say it can most likely be easier just to buy another lens. Replacing a 1958 lens may be much less than a Leica service repair. Enjoy the holidays! bob

Thanks folks! Nice exposure Tom.

You can call the local news station. I've seen a few photographers get busted on the news. One of them had to close his doors. He failed to deliver photo's to people. It was that simple. He said his computer died and he lost a few weddings. Hopefully this didn't happen to your photographer. Usually if one person is having issues there are others. A news crew surely gets to the bottom of the problem fairly quickly, within just a few days. Yes it sucks. Keep us posted. Hope you get some photos by Christmas time.

Well I'm tired of wedding dresses looking blown out, yet the faces of the brides are just fine. In fact, often the blown out white dresses can turn to a bluish tint. All of the bead work is washed away. The dresses kind of look like a white sheet, showing no detail. Unless you want to correct this using programs such as photoshop you and the bride have to pretty much understand that this is digital. Don't get me wrong here. Sure, often you can get the face of the bride and the dress to show up perfectly. However, even if your exposure is dead on chances are the brides dress will be over exposed. Even if you use a handheld light meter. I have the Minolta Flash Meter 4F and I often use it pretty much at every wedding. So lets pause for a second here. Lets say you are photographing the bride and she has a wonderful sun tan! Your camera reading is 250th of a second at F8. Her face looks perfect. Well we also know that when you are photographing white things, not just dresses, you have to compensate about 2 stops to see the details in the dresses or the white objects. This translates to 250th of a second to about or around F16. Then you will see every detail. But then the brides face is 2 F stops under exposed! Film is much more forgiving. With film you can see every single detail of/on a wedding dress. Even with darker skinned brides you will see the details. Pretty cool. Well I have some minor health issues. 2 elbow surgeries last year, I've had back surgery and both feet have been operated on. Often after weddings I hurt for a few days. Marc Williams actually gave me this idea. So thank you in advance Marc. I went out and bought a Leica film camera, range finder style, not the SLR style. It kind of looks like a toy camera. However when you put a roll of film through the camera you will surely get that WOW look on your face! Although I'm cutting way down on weddings for next year I will be doing a lot of the formal shots with a roll of 36 exposure film. Yes it means that much to me. The brides spend so much money for their gowns I strongly feel that shooting just one roll of film will make that bride very happy. As said above, I've had surgeries. The M series Leica cameras can fit in your pocket. Yes they weigh about the same as some of the SLR cameras, these tanks are small. The lenses on the Leica's are probably equal to the quality of any SLR and in some cases as good as some of the medium format cameras. Needless to say I'd love to hear some viewpoints. Maybe Marc will pop in. After all he is one of the top rated photographers. There's others as well - great photographers on this site. I'm just giving kudos to Marc, because he has Leica gear and I know that he still uses film. I'd like to hear from the long timers too, such as WW that started in the wedding bizz using film. I thought about buying a Hasselblad film camera, but then the weight of these camera's turned me off. So should photographers really care enough to buy a film camera for the formals? Frankly, I never got a complaint from a bride, but this is a subject thats bothered me for many years.

The girl above has a double chin and I had her put her weight on her back leg. If she was leaning over on her front leg the chin would show up a lot. You can tell that she is leaning on her left leg because her shoulders are higher in front and lower in the back. By the way with the lower neck issue you can ask her to point her face forward. You can shoot from a step stool so you are higher up. If you are a smaller photographer a step stool is kind of a must, because this accents the chin and nose areas. Unless you are over about 6 feet tall or so you should have a step stool with you just in case someone, the groom included is like 6'5" or something. This too helps a lot if you are in a chuch and the Altar has steps. You want to be at least around the same height as the groom. Try not to ever pose a lady or a man with even weight on their feet and even shoulders. Read up on masculine and feminine posing. Your wedding photo's will look fantastic just by knowing these few simple rules of photography. Hope this helps.

It would help greatly to see an example. There's a lot of tricks you can do with overweight people when shooting the actual weddings. This bride isn't overweight, but by turning her in an angle, maybe 45 degrees and you move the flowers in front of her waist you can take off a lot of weight naturally. You are showing off the flowers taking the eyes off the waist area. As said above you can also use the liquify filter as well. This photo is far from perfect. I shot this wedding last August with just having elbow surgery. I used a pod for most of the shots and although tripods and monopods are lifesavers they can greatly slow you up. Well the photo still works and she she looks thinner than in real life. Practicing assorted angles of people along with the use of creative lighting you really shouldn't ever get very any complaints. This also includes, works with pregnant brides that don't really want to be shown. Hope this helps.<div></div>

If you post a picture I'm sure some or all of the readers can resize the image to its proper specs.

Dan, I'm still on page one with reading the manual! Way to go! Seriously, its a complicated camera if it's your first video/still camera. However it's one great camera.

Not too long ago at a wedding someone asked me why I carry a list of the shots to take! He asked if this was my first wedding. He was on the younger side so I asked him how old he was. He said he was 23. My first response to him was I've been shooting weddings longer than he's been on this earth. I then told him that a lot of the guests were from other states and some even flew in from other countries. It would be a shame to not photograph these very important people. Before anyone gets married tell the photographers to take down detailed notes.

Get a good flash and add a second camera. Never trust a second shooter, so be sure to get the required shots yourself. Also pack enough batteries. Plan on changing batteries after about every 75 shots. Use your flash a lot, almost on every shot you take. This prevents dark eye sockets. I much rather see you use a flash on every shot compared to no flash at all.

Well since we now have to lease Photoshop 6 Cloud are people using other programs for editing weddings? For example I bought the 5D mk.3 and I can't upgrade Photoshop 4 to allow me to edit the Raw files. So I have 2 questions. 1) Can I upgrade Lightroom to do the Raw wedding conversions? Using the Canon 5D mk 3. 2) Are there any other programs that wedding photographers use. I have Photoshop 6 but it is pretty different compared to Photoshop 4. Thank you in advance. Oh, if some of the readers are using other programs, what's the cost? Have a great weekend!

Sorry folks, I had a typo - I meat "Protecting," not "Protesting!"

Try formatting the cards in your camera's first, before taking any shots. Don't switch the same cards between cameras without formatting. I've heard of this happening before. It's uncommon but it does happen.

It's great to have an inexpensive filter protesting the front of your lens, along with a lens hood and a lens cap. However when I'm actually shooting these filters come off of the cameras. I'd rather not use a protective filter of any type when photographing. I use filters, but for whatever effects I'm after, such as a 4 or 6 point Star filter, or even a Softar 1/2 filter when doing closeup work of people's faces. So there are times when you must use a filter. So I'm in total agreement with the others that have posted. Protective filters can surely effect the outcome of an image in a negative way.

I like Toms answer a lot. I'd just give out jpegs and not worry too much about the enlargements. There's probably a magic number such as anything over a 16X20 print this could be a good time to to take a raw file and save it as a Tiff.