kevin_swan1

<p>Hey guys,</p>

<p>I did a quick search, but couldn't find anywhere where this has already been asked. I just bought a pair of Pocket Wizards, and I have a question.</p>

<p>I want to be able to use an on-camera flash, together with an off-camera flash. I mounted a flash onto my camera's hot shoe. I then connected Pocket Wizard #1 to my camera's PC port. I took a second flash and connected the other Pocket Wizard to it. I turned everything on, and it works like a charm.</p>

<p>However, here's where I'm having a problem. If I turn off the flash on my camera's hot shoe, it appears that the camera is not sending the "flash" signal to its PC port (where Pocket Wizard #1 would send the signal to Pocket Wizard #2). It seems that if the camera doesn't detect a flash in its hotshoe, it doesn't send the "flash" signal to its PC port.</p>

<p>My questions are: 1) am I correctly interpreting what's happening here? and 2) Is there any way around this problem? I'm using a Nikon D300 with 2 SB-900's. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks.</p>

<p>I have a very similar story. The groom in one of the weddings I shot last year developed a very visible cold sore on his upper lip the day before the wedding. 2 weeks after the wedding, I had their photos online. They loved them. I met with them a few days later to deliver their prints. By then, they had seen some of their guests' photos on Facebook. The groom told me he'd forgotten about the cold sore until he saw his friends' photos and saw his cold sore in every one of their photos. He told me, "I didn't remember seeing it in your photos, so I went back and double-checked, and sure enough, it wasn't there!" That's when I reminded him about the magic of Photoshop, and why it's worth it to hire a pro. ;)</p>

<p>They loved that I had completely eliminated it from every photo. Wedding photography is a people business, not a photography business. It's all about over-delivering, and keeping your clients happy. You should retouch the photos at no extra charge. If you find it's more work than you bargained for, then raise your prices. If you're charging money for a service, people have a right to expect professional results. YOU set your prices, not your clients, so if your prices are too low, that's YOUR mistake. Don't take it out on your clients.</p><div></div>

<p>Hi Bilal,</p>

<p>If you're shooting weddings pro-bono, I'd go for the D700. However, if you're charging money for your work, then you absolutely must have 2 high-quality camera bodies. As a paid worker, you must have 2 pro-level cameras, with the D300 being the minimum. You can get a couple used D300's for the same price as a new D700.</p>

<p>Either the D300 or the D700 can both fire both the SB-600 and SB-800 (and SB-900) off-camera using the built-in Nikon CLS feature (assuming line-of-sight visibility). You should not be shooting paid weddings with a D40, even as a backup camera. Without line-of-sight, you'd need some RF triggers, such as PocketWizards, to trigger your off-camera flashes.</p>

<p>But above all else, if you're being paid to shoot these weddings, you need 2 good cameras, and a D40 doesn't count. They must both be at least D300's. You absolutely should not be charging people money to shoot weddings with a single D40 (or a single D700, for that matter - you absolutely need 2 cameras to shoot a paid wedding).</p>

<p>I checked out your website. You have a great eye for composition, but I found your photos generally too dark. Calibrate your monitor, and spend a little time studying how to optimize your histograms, I think it would really help take your photos to the next level.<br>

Hope this helps!</p>

<p>I apply some basic editing to all my photos - sharpening, white balance, straightening horizons, cropping a little differently, boosting saturation, maybe running a couple actions. As far as "airbrushing" the photos, I'll go through and whiten all the teeth, and clone out any temporary blemishes or marks, like pimples, rashes, cold sores, shaving nicks - that sort of thing. I leave any permanent marks (birthmarks, tattoos, moles, etc.) unless the client explicitly asks me to remove them. I do this to all my photos, not just the ones they order as enlargements. However, I usually deliver 300-350 photos, not 700.</p>

<p>If you know it's going to be indoors, you could exercise more control over the lighting. Maybe set up some off-camera lighting, since you'll (presumably) have access to electricity and won't have to worry about weather. You could end up with some very nice formals, with the proper preparation.</p>

<p>It's front-focusing. I had the same problem with my 50 f/1.4. Just dial in a little compensation in the AF Tuning facility and it should correct it.</p>

<p>Up until now, I've been using MPix for print orders for my clients. The shipping costs me $15 USD, but I've rationalized it as being worth it for a higher-quality product.</p>

<p>As of tomorrow, MPix's only shipping option to Canada is FedEx, and it will <strong>double</strong> the shipping cost to $30. This is too much for me. It's killing my profit to pay $30 shipping for $30 worth of prints.</p>

<p>Can anyone here recommend a good, high-quality print supplier in Canada?</p>

<p>I just want to throw one other suggestion into the mix ...</p>

<p>It's possible your lens is front/back focusing on your camera. I've had to AF Tune all of my lenses on my D300, none of them were perfect with the default setting. Most of them were front-focusing (that is, the subject was behind the point where the camera was focusing). You might want to look into tuning your auto-focusing to your lenses with your specific camera. That might improve your results a little.</p>

<p>In general, however, I agree with Lex. The sample photo posted looks like camera shake blur, not soft focusing.</p>

<p>Regarding the first question, I'll be more than happy to take table shots if requested, but it's not on my list of "standard" shots to get during the reception. They're very time-consuming, and difficult to coordinate.</p>

<p>As for departure time, I stay until I've captured all of the usual "reception" events (receiving line, bouquet, garter, cake, speeches, etc.). If there are other special events occurring that they want photographed, and they've mentioned it to me beforehand, I don't mind staying to capture them. However, I don't stay all the way till the end by default unless specifically asked.</p>

<p>Marc,</p>

<p>For sure, Stillmotion knows how to properly edit video. However, it should be noted that they have absolutely top-notch equipment as well. Their photo/video packages costs $25,000. They come equipped with Steadicam sleds, multiple shooters, follow-focus gear, the works. They are very, very good at what they do, and it goes far beyond just the editing.</p>

<p>This isn't meant as a physical criticism, but in your original ad, my first impression was that the pose makes the groom look like he's got a big gut. I'd consider selecting a better photo.</p>

<p>I'm also not a fan of the bright, florescent colours. I think the pink text on a turquoise background would be hard on the eyes. I'd recommend something with a lot more contrast.</p>

<p>Just some objective comments, worth what you paid for them. :)</p>

<p>D. D. - I've seen the demo for FotoFusion, and it looks fantastic. However, the one thing I wondered was, how does it handle the "safe edge" and gutter lines of the Asukabook template files? Have you designed an Askuabook album using FotoFusion? If so, how did it go? How did you do it while still keeping the border lines the output JPGs?</p>

<p>Hi David, thanks for the comments. With regards to blowing out the sky: during the ceremony, the sun was almost directly behind the groom's head, so I had a vicious backlighting situation. I used my flash to fill in the shadows as best I could, then brought up the overall exposure in Adobe Camera RAW in post-processing. It resulting in completely blowing out the sky, but preserving the detail in the bride and groom. It wasn't an ideal lighting situation, but in hindsight, I actually kind of like the resulting look of the photos. :)</p>

<p>I'll keep your DOF comments in mind for the future - I've been afraid of using my 50 f/1.4 because of a fear of a too-shallow DOF. Your comments indicate my fears might be justified, and maybe I should stick to 2.8 or smaller.</p>

<p>Thanks again!</p>

<p>Hey, all.</p>

<p>I see folks requesting critiques here often, and it occurred to me, it's been a long time since I've had some feedback from a group of objective third parties. I just shot a wedding yesterday, and I'm always looking to improve, so I was wondering if I could ask for a little constructive criticism. I've posted a few highlight shots from yesterday's wedding to my blog, so please feel free to skim over them and let me know what you think works, and what could be improved. Thanks!</p>

<p>http://swanweddingphotography.wordpress.com/</p><div></div>

<p>OK, here goes.</p>

<p>The looping gallery on your main page only has 3 photos. The first one (the couple in the front yard of the mansion) is fine. The second one (the little girl) is very amateurish. It demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of how to drag the shutter, and on top of that, there is a very obvious side-shadow on the little girl that reveals you weren't using a flash bracket, or even bouncing your flash. The third photo suffers from the same lack of dragging the shutter, plus you neglected to clone out the mole/pimple on the beautiful young woman's face. Furthermore, I suspect the black-and-white conversion was an effort to rescue an out-of-control white balance issue. At any rate, as a black and white conversion, you should trend more towards the right of the histogram (that is, bring up the brightness, in general).</p>

<p>Then I ventured into your "Weddings 1" gallery. These photos suffer from many of the same problems (overly-dark B&W conversions, obvious flash side-shadows in portrait orientation, lack of attention to backgrounds, inability to drag the shutter, etc.). For sure, there are a few nice shots, but in general, they have a very "snapshot-ish" feel to them.</p>

<p>"Weddings 2" actually showed a lot more promise. I've got to say, comparing the two galleries was like night and day. Maybe the second gallery just contained fewer low-light reception shots, but overall, these photos looked much better.</p>

<p>I would recommend reading the blogs of other wedding photographers you admire, and trying to emulate their style. Hope this helps.</p>

<p>I use a LowePro Vertex 300 AW. It's specifically sized to be carry-on sized for airlines. I've flown with it twice, and haven't been given any trouble by the airline staff or security. They just waved me on through. It holds pretty much everything I need for shooting a wedding.</p><div></div>

<p>As a guest, and with that budget, you should be fine with the kit lens.</p>

<p>As a guest.</p>

<p>Regarding the formal shots outdoors in the bright sun, the best approach would be to find some shade. If you absolutely must shoot them in direct sunlight, set your camera to shutter-priority, with a 1/250 sec exposure (you may need a neutral density filter to get the exposure down that low) and use fill flash. Ideally with the sun at their backs and to the side, so they're not squinting. Use a lens hood to minimize flare.</p>

<p>Hope that helps!</p>

<p>Bob,<br>

What's the difference between bracketing my exposure 1-stop over/under, and producing 1-stop over/under images from a single RAW file? Given the incredible dynamic range captured by modern imaging sensors, can't satisfactory HDR results be produced from a single properly-exposed RAW file?</p>

<p>I've never done HDRs for my clients, but I do produce composites for particularly contrasty photos. That is, if the bride (in her white gown) is in front of a shady grove, I'll produce 2 JPGs from the RAW file - 1 overexposed and 1 underexposed. I'll layer them in a single image in Photoshop, then manually blend them using layer masks, to even out the exposure of the overall image, bringing out shadow detail in the shady grove while preserving highlight detail in her white dress.</p>

<p>Hey Larry,</p>

<p>Sorry you missed a great business-building opportunity. At the very least, you should take solace in knowing noone can possibly blame you for missed photots. No one expects the limo driver to be able to function as a backup photographer. :) That said, you're in a fantastic position to capture a lot of unique photos that can be used to build your business. I'll bet you don't leave your camera home anymore after this! :)</p>

<p>I'd skip the monolights and invest in a backup body, and a better lens. Whatever lens you buy, it needs to have a constant 2.8 aperture throughout the entire zoom range. While the 50D is more than adequate for photographing weddings, you need a backup duplicate, in case the unthinkable happens (software failure, it gets dropped, bumps into something hard, rendered useless, etc.).</p>

<p>Hey, all.</p>

<p>In the default configuration, I find the exposure compensation function works counter-intuitively. That is, I turn the dial to the left to *increase* exposure compensation. That seems backwards to me. If it were a volume dial, I would turn it that way to turn DOWN the volume, yet on the camera, it INCREASES the exposure.</p>

<p>I'm aware that there's a menu setting that lets you "reverse" the dial directions, but that changes the dial for all the other settings, too. I find the shutter speed and aperture controls function intuitively - it's only the exposure compensation that feels wrong to me.</p>

<p>Is there a way to reverse the command dial direction, but ONLY for exposure compensation, on the D300?</p>

<p>I keep a protective UV filter on all my lenses, all the time. I rarely use other filters, with the exception of the occassional grad ND if I'm shooting some landscape work.</p>