savagesax

Seems like the sun or a flash was used. Notice the white spots in the center of the eyes. Based on the darker face it looks like some adjustments were done to the eyes. Photoshopped or a really good retoucher from the film days. It's hard to say for sure.

I love the baby and the mother photo! On some of the shots the face looks too sharp. I often like to use a soft filter called a Softar 1 or a Softar 1/2. Sometimes adding a prop, such as her holding flowers, can add a lot to the image. Softar is a brand name and these are the best filters on the market. Faces don't look out of focus. For this type of work I like using very long lenses. I prefer a lens between 200 to the 400mm range. However, sometimes there simply is not enough room to take advantage of longer lenses. The worst lenses to use would be wide angle lenses, such as a 35mm lens and wider. Look up how to tilt the head and turn the body to slim down a subject. A good portrait book from the better book stores can surely help. There are a few poses that you have to study, related to lighting and the tilt of the subjects head, such as the masculine pose, the feminine pose, turning the body more, lighting, such as off camera lighting can often shed pounds off of a person. Putting weight on the front leg or the back leg totally changes the image results. There are lighing techniques such as Rembrandt that is really nice to know how to achieve. For closeup work shooting downward can also help make people more attractive and shooting upwards can often make things worse. At photo shoots I often carry a small ladder. A step stool. I've shot a lot of models, including Miss America and non nude Playboy headshots. Miss America was taller than me, so a small ladder is often a must. She was over 6 feet. Lighting is your best friend, so practice using at least 2 lights. Your on camera flash should be used as a fill and your off camera flash would be your main, or more powerful flash setup. Wearing cloths with strips and plaids usually hurts images. Actually in my opinion it Always kills the image. Tell clients to avoid these. I also try to avoid whites, because if you are overexposed the whites get washed out and sometimes actually turn to a light blue tint on parts of the white cloths. If people are tanned or darker skinned black cloths can often work well, however with light shin, peoples faces can look washed out. Hope this helps!

Well the distance kind of matters. How far are you from the subjects? With my experiences with Canon flash units, the 580's, they aren't very accurate after about 10 feet, so I almost always have to make some sort of adjustments. You can adjust the 600's and set the flash to overexpose, such at setting it to Plus 1 or so. I think you can go about 2 stops over, Plus 2. If you have a flash meter the safest results would be to go manual and meter the flash output and set the 600's to half power, full power, whatever the readings are. Your exposures will be dead on. You don't really need a flash meter, just take a few test shots using manual power and set the flash units accordingly. An example is when shooting at a distance of about 12 feet I would set the flash on manual at 1/2 power and the F stop at F-5.6. At 20 feet I'd switch to full power and keep the F stop at F-4. This is using and ISO setting of 400, in a church. So for the very best consistant results go manual. This will surely save you several hours of Photoshop adjustments. I actually use Quantum flash units, and the ETTL or TTL isn't any better compared to the Canon units. I still have to make constant adjustments to avoid hours of Photoshop work. I shoot RAW and and I'm able to edit most weddings in or about 3 hours, so it's worth taking your time with setting up your flash units for perfect exposures. I use these flash units because they have a lot of flash power, compared to most other flash unit's. The only flash unit that I can think of thats more powerful are the Normans.

"Piston" "Cylinder" Confused! I hope there isn't a piston in a Hasselblad! Can you take a photo of what you are referring to? I have complete sets of Hasselblad repair manuals. I don't want you doing something wrong during your repairing and overhauling. Henry, I'm joking of course, but maybe Carrol Shelby owned this camera before you and he installed and a piston and cylinder for faster shutter speeds? I know it's a bad joke. It's way after midnight and I think my brain is fried! Seriously, I admire you for your hard work and the amount of effort you are putting into this camera. Keep us posted!

Just for some knowledge. You can actually use a 24 back and run 120 or 220 film through the 24 back. You just have to remember to check and stop at the 12 mark on the counter when using the 120 film. Using 120 film won't hurt the 220 film back. I did this for many years. Most Hassy photographers prefer the 12 or the 24 back compared to the 16 back. In fact I can't think of a single person that used a 16 back or a 70 back. The main reason is you can crop the image if you wish or keep the image square. When I shot with the hassy's I carried with me the 40mm, 60mm, 80mm, 160mm, 250mm, and the 500mm lenses. By far the 80mm got the most use for wedding work. I carried 3, 80mm lenses, just in case something failed, such as the shutter. For landscapes the 40mm was fantastic. The 160mm was great for portrait work. Some photographers liked the 50mm and the 150mm lenses better than the 60mm and the 160mm lenses. I personally couldn't see the differences with huge enlargements. The 500CM body was the workhorse. I carried 3 bodies, until the 503CW came out. During this period, from about 1987 through 2003 or so, I shot about 40 weddings a year and the cameras really never let me down. Sometimes something would go wrong, but I had backup gear and I was able to fix the cameras myself. Nothing really major ever went wrong with them. Just the shutter, usually the spring broke, a few light leaks, the film overlapping, these were generally fairly easy repairs. So, you've made a very excellent choice. Don't be afraid to enlarge a print to 60X60" The images will be breath taking! One of the cool things about the Hasselblad lenses is if you are using a flash and the flash doesn't fire, changes are the lens shutter spring broke. It's a great safety trick to remember. Sure, it could be a bad sync cord or a bad PC connection, but at least you will know something is wrong during the wedding when the flash doesn't fire. You may miss a few shots at a wedding, but you surely won't wreck the whole wedding, by giving the couple blank film without images! Kadir, you made a great choice. Best of luck!

Very cool - keep us posted.

Hi Anton, with your 5D Mk 2, I think you can safely shoot at an ISO of 1600 for the dark church, but for working outside bring the ISO back down to about 100 to 400. Im my opinion, anything over 1600 can cause unwanted noise, pixelations, with this camera. It's a very good camera. You got some very good advice from the fellow gifted and experienced photographers that have posted. When is the wedding? In you can, post a few pictures on this site. We all like to see how fellow photographers are doing.

I forgot about B&H. Sorry Henry. A great store. I've bought a lot from them and they perhaps the best prices in the country.

Hi J, I had to laugh, I feel the same way.

Are you interested in another type of flash unit? I use Quantum flash units. The cool part with this flash is you can take off the dome and actually go bare bulb. Shooting with bare bulb actually fires light in 360 degrees. They have attachments allowing for 180 degrees direction. When I play around with a fish eye lens needless to say it works great. You can probably get one on ebay, for a decent price, but the cost of a new one could set you back about $1000 for the flash and the battery. Oh, it's also nice when using the 16-35mm zoom. There is also a disadvantage and thats the weight of the flash, plus carrying the battery pack on your belt, also you probably should have 2 battery packs if you shoot a lot of images at a wedding. So the cost then goes up about another $300. As a wedding photographer, the Quantums are great and they last for many years, so it's a good system if you shoot a lot of weddings. A very inexpensive, but high quality flash unit that will cover the 20mm range fairly well is the "Phottix Mitros." It's probably about the same cost as the Canon 430, but it works really well. It comes with a nice concave soft dome for bridal portraits. You don't get that hard flash look on faces. I have 2 of these and I like them better than the Canon 580 flash units. They are also much easier to use, compared to the Canon flashes. There's also the Norman strobes, but these strobes are manual only. They also have the bare bulb and require a battery pack.

Sorry Henry, it's not your day! Keep us posted with what happens. I wish you the best.

Shoot manual, becauase the altar in the church is often well lit. Most of the churches are lit well enough to shoot at a 1/15th of a second at an ISO of 400 to 800. Bring a tripod. Watch your white balance and be ready to adjust the white balance. If your camera setting is set to auto white balance it probably won't work. The colors will be way off. For example the brides white dress may look gray, blue, and even green! If you set your white balance correctly you won't have to do any corrections using photoshop, or some other program. This can save you hours and hours of corrections and every shot that you take will be crisp looking. Also shoot in RAW. If something goes wrong and it usually does, you have much more latitude for corrections. In most churches you can use a flash as the people are walking down the aisle. I hope this church will allow this, so be sure to ask. So set your camera at 1/60th of a second at F5.6. An ISO setting of 400 to 800 will be fine. Also you can surely use a flash when the couples first kiss at the end of the wedding. I'd use the same settings. Most churches no longer allow flash photography during the ceremony. More information is needed from you. I'm not sure what camera and lenses you are using, so I can't recommend an ISO setting over 800 at this time. If it's an older camera, maybe 3 or 5 years old, or a newer inexpensive camera, I surely wouldn't trust higher ISO's. Too many things can go wrong, such as stinky colors and high pixelations. The photos could look horrible. You want to achieve strong vivid color saturations, such as something you would see out of a magazine like National Geographic. Thats your goal. Hope this helps and I hope I don't sound too arrogant. I'm simply trying to help you achieve complete success!

I agree with Tim on this one! KEH is a pretty good store. Sometimes they will advertise a good used lens, but feel free in making an offer at a lower cost. I've done this a few times with my Leica cameras. They've always accepted the offers. Their used lenses are always in better condition than expected. For example. if they rate a lens at an 8 you can expect a lens rating of about a 9. It's actually a fun game to play with them. When you call them the salesman man say no to your offer. Well call back and most likely you will get a different saleman that will accept your offer! There's nothing better than a Hasselblad Zeiss lens. Look for an 80mm C* lens to start off with. Even if it's 50 years old it may work just fine! If the glass is clean you will be all set, even if the rest of the lens shows a lot of wear. The good news is if and when you buy lenses, in 10 or 20 years from now they may still be worth the same price that you paid for them. Russia made a Hasselblad copy called a Kiev, but the lenses won't fit and frankly they aren't very good cameras. You may wish to contact David Odess, a member of this forum. He often has used gear advertised on his website. He's a Master Hasselblad trained technician, so whatever you get from him will be in perfect working condition, even if the lens is 50 years old. Google "David Odess Hasselblad" and something should pop up. It's surely worth giving him a call. Make the move and buy a lens, keep your great Nikon gear. Hope this helps.

Do you have an online account set up? Something like "printroom.com?" You can put all of the wedding photo's up online. Since you are not a true wedding pro yet keep your prices on the lower side, but not real low. 4X6 - $5 5X7 - $8 8X10 - $13 11X14 - $30 16X20 - $50 16X20, framed, mounted, textured, $100 As you gain experience and have shot about 20 plus weddings or so, maybe double these prices. The key to selling at these prices is letting the clients know that you use a professional lab and the pictures come with a lifetime warranty against fading. The labs use special paper. Also, any prints over the size on an 8X10 are custom/hand printed. If they have their printing done at Walmart or some place like that, the photos may fade after a few years.

Travel light! 17-55 and the 70-200. Bring the 50mm. Maybe a mono pod, try to avoid a tripod? A flash? Although I have a large selection of prime lenses I prefer to take only zooms, thus the reason for selecting the above 2 lenses. You could buy an extender, such as the 1.4 converter. You should be able to get some fantastic shots with just the 2 zooms, even if you have to crop using photoshop or some other type of software. The images will be just fine. Not long ago I was reading an article about some of the best photographers that shot with National Geographic. Pretty much all of the photographers don't carry long lenses, mainly due to the weight and always traveling all over the world. I expected them to say that they carry huge 400 to 600mm lenses. Not a single photographer did! They all seem to like short primes, a few liked the short zooms and for whatever reason the 35mm lens was very popular, meaning that almost every photographer carried this lens and it was their favorite lens to use. Another favorite lens was the Nikon 105mm lens. Well weddings are surely different so when traveling I carry a fish eye, because it's so small, the 16-35mm, the 24-105mm and maybe the 70-200. 2 bodies and 2 flash units. I live in California and it seems that every year I have to go to another state to shoot some weddings. For example I have to shoot a wedding in Rochester, NY this June. Well traveling on the dang planes suck! If you carry too much gear the case may not fit in the carry on, overhead storage, and you surely don't want to put the cameras through the baggage check in.

Well the good news is it's an old camera and replcing them isn't too expensive! Isn't the cam metal? Can you take a picture of it? Along with the arms?

I'm not sure which screw you are referrring to. However, try not to strip the screw head. If that happens sometimes the only way left is to drill out the screw. Needless to say you need some special tools, such as a tap and it's hard to find one this small. Can you try putting a drop of Easy Out on the screw and let it set for several hours? Maybe 12 to 24 hours. I'm not a fan of using something like Easy Out on a Hassy, but it probably can't hurt at this point. Before you dig yourself deeper into trouble, maybe have David adjust the mirror for you. He is a master.

With water, reflections are pretty common. Use a circular polarizer. By moving the circular polarizer in different directions you should be able to get rid of the glare. A regular polarizer may not work. Try to set your camera at F11 to F16, pretty much everything will be in focus. Then set the shutter speed to around 1/1000th of a second to stop motion. Adjust the ISO accordingly. As for lenses the 100 to 400 is a pretty sharp lens. Have a good time!

Good question! I think you can handhold the camera without any issues. The flash should completely stop any slow movement. If you weren't using a flash I would surely recommend a pod. Make sure that the studio lights are dimmed or turned off and the modeling lights are also dimmed. At a 1/30th of a second you can surely pick up unwanted room lighting. Higher ASA/ISO film, such as an ASA/ISO of 800 speed film and higher, may not work very well, because the film could pick up that unwanted room lighting. So with a darker room setting you will achieve better results. To be safe I'd try to use a film rating of around 100. I'd use an F-stop setting of around 8 to 11, to help shut down unwanted lights. Hope this helps. Do you have a flash meter? If not, you may want to look into getting something like the Minolta 4F. This surely makes life a lot easier.

By the way, the reason for perhaps wanting a brighter focusing screen is it's hard to focus when you are in darker types of places. For example, if you shoot weddings the reception rooms make it very difficult to see and focus, because the room can be too dark, so the standard Hasselblad focusing screens don't really work very well. Your images may wind up being out of focus. If you buy the 503CW this camera body already comes with a bright screen. Kind of cool. Hasselblad did a nice upgrade with the 503CW. Feel free in emailing me. I can offer more advice if needed.

I've owned a lot of different bodies. When you use longer lenses such as a 250mm, the 350mm, or even the 500mm lenses as you look through the view finders of the older bodies the images look vignetted, meaning that the images get darker towards the sides of your view finder. My favorite body was the 503CW because with the floating mirror as Dave wrote about. This vignetting kind of went away, but not completely. This mirror is larger compared to the 500C and the 500CM bodies. Don't get the 500C. If you want to change to a brigher focusing screen it's kind of hard to set the focus, because you have to adjust the 4 screws at each corner of the screen. It's not easy. With all of the other models you simply drop in the new brighter focusing screens. There's no adjustments needed, no screws.

I haven't shot with the Pentax 6X7 since the early 1990's. Although you are correct about the 1/30 synch, Pentax has a few lenses with the shutters built into the lenses. I think one of them is the 90mm or the 75mm? If someone can pop in that knows which lenses these are will allow you to synch at a much higher speed. Perhaps 1/500th of a second? Sorry, it's been too long to remember, however I remember that these lenses with the built in shutters had fantastic glass. I'm also not sure if these lenses had a PC connection to plug into your radio slaves. If so, getting one of these lenses may solve your problem. Sorry that I can't remember, however fellow photo.net members will know!

Very strange that this happened, even though it's out of warranty the seals should have held up way past the warranty period. Very frustrating too, because Canon repairs are expensive and they can be on the slow side taking about a few weeks to get serviced. Kind of sucks.

A really great video. I've fixed this problem a few times. I did my own Hassy repairs, however I don't repair cameras as a camera repair service. Hasselblad in New Jersey can surely fix this, but I'd rather send it to a member of this forum named David Odess and support him. He is factory trained and my guess his turnaround time will be faster. Google David. It should pop up on the first page. Google David Odess, Hasselblad repair. By the way, don't attempt to repair this yourself. It can get kind of complicated, mainly the timing between the upper and lower shutter curtain. For example it's pretty easy to screw up the alignment.

First, I have to agree with the posts above. Well the camera is labeled as water resistant. So there is some problem here in my opinion, with the body not being sealed properly. I must say that it is not a water proofed camera of course. Thats a no brainer! When you undergo high humidity your concern of course is condensation, but I would think that this camera should be able to repel any of these issues. The camera is water resistant. Note the the 5D Mark 2 is not water resistant. I think my concern here would be that the camera may have been mishandled. Bumbed, dropped, something like that, causing one of the seals to leak slightly. Although the 5D Mark 3 camera is water resistant, it's not built like a tank, such as the 1Ds series cameras. I have the 1Ds Mk 3 cameras and I haven't had any problems with moisture, even shooting in a light rainfall, sprinkles. One of the cameras has been dropped off of a tripod. It didn't even suffer a scratch! I have one 5D Mark 3 camera and I won't use it in the rain. I don't trust it. It's so light in weight! I'd rather use the Canon tanks, like the 1Ds Mk 3 cameras. You can buy these for a good price used, for about the same price as a new 5D Mark 3. A lot of photographers still use the 1Ds Mark 2 cameras. These cameras don't break down. Hope this helps.