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My 17-40L is a truly excellent lens and surprised the heck out of me when I used it for large groups, resolves far better than a WA zoom has any right to. Although a stop slower than the 16-35L I prefer having that tiny amount more reach for when I'm multi tasking with the lens attached.

I've often shot couples with one far far darker than the other, I try and expose as far to the right as possible without blowing essential detail, even if you tone the files down slightly in the Raw converter at least you have the detail in the darks. I never thought with digital that I would go back to shooting this way but <i>within limits based on experience </i> I am now back to shooting for the shadows! Only possible with the incredible files from my 5D's and ACR's spectacular highlight recovery.

Use the free DNG converter which comes with the latest version of Camera RAW and then your CS2 will open the files. Have to admit I would hate to have to go back to processing with the older camera raw, some of the new features are seriously addictive!

 

Can I ask a question and possibly side track your thread? Who thinks that a 1Ds mkIII is serious overkill for a wedding?

Lauren, not only did I start but I was much worse then! I had a choice, lay down and become a 'nebbech' or go out and earn money for my family in a way I enjoy! I'm ten years younger than you so for me it really was a life decision some 7 years back.

I have serious problems with my feet/ankles (including osteo arthritis) and need at least 8 ibuprofen (200mg) per 12 hour wedding to get through and am still in considerable pain at the end. It used to be double that amount of painkillers before the last operation! I even have pills that protect my stomacvh from the amount of ibuprofen I take. I still have years of wedding photography left in me, especially if I lose a lot of weight but I'll be finished by 40 or so. I have a deal with my wife that I bring in the main income till then and then we swop!

 

When the adrenalin is pumping you don't feel the pain, it's the quiet bits when it hits home and starting up again after a break is often the most painful bit. I do of course have an assistant to do all my shlepping and setting up of equipment such as lighting and backdrops, etc, I need to be as fresh as possible for capturing moments.

 

I've asked several specialists and they all said the same thing: I could stop and take things easy with my feet or I could enjoy using them and get the most out of them while I can, it will make no difference in the end but at least this way I will have had a life...

Sam, from experience dealing with someone with a masters in photography a degree in photography is next to useless for wedding photography. Once you know the technical side well enough for it to be subconscious what you need is plenty experience of what wedding photography is all about and the best way to do that is good old fashioned apprenticing. When I worked with my mentor/boss for 6 months it wasn't to learn what fstop to use, it was to learn how to deal with people, how to work with the flow of the day and what to do when things don't go as planned or just plain wrong. Of course apart from that there is the whole peripheral side to wedding photography that doesn't involve any photography at all. The marketing, the selling, the organisation, the people skills, the orders, the advertising, etc, etc.

 

Seriously if you are going to get a degree and want to break into wedding photography most here would recommend a business course rather than a photography course, you will find it far more useful.

 

If however you want to go into journalism then a degree or two in photography is almost a must these days silly as it may seem. When I first wanted to make a living from photography my mother was being treated for the big 'C' in a specialist hospital in Manchester. I was with her one day and on the way out popped into their photography department to ask for a job. The woman in charge of the unit there told me I would need at least a masters in photography before the hospital would consider me eventhough she started without any qualifications and was trained up from 6 months on the job. She explained that management can't see beyond written qualifications these days however stupid it might sound..

Firstly thanks folks, secondly I'm a serious i diot! If you click off the View/Ascending in bridge then it does it sorts it backwards automatically ready for renaming! Doh!

Every Fuji Frontier I have ever used has printed orders backwards. This means

that when I get my proofs back to put in the proof albums, or in fact any print

order, I have to put them all in order first. With hundreds of prints and with

2 or so weddings a week at present this is a serious pain in the neck and uses

up time that could be far more usefully employed otherwise. Further to that

when you actually add up all the admin side of a wedding nevermind the post

processing work our costs are pretty low for the per hour work!

 

Most of my packages (all the ones that include the negs) include a proof

album/s and a further full set of proofs to share out with the family. I costs

me little to do and when giving the negs is a great little extra that the

families appreciate. So far I've worked out that sending the files as (first

set) a001.jpg and (2nd set) b001.jpg will have them printed out as two seperate

sets. Stops me having to seperate them when I get the package back. Next

problem, getting them back into order. At that stage I have two sets to put in

the right order. Methinks that if I had software that would rename all my files

back to front, make pic 350.jpg into 001.jpg, 349.jpg into 002.jpg then I would

get all my pics back both seperated nicely and in the right order for quick

packaging and albuming.

 

Anyone know of any software that does this? Anyone else want to share tips on

fast tracking the admin side of presenting a wedding package?

Can you elaborate on why it isn't enough? I use 580's with a lightsphere always in bounce which uses a huge amount of power but the only times I've found it not enough is shooting groups at f5.6 at low iso's such as <200 indoors with diffusion. To be honest when you need to shoot with those settings then hotshoe flash isn't the best answer anyway...

Depend if the tiny buffer, extremely slow review, inability to use much over iso 400 and truly awful flash metering are bothering you.

 

I used to have a 1Ds and now shoot with a brace of 5D's and a 20D for backup (used to have one as a second body). IMO a 5D would be a better replacement to your 1Ds, all the benifit of the latest technology and a FF sensor to boot. You could not get me back to the 1Ds for any amount of money though I'd kill for a couple of D3's! ;-)

I do use it though for ceremonial stuff where there isn't much movement.

I tried it for one wedding and switched to an 85mm 1.8, thing is that when the shutter speeds are low enough to need IS you usually get subject movement and with f4 that happens a lot even at iso 1600. Excellent lens though!

I used to have it, forget it as a bag to work out of, to access your lenses you need to open the compartment fully and if it's on you then that means that lenses will take the tumble to the floor. Been there, heard the horrible crunch...

Get another 5D, a 40D would be a similar price anyway and you get a camera which works EXACTLY the same with your lenses. Let's say your 5D dies mid wedding and you need the focal length of your 16-35. You're screwed unless you bought the 10-22EFS by which time you might as well have bought the 5D!

 

Personally I think that having a backup with a different crop factor is not a good idea at all unless you have already have the lenses to entirely replicate the focal length and DOF that you know you need for your brand of wedding photography, on a crop camera. I could add image quality to that list but the 40D should be close enough to the 5D to not show a difference. I recently bought a 20D as a 3rd backup to my two 5D's but I know that once I'm that far down the backup line I'm desperately trying to get the job done at all under huge pressure and care less about getting everything 'just as good'! Evenso with my primes I'm lacking little in being able to replicate the DOF of FF even with the crop camera. Only problem is that now with a third backup camera and a third backup flash I've run out of space in my camera case!

In that case LC you are as someone said above giving away something for free, you are talking about a considerable time in photo manipulation something which cannot be free unless your economics of wedding photography differ from mine. Your time is worth money, not just your products, infact with wedding photography the majority of your product is just that - time.

Shouldn't take that long to post process, think film days, a good proof had perfect colour and density. With digital I would add the ability to have a perfect crop and perhaps vignetting correction if using wide angles but all that in a program such as LR should take less than a minute per photo and far less once you get used to it. You can even do some quick cloning before batch processing the lot for proof presentation. When they make the orders you do all the fancy stuff, most of it can't be seen all that well online using uncalibrated screens anyway.

 

Get hold of a trial copy of LR, set up some 'defaults' for your pictures which will serve as a good starting point, learn where the tools you need are and how to disable or ignore the rest and start moving those files fast!

 

That said I (and every other pro I know using them) would kill for a dodging and burning tool in LR/ACR, some bright/blown whites are unimportant but especially when in the foreground are extremely distracting. I hate having to go into PS when proofing, it usually is only when I've screwed up very badly and I can't remember a time I couldn't fix something with the simple tools in ACR.

David, here is your pic with the colour noise reduction from ACR which can of course be set to default. It would be even better with the original RAW image. High ISO in not the exclusive reserve of B&W output!<div></div>

As far as I know my 5D's cannot write faster than my Ultra II cards which are absolutely excellent and stupidly cheap. You probably won't or can't use the extra speed of the new cards in camera for wedding work, it isn't sports, but where the extra speed comes in handly is downloading the cards to your computer, the faster the card the faster the download.

Yes, I shoot for a possible 8X10 but crop for proofing in 2:3 format otherwise as you say there is a lot of empty room around the sides.

1000-1200 for 300-400 final perfect proofs but I take 3 of every group or pose and have to focus bracket when shooting wide open.

Use the ones you want and delete the others from your actions palette, arrange them into groups and work with what you need instead of just trying to sift through a huge amount of actions to find the ones you want.

It is rather sad. Why can't they hire some native english speakers to write templates for them? If you're going to try running a scam at least do it properly! ;-)

The type of shooting done in the past with a 'blad was very different to the documentary/PJ style shot now.

 

That said I have a 2nd 5D dedicated to the 50mm and 85mm primes that belong to it. They account for some 20% of the final shots and I only shoot them wide open and without flash. Absolutely love the look.

 

On the other hand I decided on the look I wanted and wide open primes was the answer, I don't shoot primes for any of the snobbish reasons that so many hobbyists have. My 50mm 1.4 is no sharper or more contrasty than my 24-70L @ 50mm at any aperture. It can shoot at f1.4 and that is why I use it.

I think that what you have found is that no one in the regular market wants a film shooter specifically (as opposed to digital) and it may even be turning people off as they want files. Given that the film/digital debate is all but dead even among the pros why would you think that Joe average client should care enough for it to bring you more jobs? Personally I would stop advertising the film word and base your advertising on great packages and photos to seperate yourself from the uncle Bob's out there.

Proofs within a month, never before a fortnight. I've been caught out with that before, give it too soon and you kill half the wow effect, it's just too fresh in their memories.