peter_steeper

<p>Use your fastest f-stop (f4), 800-1600 ISO and a custom white balance. A white sheet of paper or a white hockey jersey works fine for a custom white balance. This will eliminate the orangish colour cast you usually get in a hockey rink.<br>

If the images are too dark you will need to do exposure compensation (+1-2 stops) to correct. This happens when your subject is mostly white like ice and hockey jerseys.<br>

If you need more light you can use your flash. With your flash, the background will be orangish. This can be corrected by using a colour correction filter (CTO) on your flash and then do a custom white balance with the flash on. You can learn more about colour correction with a flash at the Strobist site.<br>

<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2065/2388489845_80f2d9b19a.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="226" /><br>

The image on the left was done using a flash without colour correction. The jersey is fine but you see the orangish background. The other images were done with a CTO filter on the flash and custom white balance. The background is intentionally set to 1-2 stops under.</p>

 

<p>I'd recommend reducing the amount of stuff you take with you.<br>

When we went on vacation to BC I took my laptop to store images. I travel a lot for work and having the laptop on vacation and staying in hotels felt like a work trip and it wasn't relaxing. Also managing a lot of power cords and chargers was frustrating.<br>

When we went to Greece, I bought several high capacity CF cards and did not take the laptop. I sold the extra cards when I returned to recoop my investment in the cards. I only took one charger for the camera battery and bought AA batteries for the flash. This was a very relaxing and enjoyable trip.</p>

<p>I have learned a lot about lighting for product photography from the book "Light Science and Magic". It is certainly a subject I need to learn more about.</p>

<p>I have both. At one time I was a partner in an Apple dealership but I have been working with both Macs and PC for the last 15 years.<br>

Mac has a slight advantage in colour management when you are using multiple monitors and certainly they look more stylish.<br>

I have a Macbook Pro laptop which is better than any other other laptop I have owned. I use a PC for my desktop as it is cheaper and easier to have one custom built for working with images. I have a 2TB RAID drive for my images, a 320GB drive © for applications and Windows and several drives of various sizes for backup. Any hard drive will fail sometime on a Friday afternoon when you have a major deadline.<br>

Spend money on a good and reliable storage system and backup, a good monitor, a built in card reader, the fastest processor you can afford and a decent video card for working with images. Anything else depends on personal interests ie games, music or video.<br>

Find a good local PC store that understands the needs for Photoshop as they can build a PC for you. Stay away from the Big Box stores as you will be sold something generates more commission for the sales rep.<br>

Good luck!</p>

I've had good results with batteries from SterlingTek. Much cheaper and hold a longer charge. Some of thier packages come with car chargers.

I have the 800s which I use in my home studio. I don't do weddings so I can't help you with that.

 

In my home I find that the 800s are too powerful sometimes as I find I am often shooting at F9 or higher and I

can't reduce the output enough for using larger apertures. There are times when I wish I had a 400 so I could use

a larger aperture. I don't neutral density gels for the lights and that might be one way to reduce the output.

<p>This was the first L lens I bought as it was the most affordable. I have been extremely pleased with it and it

is my sharpest lens. It has a metal barrel and is very solid. I'd recommend getting the lenshood with it. A

friend of mine who has the 75-300 lens tried it one day and he has been dissatisfied with his lens ever since

that day.<br>

This picture was about f5.6 and it was taken from 1/2 kilometer across the harbour.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.pbase.com/psteeper/image/94371506/large">Purdys Wharf Towers</a></p>

A household light bulb doesn't work well. Replace them with 150 watt halogen from Home Depot for $4 each. These work better with the light modifiers Ellis mentions.

I have both 430exs and AB800s. I can measure the output tomorrow night if you want to know the difference in stops.

 

There are other issues to consider. The Alien Bees will recycle in 1 second or less and your 430ex could take several seconds. This may not matter when shooting cars but it is a factor when doing action shots. I can shoot continuously with the ABs and not think about recycling times. I have to take care with the 430s or I lose shots. The AB800s put out a lot of light, sometimes too much for my basement studio but again this may not matter if you need to fill a large area with light.

 

I only have the Cactus triggers at the moment and they do not work well for triggering both the ABs and the 430exs. I will be replacing them soon and hopefully the problem will be resolved.

I just had the same problem today. I couldn't remove my 100mm macro from my 20D. I tried some of the suggestions such as moving the lens back and forth. I also tried turning the camera upside down while trying to remove it. I managed to remove the lens but I don't know exactly what worked. I did not force it.

 

I compared the 100mm to another lens and I was able to discover the problem. There is a tiny set screw on each lens that stops the lens from turning when it is mounted. It was sticking out slightly more on the 100mm lens. This set screw had come loose and I tighten it with a very small phillips screw driver.

 

Thanks to everyone for the ideas. I feel much better now that everything is working again.

<p>Thanks I found it. I couldn't any useful references with the Google search.</p>

 

<p><a href="http://www.photo.net/canon-eos-digital-camera-forum/00PxAM">Previous post</a></p>

I cannot remove my 100mm macro from my 20D. I can turn it slightly but it will not come off the camera. In the

last two days sometimes the aperture displays as 00. Turning the lens slightly in the mount fixes this problem

but I've had no problem changing lenses until today. I don't know if these two problems are related.

 

Any suggestions? Any ideas how much it might cost for service?

I had a small bug get into the LCD display on the back on my 20D. That was two years ago and the camera still works fine.

Alien Bees has information on their website about power converters. This may help you to determine if it will work.

 

http://www.alienbees.com/nonus.html

As a quick check try the flash white balance setting and see if there is any improvement. If not, do a custom WB.

Try going to a sign shop. They should have foamcore or a suitable substitute. Sometimes they will give you scrap pieces or only charge you a few dollars. You can also get 4'x8' sheets from them. You should be able find both white and black material. It will be cheaper than an art supply store.

The 10' are not very good. I'd recommend geting something else.

Regarding the preflash, trying setting your camera on manual. On my wife's P&S, the preflash is turned off with the manual setting and it will work with my studio flashes.

Exactly the same thing happened to me recently and I had to replace the shutter. About $285 CDN.

I shoot some golf tournaments every year where we need to provide 200-300 people with 8x10 prints and web images at the end of the day. Speed of work flow is very important when you only have two hours to meet your deadline. An extra time to copy files, extra time to browse and select images and extra time to process would just cause more stress and no benefit. A 21MP file will generally slow down production without providing any benefit in this situation. I think sRAW would ideal for that.

I don't usually shoot weddings but I have had good success with it for event photography. The head is convenient to swivel in any direction and you also have manual settings when you need them. I have two and I am planning to buy a third.

I washed my Sandisk Ultra IIs and they survived fine. I haven't tested any other cards in the washing machine. I don't think I have the right psychological make up to try this test again. My wife thought the look of panic on my face was hilarious when I realized the cards were in the washer.

I'd recommend you go and enjoy using your camera at the lower ISO settings. You will get good results and many successful images. I have had no urge to upgrade since I purchased my 20D and I suspect you paid a lot less than I did.

This is reasonable quality for 3200 ISO. I don't see a problem with it. 3200 is disabled as the default in a new 20D. You have to enable it in custom functions since the quality is poor at 3200 and you need to be aware of the decision to use it.

 

How is the quality at 100, 200 and 400 ISO? You should expect good results at these settings if the image is properly exposed.

I bought the hood. If you whack your lens against something then the hood takes the blow and acts as a shock absorber. My hoods have scratches but not the lenses.

I also have the tripod ring. It seemed like a lot of money at the time but I love being able to change from portrait to landscape in a second.