kerryharrison

<p>What album design software do you use to create high-end wedding albums?</p>

 

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<li>Up until now I've been using a program called "You Select It" (YSI) to create my wedding albums. The nice thing about this program is it works in conjunction with PhotoShop and automatically exports in layers which can be flattened and saved as a JPG. You can pretty much use the flattened designs with any book company out there.</li>

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<li>I was completely loving YSI until I recently purchased a new 64 bit computer running Windows 7. YSI seems to be incompatible with the new computer. After much trouble shooting I've come up with a fix, but it only last so long. I never had any of these issues with my old PC and the YSI program.</li>

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<li>Can someone please suggest album design software that works with a 64 bit computer?</li>

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<p>Hi Stephanie,<br>

First off it sounds like you did the right thing by checking out the church and lighting beforehand and at the same time the ceremony would take place. I think this was really important, especially because shooting weddings is not something you do regularly. I also think it was good to tell your friends that you are not pro.<br>

I think many people believe being a photographer is easy. You push a little button and magic happens! (That's kind of true- the magic part but not the easy part!). I shot 33 weddings this year, which definitely gives me lots of recent experience. I also shoot professionally for a large corporation. I'm quite often surprised at the astonishing number of difficult situations that one encounters and how you need to have a solution with in minutes. In my trunk I carry around a lot of lighting equipment (just in case) but the best tool I have is my Nikon D700 (or Nikon D3s) for low light situations so I can simply crank up the ISO.<br>

I know not everyone can justify purchasing those cameras, but they do certainly make your job as a photographer, so much easier.<br>

My last wedding of the year was in mid November and a situation similar to yours. The church had a policy of no photographers in the church, no flash and all the lights were out. They were steadfast about it. No bartering, no other options. The only lighting we had was about 20 candles and some sort of completely dimmed down overhead single light above the alter. (I must admit, it was really beautiful, but a photographers nightmare!). We were allowed to shoot from the balcony only. (Try shooting walking down the aisle photos from above and behind!). We shoot at ISO 6400 and 1/40 of a second, 2.8.<br>

As a photographer you need to be ready for anything, people expect it. I also think your friends will most likely be thrilled with the photos you took of them. Weddings are a huge amount of work, responsibility and stress. I would recommend asking people in the future for a small sum of money toward your efforts. You can take the money and purchase better equipment, so when the next wedding rolls round you have better tools.</p>

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<p>The D700 is absolutely the camera you need to shoot weddings. The most important feature of the D700 is that you can crank the ISO to 5000, couple it with a fast lens and shoot with out a flash. During many ceremonies, especially Catholic ceremonies, the photographer is not allowed to use a flash. If all you have is a D300 even with a 2.8 lens you will be out of luck.<br>

On the other hand I shot a wedding a week ago and one of my compact flash cards failed. The card that failed just happen to have all the ceremony images on it. I managed to recover all of the images (minus the meta data), but you can only imagine the hours of stress during the recovery process. Around 2 in the morning as I was crawling into bed, I swore that I was buy a pro camera with slots for 2 compact flash cards because really the stress was so not worth it.<br>

My next wedding is on the 19th. Not sure I'll have upgraded my camera by then (though Calumet is offering 6 months no payments, no interest, until May 2010). So my humble advice is to purchase a camera that has low noise at a high ISO and one with two memory slots!</p>

<p>The 24-70mm f/2.8. I always have it on one of my cameras.</p>

<p>I own both. I purchased the D700 to shoot in low light situations. It's really the perfect camera for shooting weddings without a flash. I prefer the D300 for studio work and nature work. It's really handy having both. If you are like me and love to print really large, I'd save up for the D3x or wait until Nikon releases the D700x. I love the power behind doubling my pixels.</p>