dustin_hatcher

<p>I'm researching which flash units I want to buy next and I've been looking at the new Metz stuff on the market. Specifically the Metz 48 AF-1. I like that it does ETTL-II but I wanted to know if anyone can tell me if it [or the bigger 58 version] have built in PC synch ports?<br>

That's a very important feature for me and from what I read between Adorama and Metz's own site, it seems to indicate they don't have those ports.</p>

 

<p>Ok, so not a hard fast rule by any means. I figured that's about how it ought to work, I just wanted to double-check I wasn't missing out on anything. :) Thank you Nadine!</p>

<p>Hi All,</p>

<p>I noticed on some of the Nikon and Canon flashes when you use the built-in bounce card + diffuser the flash automatically goes to a certain zoom setting (like 14mm for the 580ex II).</p>

<p>I was curious if its common-place to set a similar zoom setting when you're using something like the Stofen Omni-bounce on the flash? I always thought you were supposed to set it to max zoom in order to get the full power of the flash?</p>

<p>Just trying to settle some curiosity here and see what other's opinions/thoughts are. :)</p>

<p>I disagree about cloning any of the grass in front of the faces out. It wouldn't look that way in real life and certainly shouldn't be expected to be that way in a photo like this. For all intents and purposes (even though it looks posed) this photograph purports to be a candid style shot, not a studio shot where you would expect faces to be clear and the center of attention. the grass, the setting, the kiss all works to make this a photograph to make you feel something emotional. Not to be a collage of photography techniques executed perfectly. I think sometimes we tend to get lost in all the technical minded stuff and forget that a lot of photography should be about conveying emotions & feelings. As a photograph, this does it for me. It gives me a calm, subdued, romantic feeling. Maybe the couple could've been a bit closer and I personally might have had the bride do something with the hand thats on the bottom edge of the photograph, but that's just being nit picky of an overall great image.</p>

<p>Hi Bruce,<br>

My wife and I have August 15th, 2009 open as a date as well and would certainly love to be considered among the other wonderful photographers here. We are not far from the Yosemite area. Thank you for taking a moment to pass our info along to your friend and have a great day!</p>

<p>I think what happened with us is that the client just wanted to make sure they got all the pictures (not necessarily in RAW format, but yes something usable for them). Even when we explained that we get rid of the blurry ones, etc first, they were somewhat insistent we give those too since its their photos. So I think that's what kind of threw us for a loop. </p>

<p>Yes our contract is very specific about what they get and they are allowed to re-print for personal use only (not profitable use).</p>

<p>Hi Everyone,</p>

<p>Wasn't quite sure where this question would fall under, so I just put other. Anyways, I wanted to find out what everyone's opinion here is on giving clients all the RAW files from their photoshoots?</p>

<p>Let me preface this question with the knowledge that my wife and I always kind of assumed you don't want to do that just because there's really no good reason for a client to have the blurry, wrong cropped, incorrect white balance, unedited images. We also thought its a bad idea because if a client got a hold of a blurry picture or something they might accidentally/purposefully show it to someone and then it looks bad on us of course.</p>

<p>Lately however, we've had a few clients who are somewhat adament that they would prefer one disc with all the RAW images and one disc with our chosen and edited images for them. Their reason being "just because its their photos" (since they paid for the photoshoot).</p>

<p>We got this question yesterday on one of our shoots and we basically tried to explain very politely that we don't give them out because of the reasons which I mentioned up above in the 2nd paragraph.</p>

<p>So anyhow, what is everyone's opinion on this? How do you handle that situation and do you think we did alright with what we told them?</p>

<p>I haven't shot at a lot of different churches, but so far I really enjoy hiking my ISO up to 1600 and using my 85MM F/1.8 prime for processional/recessional shots.</p>

<p>$1200+!! Jeeebus H... you can get a nice monolight and a portable battery pack for much cheaper. I have to echo that off-camera TTL hasn't been especially polite to me and I much prefer manually setting the off-camera flashes. Personally I'm looking into something like an Alien Bees B400 + sturdy stand + sandbags + Vagabond portable battery pack which all comes out to about $600'ish? Just throwin it out there for consideration. :)</p>

<p>There's also the Japanese Friendship Garden in Kelley Park by Senter and Story road. We did an engagement session there once. It was nice. Do not know if permit is required though.</p>

<p>I was just looking for a filter over on bhphoto's site and noticed that Cokin is now selling screw-in filters. Was wondering if anyone here has used them yet with any opinions as to good or bad?<br>

Thanks! :)</p>

<p>Unfortunately there's no option for me to offer the ability to start with music off and be able to turn on if desired. Only start with it on and turn it off if desired. :) </p>

<p>Daniel - I hear what you're saying. I tend to think of flash as being sort of a standard that the market I'm trying to hit probably actually expects. From a few brides who are friends and not clients they're more curious now why some photographers don't have a flash website. What I hear even more often is that the flash websites are pretty. Although I can certainly understand how some may find it annoying. However, I have to fall back on the can't please everyone rule :) In 10 years we probably won't have websites at all. We'll probably instant message media slideshows/packets to someone's iPhone 3000G uber mega network manager device :) Oh and the company I'm using actually allows you to put meta keywords and descriptions on each page of your flash site. Pretty cool I think :)</p>

<p>Mark - I've seen websites with and without music and I have to say that I prefer to have whatever music playing from someone's website [if I'm really interested in it] for a few reasons. Those would be that it gives me a little [however small it might be, its something] introspective on someone's personality and whether if I were hiring them would I jive with them. Now granted we all have fairly similar music on the wedding websites, but if someone totally loves Jack Johnson and they go your site and it starts out playing Jack Johnson, well that might just be bonus point for you. And if they don't like it they can [usually] just simply turn it off, at least on our website they will be able to. :)</p>

<p>Aimee, I'm not sure. I can tell you when I check the stats from our blog people that come there are there between 5-20 minutes, sometimes even longer. Saw someone who was on it for 45 minutes once :) Sooo to answer your question, they might? :)</p>

<p>Hi Everyone, thank you for the replies! Yes there definitely is an off button for the music. It is located in the upper left corner and all you have to do is click it once to turn off the music.<br>

As for forced slideshowing that's a no go. You can pause the gallery slideshows anytime and scroll at your own pace. Also, the site is actually pretty quick to load because of the fact you can't upload a zillion songs. That's why photobiz did it that way so the site would load much more quickly.<br>

I will look into an HTML alternative with them, though it might not come out at the same time as the flash site.</p>

<p>Hi Everyone,<br>

I've been getting some great feedback here about running our photography business and I realized I should pop over to this area and ask about a website design question that's been floating around in my head.<br>

We're putting together a new website (all flash based template) and I was wondering what everyone here thought would be an appropriate amount of images to load in our Wedding gallery? This will be the actual portfolio gallery which is separate from the home page that will also scroll some images.<br>

We're planning to do about 15-20 images on the home gallery but those will also include some family and children shots because those are part of our photography business as well.<br>

The only thing with our website that concerns me is that we can only use 1-2 songs per gallery which is an unfortunate limitation of the company we went with [photobiz] that will hopefully change in the future, but everything else about them is top notch which is why we're using them. :)<br>

So with 1-2 songs, my concern is I don't want people to be on one gallery too long with song/s looping. I'm afraid that might get kind of old or boring. What do you guys think would be a good amount of images to put that would display our work, but not be too much to the point where it would get boring? <br>

Thank you all for the wonderful help!<br>

Dustin</p>

<p>I agree with many others on this. The only thing I would say is buy a couple of cheap compact flash cards somewhere, go to a camera store where they will really let you play without pressuring you a lot to buy. Ask if you can take some pictures on your compact flash cards (1 for Nikon, 1 for Canon, 1 for Sony if you really want to) and then take those cards home and look at the sample images you took.<br>

This way you will know<br>

-how the camera felt to work<br>

-what you can expect for image quality from each camera you tested<br>

-you'll start to get somewhat of a feel what its like to work with digital AFTER taking the pictures</p>

 

<p>Just to help clarify a little as to what market I'm targeting. It would be 25-35 year olds seeking photographers in the $3k-$5k range in the San Francisco area. :)</p>

<p>One of my goals this year is to do some competing with prints from some of the weddings I will cover. I have various reasons for doing this, but mostly because I want to experience what its like. I've been doing some searching here and there and haven't really found much to go on. I was fortunate to see updates from this year's WPPI print compeition from David Beckstead about what the judges were looking for in the prints, but I wanted to see if anyone knows where I could dig up some good info on how to go about putting together entries for print competition and what/where are some other competitions that I could enter my prints in besides WPPI? :)</p>

<p>Thank you all for any info you can provide!</p>

<p>Dustin</p>

<p>Thanks for all the replies everyone, I certainly appreciate them. </p>

<p>William M. - I agree with the sentiment that I should play with it since it is digital. I'm going to give bouncing a try at some receptions this year. I've so far only been pointing it directly at the center [well close to the center] anyways of the dance floor for some side lighting and when I don't want it I just disconnect the remote trigger and put that in my pocket. I've typically been setting up in such a way that I can control how much light I need by switching between 100-800 ISO in terms of if I get closer or farther away instead of changing the aperture. I like to try to get softer backgrounds so that has worked pretty well for me. Here's a picture from a wedding my wife and I covered back in Dec. 08 of how my setup has been working for me. On the left you can obviously see where the off-camera light is and how I used it for effect and on the right is the other kind of affect I like to get as well. Believe it or not that is with the flash going off in the same direction, only I moved :)<br>

Nadine - I always heed your advice when reading these forums. I agree the monolights are top heavy and if I went with that solution I'd get a little beefier stand and I always put 10-20lbs of ankle weights [i find them cheaper to buy than boa bags and just as flexible to hold down light stands] on my stands to try to make sure they don't accidentally get knocked over.<br>

<img src="http://truebeautyphotography.com/Audrey_Vance_Blog/avwedding0630.jpg" alt="" width="807" height="638" /></p>

 

<p>William just curious do you point your White Lightning directly at the crowd or bounce from the ceiling?</p>

<p>Hi Steve,<br>

I think that's a good point that you bring up about destroying the ambient lighting of the room. I actually try to make sure I don't in fact blow the ambient lighting away. I tend to try to use the off-camera light as more of a sidelight to the crowd during dancing etc coupled with an on-camera flash to fill in faces and details, but maintain the ambient look in the background. Well that's my goal anyhow when I setup :)</p>

<p>I use the newer Alien Bees wireless receiver and transmitter. I found they work quite well at half the price of the pocket wizards. Good for the budget :)<br>

My question is what do you guys think of doing something like that? I've seen photographers go with off-camera lighting, without off-camera lighting. Hot-shoe mounted flashes, but I haven't seen any monolights hooked up at a reception yet. Of course that doesn't mean anything as I've only been doing this for a year now.</p>

<p>Hi All,<br>

I just wanted to gather some of your thoughts about bringing along an Alien Bees B400 or B800 along to setup for off-camera lighting at a reception. Right now I currently use an older Canon 540EZ on a lightstand to accomplish this, but was thinking something that plugs in might give me a little quicker recycle time. <br>

I would of course make sure all cords are hidden &/ taped down to minimize the risk of any tripping. </p>

<p>Thank you everyone!</p>