dave404

<p>I think its always best to do your editing in a color space that matches where the output is going. So unless you know better sRGB is safest. The conversion between a much high gamut space and a lower one can result in muddying up your colors. You should test out the lab and shoot RAW so you can convert into both color spaces.</p>

<p>Consider investing in a plugin to control noise like Imaginomic Noiseware, Noise Ninja, etc. Download the trail software and test it out. I am not up on stand alone products but I'll bet you can google up some.</p>

<p>I rarely use my STE2 and instead if I am shooting ETTLII I usually have an off camera key light and an on camera fill, both canon units (580/550) and I use ratio control. If the going gets tough and I can not move around the off camera light, I ditch the second light andswitch to trying to bounce. You have that capability already. Since you also have non canon flash units the PW or remote trigger option is looking like the better choice. I have my old Sunpak handlemount flash operating nicely with my Canon flashes using Cybersync transmitters. Plus, I can take out my Alien Bees or a one of my Alien Bees if I need something powerful. The Cybersyncs are cheap, resonalby well constructed and reliable. Before going to ebay triggers I would suggest Cybersync.</p>

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<p>You should do your corrections targeting them towards your final color space. Espeically if you are having it printed in a publication which would be CMYK. There are are many fiasco stories of the unwitting photographer that sent out Adobe RGB to a commercial printer. Most of these colors that are out of gamut will get flattened and the image quality will suffer. If you are printing on your home printer you can wring out some extra color, but you can suffer quality loss all the while expecting better color in that bigger gamut color space.</p>

<p>Here is the FAQ from the site I use for printing.<br /> When you go to save your JPG files please remember the following points:</p>

<ol>

<li>Save the JPG in the sRGB color space only. (<strong>Do NOT upload in Adobe RGB or any other color profile. </strong> This will only result in substandard color correction) </li>

<li>Do not save the JPG with any embedded profile.</li>

<li>Do not save the JPG with any attached thumbnails (common with Photoshop and Lightroom editing...)</li>

</ol>

<p>Shoot in RAW and save the RAW files so you can take advantage of that down the road and beware the urge to use the best and widest color space.</p>

<p>As long as you do not interfere with the paid photographer I see no problems. Don't get in the way. A longer lens would allow you to snipe certain moments in the distance that will probably not be captured. If you know the people, unlike the paid photographer you have the advantage of knowing who is who and capture moments that they would otherwise let slip by. Just be friendly with the paid photographers and let them do their thing.</p>

<p>If you are always spot on in exposure and photographing a scene without a huge difference in dynamic range, go for the JPG. If you are shooting in a more challenging environment and are a mere mortal, RAW has the extra dynamic range and and control to allow you to save the shot. <br>

Besides the extra dynamic range you should understand what happens when you take a picture with a digital camera. Unbenownst to you a great many decisions are made by a software programmer you will never meet who is trying to figure our what you are looking for in the photograph. This guy may be good programmer but the tools at hand are limited.<br>

First the camera will attempt to figure out the white balance by searching for the brightest object and assuming it is white. No the bright yellow light reflecting off the disco ball at the wedding is not white, but the camera knows it must be white. Your beautiful bride's (standing next to the disco ball) dress will of course be adjusted accordingly and the camera will assume you want the reflection in the disco ball to be properly exposed. Presto, the bride's dress measures R129 G120 B180, nice blue and quite dark. You lost half the range and have a nice exposure of a reflection off a disco ball. Of course the camera will then drop from 12 or so bits down to 8 and apply a gamma curve for nice tonality over this range. A nice contrast boost in the "mid tones" and you are ready to get your a** handed to you by an angry bride.<br>

In an early post on this forum there was a poster that had a grey cat photographed in nice lighting and wanted to know what RAW had to offer. Well Mr Wong or whoever wrote the software had an evenly lit grey cat as his model when he wrote the software. I write a lot of software, but you have to know its limitations. By using RAW you defer the decisions until you are safe at your computer and can make the decisions yourself.<br>

One other thing, the RAW file is a real negative. No accidental edits and SAVE commands to ruin it. I convert to DNG and archive those. That is another advantage.</p>

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<p>Seamless is cheap and don't forget you can GEL your background lights to get different colors. Less wrinkles in seamless paper also. For muslins and canvas backgrounds, Amvona has a good selection that are relatively cheap. <br>

I tried chromacolor with the intent of solving all my background needs with one background and some Photoshop work, but always fought with the spill since I do not have enough depth where I shoot to get the subject far enough from the background.</p>

<p>If you shoot a Macbeth reference chart or some other white balance card you should be able to come up with some good estimates. Click the eyedropper in ACR on a grey square. Probably not up to the quality of a light meter that is designed for measuring color.</p>

<p>Shoot RAW because it gives you a lot of exposure latitude. White dresses, black suits equals a large dynamic range. You can always shoot both and if you need the RAW you got it.<br>

Also for indoor work, I also GEL my flashes with CTO 1/4 (orange). This makes the flash output approximately tungsten like the room lights. Then in Photoshop I set the white balance - typically off of the collar of a nice white shirt. Then you can apply that white balance to a whole batch of shots in Photoshop. Voila. Get rid of those nasty yellow casts on the background right away.<br>

Not sure how easy it is to do in DPP, probably not bad.</p>

<p>Study the PlanetNeil site quite a lot, especially dragging the shutter and other concepts. Avoid direct flash by bouncing it. Also, if you have two flashes you can set up an off camera 580 as the key light on a stand or with an assistant holding it and have another 580 on camera as fill. In ETTL mode you can set ratios - just remember that Canon's flashes have it all backwards in how they present the ratios. Doing full manual in a hectic wedding is nice if you can hack it. Here is a good reference.<br>

http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/#faq7<br>

You may be tempted to open up your lens to maximize the ambient light, just watch the depth of field closely. Also use manual mode and make sure you are not shooting so slow you get objectionable blurr.<br>

Practice a lot and good luck.</p>

 

<p>You can measure the voltage out of the 285 and see if its in range of your camera with a simple volt meter. Assuming your camera can still fire another flash you should be good to go.<br>

Google up "sync voltage flash" and you should find a pretty good list of flashes and sync voltages, although my old Sunpak handlemount flash has nowhere near the voltage they have on the list. But it is never on the camera either.<br>

I would use the Vivitar flash for off camera strobist type stuff and get a speedlight to match your camera. Then you have ETTL-II for those occassions where you want automatic operaton or a manual setup with multiple flashes.</p>

<p>Many astronomical subjects are actually fairly large in the telescope. My Celestron 8 at the prime focus can not hold the entire moon in one image or just barely. The 1.6 crop camera, 40D will be worse. They sell a reducer corrector for this prime focus photography which can cut the C8 from 1000mm f/8 to 500mm f/4 and get a better field of view. Whether you use a Newtonian or something else the same image scale problems.<br>

Another approach to is to just use the camera as a platform to drive the camera around. In piggyback mode you can get quite a lot of objects without the pain of manually correcting for drive errors.<br>

To average out noise there is a free program called deep sky stacker that can combine many photographs of the same area into one, much better rendition. Have not tried it personally.<br>

I used to do this photography a lot, but you have to travel far from the city lights and find a good site where you will not be disturbed, arrested or harassed. Then there is the weather.<br>

At least planets and the moon can be shot easily from the suburbs.</p>

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<p>The big reason to go with the L zoom is want to be flexible and not have to keep changing lenses and yet still want a very good lens. Some people are prime lens purists. If you are at an event though, you don't want people to have to wait for you to switch to a wider lens to get a group shot. You also don't need the extra chance of a mishap when changing lenses. I have already dropped my 20D into deep snow at Lake Tahoe during a lens swap - I kept the 70-200 2.8L in my hand and the camera fall. Fortunately I had the giotto blower to clean it out.<br>

Bad choice selling the 24-70. Its a very good range on a 5D. I have augmented my 24-70 with a 85mm 1.8 for the extra stop and to have a backup lens at 85 mm on my 5D. Primes have their place bit nobody wants to wait for you to change lenses.</p>

 

<p>When you "modify" a RAW file in ACR or some other RAW converter you are not really changing the pixel data, you are changing metadata that inserted in the file. This is just setting information you created when you "edited" the RAW file in the converter. If you use the camera vendors format (say Canon CR2) if you make change in ACR you save them most likely to a "sidecar XMP" format file (XMP which is a form of XML the web savy), which is a text file that has the same file name but is named dot XMP. This file contains just settings that have to be interpreted by a RAW converter that reads them, the white balance, tint, all the settings on the sliders. If you do not have sidecar XMP option selected they go to the place Photoshop keeps a central database - the worst choice since the settings are separate from the RAW file. I convert to Adobe DNG and therefore I do not need these sidecar files and the setting get saved with the RAW data. Still, the RAW data is not overwritten and is essentially a NEGATIVE. These settings are like adjustment layers in Photoshop - no pixels just instructions for how to modify the pixels.<br>

The RAW converter ACR or DPP will convert the pixels from the camera into Pixel data that photoshop can use and then write out as JPG or TIFF or PSD.</p>

<p>Just back up your work and don't worry about it. Workflow should include importation, processing and archival. I run a script that offloads the memory card and puts the images on two drives, then converts to DNG and puts all the files in a date stamped project directory. I archive all the DNGs so I can go back at any time. I then sort things out in bridge.<br>

Once you learn actions you can have bridge open up your photos and create adjustment layers, etc so they are there when it opens it in Photoshop. You can also have it pump out default processing of JPGS if you want. Usually I do 1-4 min of work most shots.<br>

Note that adjustment layers themselves do not add much to the file, they are virtual layers that are not pixels - until you add a mask but even that is smaller and more compact than a pixel layer. IN any case since I convert modes (CMYK or LAB) a lot and so I have to flatten and so I do not save many of these intermediate files unless the picture is important. One time I do save intermediate images is on faces after spending a lot of time taming zits and hair problems. Once is enough.</p>

<p>WACOM = Less Carpel Tunnel syndrome + better results in less time<br>

the Wacom mouse is crappy so I still use a regular mouse. the Intuos 6x8 inch tablet is one of my best purchases. I could never paint with a mouse.</p>

<p>May have used some dodging of the whites of the eyes or a curve on an adjustment layer with a mask (or screen blend mode and mask). Eyes have been kicked up a lot including the catchlight.</p>

<p>Even though you say the colors "look fine", another thing to consider is the color space you are working in. If you are working in Adobe RGB and handing off to a print show that only does sRGB and ignores the embedded ICC profile, it will get flattened. On your home printer I would expect it to be better.</p>

<p>There are plenty of internet resources, even video tutorials on Youtube. Camp out for a while in Barnes and Nobel, the number of Photoshop books is very large.<br>

Books by the Late Bruce Frasier, Scott Kelly and others are very good. You need to learn basics not cookie cutter procedures. An overview book that goes thorough the commands is another good item to have in the book case.<br>

Some books approach Photoshop from a Graphic Artist perspective, you want to go more of a photographer's approach.</p>

<p>I bought some backgrounds from Kaeser before off ebay, so he is reputable. Not sure if would invest in Cheap Chinese strobes. I have a pair of Chinese strobes that I got as a gift. They are solid - but cheap and feature poor. Only a rocker switch to set power level in 1/4 1/2 1/1 settings. If you lower the power settings you must drain the charge from the flash capacitor manually by hitting the test button since it does not dump it for you. They do not recycle quickly, not terrible in a home studio, but slow compared to AlienBees.<br>

When buying strobes think of your future needs and the ability to buy accessories to fit the strobes. Also, mixing and matching equipment later on (like I do) is a pain to do. I stick to my AlienBee strobes but use the Chinese ones for kickers and similar types of illumination. Wish I had all AB stuff at a minimum. -- but those Chinese strobes were a gift, much better than a tie I guess.</p>

<p>First, of course try to light the face properly to avoid the shadows. If the bags are heavy, or the subject has zits or other facial problems don't be a purist and try to avoid Photoshop. You may want to duplicate the background layer, gaussian blurr it and the paint in the mask where you want to soften the image. Then lower opacity for the layer. This digital makeup will allow you to keep the eyes and lips sharp and concentrate on the problem skin. Another useful approach is painting onto a soft-light neutral layer to get rid of wrinkles and some of the worst spots. Of course the good old healing brush in lighten mode can help. Just don't try to hide all the flaws, just lessen them.</p>

<p>Good luck. I have two of the smaller Excalibur's (a gift) but went to Alien Bees. Do they service them in the USA? Probably not.<br>

Perhaps its just a short and opening he unit will lead to an obvious solution. Its not like opening an old Tv or Microwave where a big charges sit around waiting to zap you. Discharge the flash with the trigger and have no A/C attached. If there is not an obvious problem with broken wires some charred damage that can be fixed with a Radio Shack solder iron you are probably out of luck.</p>

<p>The portable flashes are great, but having a studio strobe or two would be nice to have. The flashes lack a modeling light like a studio strobe and I think you can learn more using this type of light as your key. Using wireless triggers you could get get the 580-550 as fill, accent or hair light.<br>

Nathans observation about large groups is true, you have to watch the shadows and light falloff across the whole group. With one studio light you could get a small softbox or broully box.<br>

Of course also look at the Alien Bee stuff.</p>

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<p>Paul Buff is coming out with a new wireless commander to allow them to control Alienbee strobes from a central source so don't confuse them. Paul Buff's customer service is very good and you can talk to them on the phone to make sure you are buying the right thing. No phone calls to Bangalore.<br>

You seem interested in the Cybersync CST Transmitter and Cybersync CSRB. Both are battery operated, and work well for studio use with any strobe or with a flash. If your flash has a jack like the 580EXII it will plug in directly, otherwise the flashzebra or Paramount cords has an attachment to the bottom of the flash tha that will attach directly to the receiver. Beware using the stand that comes with the flash, as its prone to slip off. My 500Ex cost $80 to repair the last time it slipped off. Buy a light stand and a bracket to mount the flash.<br>

The receiver is good in that it takes standard AA batteries while the transmitter battery is a pretty standard watch type battery that lasts quite a long time and can be found at any Radio Shack.<br>

The only problem I have with Cybersyncs is the test button serves to "wake them up", this button should be recessed so that it does not get pressed while in storage and waste batteries. It could could also use a lanyard but a standared Wii lanyard can be jury rigged through the battery compartment on the receiver to hold it on a flash stand. <br>

I acheive 1/200th sec sync on my 5D and 1/250th on the 20D. I actually think I did better on the 5D but the 5D is rated at 1/200th. Advertized Latency is 1/4000 of a second and one unit can serve to exend the range at a cost of another 1/4000 sec latency, that added to your camera's inherant latency effec the sync performance. <br>

These beat the hell out of the Ebay triggers I was using. I have had 100% reliability. If you are shooting from one helicopter to another like the strobist guy - go Pocket wizards for the much longer range and pay through the nose. For me these work great.<br>

Remember you will be working in full manual mode, so in dynamically changing situations you can be challenged. In those situations I will use my 580 - 550EX in ETTL II mode to resolve some of these situations. Full manual is better if you have the time.</p>

<p>When shooting multiple people I back off to f/4 or even f/5.6 just to make sure I get them all. I will bracket my f/stops sometimes. I don't want to be unpleasantly surprised when it gets to Photoshop.<br>

I really like the look of the short DOF shots with my 70-200 f2.8 lens, but the autofocus system frequenty does not come through in a clutch shot. I want the brides face to be sharp, the camera finds the back of her father's head to be point of focus. Select the focusing point, use the center to focus half depress, recompose - doh! missed again. Dark, low contrast environments give my 5D headaches. I think I need to switch to a better focusing screen so I can manually verify the focus is dead on where I want it.</p>