savagesax

After many years of doing weddings, since 1988, I don't think you need a pile of lenses, or actually change any of the lenses that you already have. I really like the Canon 70-200 L IS lens, but I hardly ever use it for weddings. Here's my thoughts since you don't sound like wedding photography will become a full-time profession right now. See if you can you can obtain a spare camera and a spare flash, just in case the camera or the flash decides to malfunction. Borrowing would be ideal. I also like to keep things simple, meaning not to change lenses a lot. You could do a complete wedding with just one zoom lens, like the 17-70 Sigma, or the 50mm lens. Your photo's will be very sharp. Often important parts of the weddings fly by and you don't have enough time to be messing around with changing lenses. You may miss some shots. If you really want to buy something new and fun, pick up the Canon T5I, because of the clean higher ISO's.

The Hasselblad straps hook up differently, compared to pretty much any other camera. You probably already know this. So with this in mind are the Hasselblad strap lugs connected to the original camera body lug posts or perhaps the lugs were altered or changed? To be honest I've never heard of one popping off the body, so I'm at a loss. Maybe a service repair tech can fix this or come up with another type of attachment. Sorry that I haven't been of much help, however it's surely interesting!

Can you talk a bit about your lighting setups? This is important to me for portraiture type of work and setting up the camera correctly. Are you using more than one light or perhaps 2 or more lights? Often I will use up to 5 external lights, but not very often. I can't ever recall shooting at 1.8 or less, although a few of my lenses go below 1.2, such as a few Rangefinger Leica lenses. One of the Leica lenses is .95! WOW! The magic F-stop settings for me is around F-4 to F-5.6 for outdoor work. This totally depends on the lens I'm using. Longer lenses, such as around 200 to 400mm's are almost always at F-5.6. When working outside the background around the 4 to 6 foot mark will go blurry with longer lenses, out of focus in a very pleasing way. At 1.2 or less, such as with a 50mm or an 85mm lens often the nose and eyes may be in focus, but the ears will be soft, so we need to be very careful. With shorter lenses, such as a 28mm you should be fine, however I hate the look of 28mm lens portraits. The longer the lens - the better most people look. For indoor studio work, using 2 or more strobe lights this varies a bit. Such as working with hard high key light compared to the soft romantic lighting look. With regards to setting up the lights generally I'm around F-4 to F-11. I can't recall ever being over F-11 or under F-4. You actually asked a very difficult question, because of all the rules related to portraits. Hope this helps.

Lighting and posing are the keys to great portraits. I think lighting is number one, the key to mastering great photo's. I'd buy some books, even books from the 1960's show excellent lighting techniques. At 1 time I probably had about 100 books! Don't go crazy as I did, but take studying seriously, sometimes more serious than college classes. Depends on your teachers knowledge. Some of the gear you will need for studio work are external strobes, (umbrellas, silver, white, and gold), backdrops, digital backgrounds, green screens, reflectors, and soft boxes both large, light 3 to 6 feet and small ones. In my opinion you will also need soft filters. I prefer the brand "Softar," 1/2 to 1 strength. Buy as needed. Everything I've listed can add up to about $10,000 and more. Needless to say, keep up your skills with the Photoshop products.

Well here comes more science! It's worth reading. Again, good questions. Hopefully us fellow readers will save you lots of wasted money from damaged gear, by doing the things you want to achieve the correct way. First, how are you attaching the receiver and the flash? Can you post a pic? I think you you will be fine, but I'd like to see a photo before saying yes. Mainly the receiver. If it's a wireless transmitter and receiver, such as a radio slave you should be OK. The thing that could happen is you may need to set the flash to Auto or Manual. Needless to say TTL won't work. Setting to the TTL mode the flash will probably fire the flash at full power, such as full Manual power. My concern is I don't know about this flash, the Yongnuo YN622C set up. There is a slim chance that it could actually get very hot and short out, starting with the batteries getting too hot. Actually so hot that you can't even handhold when touching the batteries. Then the flash dies from overheating, again circuit burns, resisters, and other parts of the circuit board. Now the science part - This gets a bit complicated, so bear with me. You can buy a generic flash, such as a Vivitar 183 or 185 for little money. They last forever and very inexpensive. If you look at the bottom of the hot shoe on these flashes there's only 1 prong sticking out of the center of this shoe. Canons, Nikons, and several other shoes all have this center shoe post, but they also have 3 to 5 other posts/prongs/pins sticking out of the shoes. These extra posts are set up for TTL, and other types of operations, such as the flash sync above 250th of a second, and the second curtain camera sync. These posts, pins, prong, whatever you wish to call them have other operational functions; I've just listed a few. As I said it gets complicated. So lets make it simple. Buy a flash that only has one prong sticking out of the hot shoe. This is your voltage prong. Every camera has one with standard mounts. Some of the Sony cameras and the Minolta cameras sadly use non standard mounts. Long story short if you buy a non dedicated flash that has the only one centered prong, without any other prongs sticking out it should work fine on your camera and the chance of voltage overloads are slim. Vivitar flash units are still considered very decent flash units. You can also check out Sunpak, and some of the Metz strobes. Again, before you buy one, make sure it only has one prong. That's your key to camera safety. Pretty much all of the new modern cameras will accept the one pronged hot shoe mounts. My personal suggestion is to go with a dedicated Canon or non Canon flash and buy some really cheap, inexpensive radio slaves on ebay for about $30 for your external flash use. Post a picture if you wish.

Fantastic! Thanks for sharing the story!

Tom Musselman actually is very dead on. It's a common problem for wedding photographers. Wedding photographers often work in very dark reception halls as well as churches and temples. Also night time backyard weddings are very difficult. The major problems are the cameras won't focus and the flash is often over or under exposed. I actually use radio slaves and set up external strobes, but that's a totally different subject. The cost for upgrading your camera to a Canon T5 isn't isn't that much Maybe $450 or less. This could help solve some of your problems. An added dedicated non Canon or a Canon flash could help a lot as well, such as with regards to Williams comment - ETTL. Bouncing is a fantastic idea and an excellent technique and with a dedicated non Canon flash or an actual Canon flash will surely help. I think people will be happier with you and the results of the images will also improve. After 10 to 15 feet and back from your subjects I don't usually bounce the flash, because the flash lacks power and you most likely will be underexposed. You may wish to rewrite your problem and post it on the wedding website, or ask for permission to forward this question to the wedding site. Double posting isn't allowed, but maybe the moderators will make an exception. Some of the people that already posted are wedding photographers. It takes a lot of practice to get that perfect image balancing the camera and your flash. You could also post a few pictures, or even one image. This could surely help me and a lot of the others guide you to camera settings that may help nail down better quality images. For example, when it's dark I like to have my camera or camera's set at the same ISO setting, the same F-stop, and the same shutter speeds. I also shoot in manual mode 99 percent of the time. So this setup allows me to make flash adjustments and avoid any camera adjustments. Needless to say a lot of photographers have their own ways of balancing the flash and the camera as one unit and it's worth hearing from them. If people are complaining about how bright your flash is this shouldn't really happen. So asking for help is a very smart move.

Good questions. I like the "Thin," filter quality glass filters such as for polarizing. For nature I also like using oversize filters such as 6 inch square filters, such as a 3 F-stop Neutral Density filter. They can of course be expensive but the quality is usually very good. I'm perhaps going overboard here over overkill, but I do believe in quality filters to match your quality lenses. I sometimes carry crappy plastic filters, $10 lens filters for safety only, however I remove them before taking a photo. Back to the thin polarizing filters. With the 16x35mm, no problems. No vignetting. As David wisely says, don't stack them.

As Bob says you can damage, even burn the circuits. I wouldn't do it. It's an interesting subject so lets talk science for a second. It only takes less than 5 volts to fry a circuit board. Actually only 3 volts can often wreck a circuit board, such as a motherboard on a computer. Scary, but true! A very good non Canon flash, but a dedicated Canon flash unit is the Phottix Mitrox. I actually like it better than the Canon flashes. Comes with a very nice soft diffuser for excellent bridal portraits to light up the brides eyes. Just one example. It's also great for nature work and pretty much anything that requires the use of a decent flash. The cool part is it's VERY easy to operate. Good luck, hope this helps.

Don't think so, the Pentax backs are hinged and can't be removed very easily. In short, the Pentax backs aren't removable, unless some sort of modifications are made.

Thanks William! With lots of wedding shots to look at every week we may learn a lot and get new ideas. Even from the somewhat old timers such as me! Thanks again for giving it some thought and consideration! I agree, the more simple it is constructed the better it is for everyone! Actually there probably isn't a need for other people to place a rating on the posted photo's. The person posting the image can simply say where it was taken, maybe what lens was used and that's about it! Bob

I was looking at the assorted sites here on photo.net and they have things like Canon Thursday when people post some of their work. There's also a medium format day. So once a week if people wish to post a pic or 2 they can? Is this a bad idea? Can we do something like this for weddings? Call it "Weekend Weddings," or something? Just an idea...

Take some photo's and post a few. Then we can help fine tune your approach to medium format. The 501CM will bring you lots of great images! Congrats! As you take the photos you may have some questions, such as using a flash, camera brackets, good tripods, and much more.

Whats interesting about the vignetting is even with the Hassy bodies like 503CW, when using the longer 350mm to their 500mm lenses you still get that vignetting, but it's better. You asked - "What does in-leaf shutter mean?" It simply means that the main shutter is built into the lens and also the body of the camera. Most 35mm and some medium format cameras only use the shutters built into the body of the cameras. This can cause some problems. When using a flash with a Hasselblad you can fire your flash at 1/500th of a second or less. With a medium format camera such as the Pentax 6x7 most of the lenses don't have shutters built into them. You can only use the Pentax 6x7 body at a 1/30th of a second, so that can really cause havoc when using a flash. However, we have to remember that Pentax makes a few lenses with shutters built into them and you can use a much faster shutter speed. You CAN change the screens out on the 500C body, but it's a pain. It can take hours to get the camera in focus, because you have to adjust all 4 corner screws of the focusing screen. For that reason any of the other Hassy bodies are a snap to change focusing screens, only takes about 30 seconds. You just drop them in! My first choice by far would to buy the 503CW. If money is an issue, buy the 500CM. They made so many of these bodies and the cost to replace one isn't very much. There are very expensive Hassy metered prisms for the Blads and they work OK. However, I like the hand held flash meters. I have 2 Minolta Flash Meter 4F unit's, but I don't think they make them anymore. Sekonic meters are very good. Hopefully, I spelled that correctly! These flash meters come in handy if you are using a flash. They also work really well when shooting with off camera flash units, such as side lighting flowers or something like that when doing your nature work and portraits. All of the Hasselblad lenses are really sweet. So buy with confidence. My least favorite lens was the 500mm, because the F-stop started at F8. It did go to F64! Shooting at F64 was kind of cool! The lens is very long and you need a strong tripod. The lens is very sharp. I didn't really have a favorite lens, because they are all so great. The most used lens was the 80mm and the 60mm for nature work. I also really liked the 40mm for a really wide angle shot. For portraits the 150 and the 160mm lenses were amazing. When shooting close-up's of the faces of brides, the mothers, and the grandparents, I often added the Hasselblad Softar 1 filter. The lenses are so sharp that I had to take that edge off by using a soft filter. The Softar 1 filter, in my opinion, is the finest soft filter ever made. Hope this helps!

Yes I agree that the group shots are the most boring part of shooting weddings sometimes. It seems that at every wedding people are wandering around and you have to wait for them to show up for the assorted group shots. Often you are very limited on time, so this too adds stress levels. I usually ask a few of the members of the bridal party chase down the missing people. As I'm shooting one group of people I announce who the next set of people are on deck. I like to shoot the group shots in a special order, starting with the grandparents and the older people, then work your way down to the large family shots, then to the actual family, then to the bridal party and lastly the bride and groom. It's more of having fun with the people. Showing the people that you care. Joking around is a very good thing. When selling photo's, reorders, at least half of our reorders are with group photo's, so these photo's are indeed valuable to the wedding party. It's hard to get people to smile so joking with them brings out the natural smiles. Have fun with posing the people. In fact I use a tripod for the group shots so I can move around and pose people correctly. This gives me the freedom of actually touching the people, again sometimes joking with them, getting the taller people in the back and the shorter people up front. If you don't do this they kind of look at you and totally ignore you, causing frustrations with you and when you look at the images later on during the editing, often you can't see some of the people, because they refused to listen to you. It helps to make a list of the order in which you want to take the photo's. Then supply a few key people, such as the bridal party members that list, so they can help round up the missing people. So the bottom line here is to be in complete control and you will gain the trust and the people will actually follow your directions. Hope this helps!

Dang, the file won't upload. A problem with the tiff conversion. By the way, shoot in RAW and save as a TIF file. Do not use jpeg files. EVER! A lot of the my painting images I save as a Tiff are 100 megabyte files. Jpeg files can be as little as 3 or so megabytes. If you wish to email me I will be happy to send off an example.

Well I shoot a fair amout of paintings. In some cases hard lighting is fine, usually 2 lights are set up at about 35 to 45 degrees. The major problem with shooting paintings is if the painter often uses canvas. With hard lighting you will surely get reflections so you need to use umbrellas or softboxes. This is why 45 degrees may not be ideal and you will have to increase the degree of your lighting setup. Because you are shooting large paintings and drawings you will surely get light dropping off. For example if you meter the center of the painting the light meter may read F8 and at the far corners on top and on the bottom of these large paintings you may get an Fstop reading of F5.6 or so. So large 60 inch umbrellas and large softbaxes could be a must. You can often correct this problem, the light fall off in photoshop, but you very much risk color changes. Another probelm is distortion. For example, the bottom of the painting may be wider or narrower than the top of the painting. Because of this I use longer lenses. Actually I now use a tilt lens. If you start doing a lot of this type of work buy a tilt/shift 90mm lens. I have Canon gear. Sadly, when shooting with a 50mm I don't think a 60 inch image will be distortion free. So can you rent a tilt/shift lens? I know you were looking for the perfect setup and the least expensive way to make this photo shoot work and you can perhaps get away with a 50mm lens by cropping in photoshop. If you were shooting something the size of perhaps a 2 or 3 foot painting you'd probably get away with it. Keep your lights as far back as you can, for more even flash control. 10 feet away would be ideal. Try to use a very low ISO, such as 50 to 100. The below example was shot using lights with 60 inch umbrellas, at about 30 degrees to get rid of the reflective surfaces. I used White Lightning strobes.

Nice catture David! Where was this taken?

You surely don't have to worry about time wasted. I'm glad that it wasn't anything more serious! Have fun and enjoy the great camera and the wonderful 3 lenses.

I agree with Brian. If for some reason you are strapped for money the digital medium format Pentax cameras are pretty nice with the 40 or the new 50 megapixel sensors. The issue here is the limited lenses available for the Pentax cameras. If you can afford the Hassy, go for it.

Well the above answers could solve your problems. It's also possible, but highly unlikely that the mirror hinges are hanging up or out of adjustment, bent slightly if the mirror hung up and a past owner tried to force the mirror back into position, but you would know this by every photo being out of focus and also having difficulty focusing at any range. It's possible that part of the photo may be sharper than another part. Again, highly unlikely, but possible. My first thought when reading the post is Mukul's comments. Is this with all of the lenses? If so, my guess is it's surely a problem with the CM body, including the focusing screen, not the lenses. I've always liked bright screens, not the standard Hassy screens. So when getting a new/used camera body I always changed out the screens. With the CM you simply drop the new bright screen in. No adjustments are needed. This was a really great improvement from the 500 C bodies. With those C bodies you had to adjust all 4 corner screws. So knowing this perhaps a past owner of your camera messed around with these 4 screws? When you do your portrait test try to use F11 on all of the lenses. With most lenses, not just Hasselblad lenses F8 to F11 is often the sharpest settings of the lenses. Keep us posted. This is an interesting issue.

Well done! It's hard to believe it's the same shot! You should make a DVD and teach this process step by step. I'd surely buy it your DVD! Amazing!

My first idea is to buy a green screen with stands, a 10X20 foot green screen. So the wall is covered as well as the floor. The cost on ebay is pretty inexpensive. Then buy their solfware program, perhaps about $40. This software will allow you to highlight the objects, furniture for example, and you can then change the background to pretty much anything you want, from a black background to a white background. You can also make your own backgrounds, such as taking a photo of a white wall. The problem is you will have to learn how to use the software, perhaps 3 hours of playing around with it should get you up to speed. For pro quality looking images I would use 2 flash units on stands, with white umbrellas, 45 to 60 inches and put a large white sheet of cardboard on the floor, away from the image of course, aimed at the background. Set the flash units to each side of the camera, perhaps about 3 feet apart and at about 4 feet off of the ground. When the flash units fire some of the flash will bounce off of the white cardboard, getting rid of the harsh shadows you were concerned about.

Hi Leo, Thanks for the information. This helps a lot! With a budget of $2000 or so I'd surely look at a mint, used, full frame, pro camera. My favorite Canon camera at the moment is the 1Ds Mark 3. You can find one at a good store like KEH or B&H with a 180 day warranty starting around $1500 in average condition to $2000 in mint, like new condition. Just a few years ago this camera sold new for $8000. The shutters in these cameras last for 300,000 clicks. I've made very clean enlargements up to 40X60 inches. I also have a 5D Mark 3 and I'm selling it. The color saturation doesn't match the quality of the 1Ds Mark 3 cameras. Even at low ISO's, such as 100, the colors don't pop like the 1Ds Mark 3's. I must say that the 5D Mark 3 does have less pixel problems above an ISO setting of 3200 and higher. However, I NEVER shoot above 1600. In fact I hardly ever go above 800! So for me the 1Ds Mk 3 is the perfect camera for me. I have a good relationship with Canon in California. A few of the techs know me by name. They told me just this past Friday that the 5Ds will be in the stores in June. The cost will be around $3650 for a medium format sensor; 50 megapixels! If you wait just one year or so and opt for this used camera I'm sure it will be priced around $1500 in mint condition. I have no issues with buying used pro gear. I've bought Hasselblads, Leica rangefinders, and recently I bought a used Phase One 80 megapixel camera with a 5 lenses for very little money. If you shop at good camera stores that offer warranties you will be just fine. Since you have some Canon quality lenses I wouldn't jump ship and go to Nikon. Lastly, I would surely go full frame. Hope this helps - bob

Thank you everyone for your excellent help and knowledge! I really appreciate your time, efforts, and your professionalism to help me out!