savagesax

You made a good choice! Any camera that holds 2 cards is a wise move, plus there isn't a learning curve, all of your

cameras are the same.

Well David is the master.

Can you take a pic of the front and the back of the camera and the back of the lens? Can you see through the lens? Your

English is great. Don't force anything. Send a pic first. Are the lenses stuck on the bodies? Are the rear curtains shut or open?

Actually full power may be wrong. Maybe 3/4's power, depending on the distance and how hard the shadows are under the

ball caps, and the time of day. Shade, hard sun, all of that. So take a few test shots. I wouldn't use a flash on program

mode or auto mode. You want the flash to be consistent on every shot, set the camera to manual as well. This way you

won't ever have to think when doing all of the assorted groups. Set the shutter speed to it's highest sync. 250th? Then set

your F-stop to probably F11 with an ISO setting of 100, using the flash. Maybe F8 if it's a cloudy day. I've shot 1000's of

these sports teams, so my settings are pretty close. The only thing that is different from when I shot these is the power of your flash unit.

David, we have the same tastes in cameras! I just got the 5DSR about a month ago. I can't seem to find time to get away

and have some fun! I'm glad to hear you really like it. Maybe after this weekend I'll take a drive up the Pacific coast past

Santa Barbara. There are some elephant seals hanging around about 1 hour north of of Santa Barbara, which are fun to

photograph. They can smell horrible!

David, I totally agree. You can shoot sports with pretty much any camera that shoots at a shutter speed of 4 frames per

second. Including those crazy air shows, like the Blue Angels. In his first post he asked what should he get. I'd grab the

tank, if the prices were about the same, plus they have dual card slots in case one card gets fried. If it's not a paying job

and the weather is horrible, I'd pack up, pick up a pizza, get a beer, and go home! If it were a paying job I'd hire a kid to help

hold an umbrella to help deflect the rain off of the lens and the camera, even though the 1D series cameras are weather

resistant they are not water proof. So we have a difference in opinions as for camera choices, all of the cameras will work

under normal weather conditions. For me to feel safe I'll always shoot the the 1Ds MK111 when the weather isn't very good.

I do own a few 5D mar3 bodies and I just bought the 5DSR 50 megapixel, but haven't taken a shot with it yet. I surely won't

take any of the 5d's out in nasty weather. Yet I can't wait to shoot with the 50 megapixel camera.

Thus the reason why I suggested the 1D and the 1DS series, the cameras and some of the lenses are extremely weather

resistant. Do you wish to wreck a camera and a job because of weather conditions? He's asking about a backup camera. This seems perfect if the weather sucks. In sub zero degree weather will the shutters fire with the 1D series camera, or in mist or maybe in a light rain, you bet they will. I have the 1Ds Mark111 as one of my nature cameras and it's NEVER failed. the other cameras get fogged up mirrors and fogged eye viewers. Do you want to go through this on a paying job and tell the client opps, sorry, I'm a pro but not a very good pro, because I don't own the pro cameras? It's something to seriously think about. Bad weather will happen sometime.

You really need to use a flash set at FULL power. The baseball caps WILL cause shade under the foreheads and dead

eyes. The lighting changes by the minute sometimes. Pose everyone correctly with the caps on, the first 7 or 8 kids kneeling the others standing, the coaches on each side standing. The center kids should have 2 bats crossing each other in an X. All of the kids should be wearing glove or not wearing gloves. It's actually kind of formal.

These printers get pretty hot along with the paper. Maybe put the paper under a book for about a minute and see it this

works? I have a feeling it will.

For sports nothing really beats the 1D or the 1Ds series cameras. The 1D3 would surely be a great choice for sports and

weather condition issues, plus enlargements are still excellent with a shutter speed rate of 11 or so frames per second. It

won't need to be repaired for several years, because the 1D series cameras are tanks. Just heavy.

How important is the image? drivesavers.com can usually get the data back, but DO NOT format the card or run anymore

software recovery programs. If they can't recover it NO CHARGE. Tell them I sent you and you will save 10 percent. Call

the 800 number for personal assistance. As soon as they get the card they will call you. They are fast and great to work

with. Hope this helps.

I did this for a living for a few years so trust me regarding drivesavers. Bob

Don't use canned air. It has oil in it and it will mess up your sensor and your lens glass. Don't send it to Canon yet. Try this first. It will pretty much do the same thing that Canon will do! (If this is dust)

Because of the colors, it's probably NOT dust. But buy this toy anyway!

Buy this -

http://www.bhphotovideo.com search DataVac

Works really GREAT! I usually do my own camera repairs going back to repairing my Hasselblads in the late 1980's. It has different

attachments so you can control the output of the airflow to a trickle to a massive clean up, such as from inside of a computer with 5 inches of dust in it.

I just bought the Canon 50 megapixel 5DSr. I need to go shoot with it... I got lucky with Canon in Irvine or wherever they

are located in California, picked it up on a holiday sale, plus I had to deal with them on the phone, being a member of their pro group, and a coupon I found somewhere, the total cost was only $2400, plus tax of course! The coupon was a big issue and Canon wouldn't accept it, so my credit card is with Paypal and Paypal did a conference call with Canon. WOW! So Canon finally honored it. Should have bought 10 instead of just 1. Sold some on ebay! That was fun! A toy that I didn't need though, but the 5D Mark111 cameras are the about same price! So folks watch the ads, coupons, rebates, and the Canon website. They surely messed up and I got lucky.

Great advice from Michael and William as usual. I do have something to add about primes and zooms, also the 70-

200mm.

Some the the pro zoom lenses are amazing. Such as the 16-35mm Canon, the 24- 70 Canon and the 24-105 Canon.

Sometimes you can keep life so simple and shoot an entire wedding with the 24-70mm or the 24-105mm lens, alone,

without a partner, or an assistant, the 2 card camera, and a flash! So 1 zoom lens, 1 camera, 1 flash and 2 cards. Life is

that simple!

My camera gear which I carried to every wedding. 1Ds Mark111, 2 - 5D Mark111's, 15mm fish eye, 16-35mm, 24-

70mm, 24-105mm, and the 70-200L IS2.8. 2 Quantum flash units, 4 turbo batteries, and 2 canon 580 flash units. So I

came to every wedding prepared.

At the wedding I only used the 5dmark111, the Quantum Trio Flash, and the 24-105 lens for 95 percent of the weddings.

If the reception room was really small with a lot of people I would throw on the 16-35mm for a few shots only when

needed. I used the 15mm fish eye lens for 3 to 5 shots, because I like the crazy look, the 70-200mm was only used at a

church/temple when the photographer had to be way in the back, but even then I often usually used the 24-105 and

cropped if needed. Often the church/temple had beautiful stained glass so why use a long lens and crop that out?

Yes I have a lot of other lenses. Primes mainly, because I do like nature photography, a lot! But lets face the facts for a

second. Yes pro primes are usually sharper. But when you photograph a bride, the mother, pretty much everyone at the

wedding, if you use tack sharp primes you will see every single mark on their faces! Ever look at Playboy magazines?

They use wicked soft filters! I use a Zeiss Softar 1 filter for closeup shots. It takes the edge off, so why would we use

primes, or spend hours in Photoshop trying to hide all of the wrinkles on the grandparents? My point is simple, leave

your primes at home.

So in reality you can shoot perfect weddings with 1 zoom lens, a flash, and a camera. The more gear you have the more

of those special moments will be missed, because of messing around with lens changes things like that. Buy some gear

to light up dark places and as others have said study up on weddings, portraits, and lighting techniques. A stinky bridal

portrait print from a $70,000 200 megapixil medium format Hasselblad camera will look the same as a $2300 Canon 5D

Mk111. Please study hard, Take a lot of practice shots, 1000's before your first wedding. If you do this you both will be

great photographers.

What do you plan to do with the reception halls which are often really dark? When you photograph someone that might

be on the dance floor, such as the bride and grooms first dance the background will be black. You won't be able to see

any of the guests. Do you have modeling lights for this situation and radio slaves to light up a dark room so you can see

everyone? Cranking up the ISO to 12,000 isn't the answer. The people will look horrible! By the way I pretty much never go over ISO 800, because I like using creative lighting to make my photos. The high ISO's is for beginners not great wedding photographers. There are exceptions to every rule and that is being creative. I will settle for an ISO of 1600 with the new cameras, but that's it. Wedding photographers are looking for serious trouble if you shoot higher than that. For example you will start picking up DJ lights and reflections of these lights will wind up on the faces of people. Not pretty seeing blue, green, and red people! <laughing>

Cameras - Get a camera that holds 2 card slots, such as an SD and a CF card. So many wedding photographers get

into a pile of trouble when they have a card that fails. It's less common now, but I actually made a decent living trying to

recover lost data on hard drives and camera cards. Hard drives is still a problem. It's amazing to me why people run a

business and don't back up their hard drives! It's mind boggling! Wedding photographers should save all of their

weddings to 2 other hard drives and maybe a dvd. Well anyway, get cameras that have dual cards, such as the 5D

MK111, not the 5D Mark11.

I'm not sure why you would want a camera that fires around 12 to 14 frames per second! If you can afford it go for it!

Just remember that your flash can't keep up. It's also pretty heavy, with a long lens, maybe a 70-200mm and a flash

you might be looking at 5 to 6 pounds! I'm not young anymore! The cool thing about the camera is it does have dual card

holders!

So think outside of the box a bit. Think about lighting, which to me is the most important part of wedding photography,

actually any type of photography. Read up on lighting up dark rooms and backyard weddings when the sun goes down,

where to place your lights, batteries in case the hall or the backyard doesn't have power outlets. Read books on portraits

and the art of wedding photo-journalism since you like fast speed cameras! Best of luck! It's a fun field!

Don't ever get an attorney. Not for $2200. Use your local SMALL CLAIMS COURT if you live in the USA. It would be

helpful to see a few photos of her complaints, not for judging, but to perhaps fix the problems. Some of the wedding

photogs are amazing retouchers. Actually mind blowing with their abilities. I'm really good, but not like some of the

others here. I started shooting weddings in 1988 I think, or was it 1987. Never had to go to court, not even close to it. That was a lot of weddings! 1500, 2000, maybe more? Doesn't matter... RELAX! It will be just fine. If the wacko bride makes threats just ignore them and continue to try to make things work out.

I would perhaps offer her to redo the bridal formals. You pay for the flowers and the tux rental, but you speak with the florist and tux place and most likely the stores will offer a discount. If not, that's $500, ask the couple to split it with you, because there is no way that in small claims court that a judge will give them a full refund, unless your pics were damaged from a bad SD/CF card. It's not going to happen. A closed eye, a blink, takes me 15 to 30 second to fix in Photoshop.

Lets face it, time is always a problem at 90 percent of the weddings. As a photographer we need to get these bridal

shots. I don't mean to sound harsh, you may have a problem and some homework is needed, but the bride will never look more beautiful for the rest of her life, even if she

remarries in 10 years or 5 years from now. I actually photographed 1 bride 4 times! She got married 4 times and used

me as her photographer for all 4 weddings! I haven't heard from her lately so maybe her kids will be calling me soon and

will be getting married! Time wise, you need 15 minutes with the bride and groom alone, regardless if they are late for

the reception, you simply tell them that the people in charge of the reception will hold everything until the B&G show up.

You have to always be stress free even though your nerves are fried and your frustration level is through the roof. You

have to talk softly, calmly, like the only thing that matters right now is them. Banging off 30 to 40 shots of the bride and

groom together and alone should be like you are on autopilot. Takes 5 minutes. With just one standard pose of the bride

and groom together you can knock off about 15 formal shots. Full length, closeups, changing the hand positions, the

groom kissing her ring finger, looking at each other, kissing each other, both looking at the rings, a closeup of the rings

with the flowers behind the hands, and much more. This is from just one generic pose. Same thing with the bride alone.

set the train, a few full lengths, tilting her head, holding the flowers in different ways, that's about 10 shots right there,

then you do the closeup shots, So study and memorize sexy and beautiful poses. Just asking her to put her weight on

her back leg changes the whole look of the dress and her pose. Asking her to put one hand on her hip and let the flowers

hang down gives a sexy look, as she looks away from the camera. Suddenly you are done with 75 to 100 images in 15

to 20 minutes. You move around a bit to change the background, you change the F-stop from F2.8 to F11 so the

background looks out of focus to in focus. Use a flash, no flash, then every shot is different. If you are really running out

of time shoot everything full length do the same sexy and elegant poses and later crop in Photoshop, B&W Sepia, all of

that!

So post some pictures if you wish and lets see what us fellow flashers might be able to help you out with.

Happy 4th! Cheers! Bob

I don't know, but I got the feeling that you can't use longer lenses with this, such as a 150mm or longer. Hassy really didn't

say anything. I'd love to slap on my old 3 foot 500mm CF lens, but that won't happen!

I agree with both posts above. Back in the day I did my own repairs to my Hasselblads and other cameras such as the

older Canon and Nikon's. I worked part-time in a camera repair center in Burbank, CA. Here's the issue with saltwater. It's

like rust on a car. Once you have rust on a car it keeps spreading. Salt does the same thing. Canon may write back to you

saying that due to the salt water they won't attempt to fix it, because of that rust effect I was referring to and more damage

will continue to occur as time goes on. So both Canon and Nikon usually won't mess with salt related damage. You could

look around for a place that does repairs but won't be too concerned about salt, if it's just a drop or 2.

lol, guess I was way off! Here's an idea, keep it and have it converted to IR (Infrared photography) I'm sure it will sell for a lot

more. Google IR camera conversions and see what the cost might be for this model. A lot of photographers dig that IR look,

myself included.

With a flash and the accessories you should be able to get a higher price than $110. The flash must be worth at least $50.

Hi RS,

Great questions! I won't answer your questions because we are crossing boundaries with the wedding forum.

Send me an email and I will share a lot of information about lighting. The most important part about photography in my

opinion is lighting. This will take several emails to get you on board with samples from me, my past partner, who still

shoots 60 plus weddings a year, using multi lights, things like that. I'm willing to help you out. There really isn't that

perfect book or video. In fact I probably have about 100 plus photo books! Eamil is fotoflasher@aol.com I'm pretty

busy, so don't get angry if I don't respond everyday. This is my system, with a wide angle dome, MOST of the time, but

I do change it arounf a bit. Check out the lessons offered on the Quantum site. You don't have to run out and buy this

system, in fact I probably wouldn't unless you were shooting weddings for a living. It's overkill, but if you shoot 2 or 3

weddings on a weekend, which I often did, this system never failed me in the digital era. In the film days I used

Hasselblads and the Metz 60 CT1 and the CT4 strobes.

For fun now, I'm disabled, hopefully that will change and I will get back into photography one day. I am using the Canon

5DS r with the Phottix Mitros flash. Easier to operate and very accurate compared to any Canon flash unit, which I also

have, 2, 580 flash units.Yes Canon makes very good flash units. I like them a lot!

Just so that you RS, and other readers know, I light up the reception halls with White Lightning strobes using Pocket

Wizard radio slaves. These White Lightning strobes have never failed me, not once since the first one I bought in the

early1990's! I have 8 of these units, the most powerful ones are the 3200 models and you really don't need these as

they will peel the paint off of walls. Yes they are that powerful! <joking> But they are perhaps the most powerful strobe

units on the market. You can surely light up a symphony concert hall with just one. I did drop one unit one time and it hit

the floor. I called them, sent it to them overnight and they shipped it back and I had it by Friday, for the weekend

weddings. NO CHARGE! Not even for their postage and it was out of the 5 year warranty! I called them to question

this. Their answer was "Don't worry about it." Well that's why I own 8 of their strobes. Lets face reality here. Who offers

a 5 year warranty anymore and who fixes something out of warranty that's surely my fault and they knew it?

I actually really like how simple this camera flash unit is to use and it has a very nice reflective soft dome. It's pretty

powerful too! http://www.phottix.com/index.php/en/hot-shoe-flashes/phottix-mitros-ttl-transceiver-flash.html (Photttix

Mitros)

http://www.qtm.com/index.php/products/qflash/trio-shoe-mounted-flash (Quantum trio)

This should perhaps be on the wedding site, but it is more related to Canon tech situations, not weddings itself. Editors,

kindly notice that I didn't get into portrait lighting, just Canon gear, radio slaves, flash units, and strobes that work well

with Canon gear. I also asked RS to contact me off of this site.

RS, I still have to disagree with you. If the flash fired your camera settings were wrong or you have issues with your

camera and/or your flash. It did NOT sync according to your settings. So please get this checked out. I'm very good at

seeing issues such as knowing when a flash doesn't fire. So if it did fire and you are positive, you have a camera issue.

You can also go look on Photoshop or the Canon software and it will tell you if the flash fired. Maybe your shutter speed

was unknowingly set at 2000th of a second or something like that and the shutter didn't sync with the flash. This info

will be in Photoshop or the Canon software.

Happy 4th folks! Cheers!

Bob

I read in the wedding forum that you might like to consider shooting weddings. One of the major failures of wedding

photographers is bad cards. I know that the Mark 3 is out of your price range, but take a look at the 1DS Mark 2's. These

are great pro cameras with dual card slots, so if one card screws up you will have a second card as your backup. This

surely beats a lawsuit! The 1DS Mk 2's sell for a very decent price used with places like KEH in great condition with low

shutter clicks. I think the shutter is good for 300,000 shutter clicks.

Error 99 is Canon's way of saying it could be ANYTHING! I'd try doing simple things, such as what Timothy suggested

first. You can surely find out if it is the camera or the lens simply by changing the lens. See if the ANYTHING 99 error code

goes away. Then you know that it is the lens, not the camera body. Canon LOVES to get bodies and lenses together,

because they will surely charge you cleaning fees even though nothing may be wrong with the lens. This alone will save

you $200 or so. If it is the body, often it can be the battery contacts. Simply changing a battery may be the answer or the

battery isn't accepting a full charge anymore. Hope this helps.