chezmojo

If you just want to back your photos up to the Internet (rather that displaying them on a site)...

 

I use Amazon's web service and Jungledisk. Not just for photos--it allows you to mount a network drive (from any

computer) and (optionally and transparently) encrypt it as it uploads to Amazons insanely-redundant storage

system. I have mine setup to do incremental backups of key folders (including photos), but you can also just drag

and drop exactly as you would to copy files to an external hard drive.

 

It costs $0.15 per GB per month. My bill is generally <$2 a month.

 

http://aws.amazon.com/s3

 

http://www.jungledisk.com

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I have the Tamron 17-55/SB-900 combo (on a D300). Whether or not the D80 can take advantage of all the features of the SB-900, I find that the most useful is being able to use the built-in flash as a commander (and I'm pretty sure the D80 can do that). You can just pop the SB-900 off the camera and flip a switch to fire it off-camera. Takes all of three seconds. The Nikon lens won't allow you to shoot in lower light than the Tamron (they're both f/2.8), but any lens plus a flash will. A flash will let you want to stop action, lift shadows, compress dynamic range, etc.

 

The Tamron lens focuses plenty fast (and is really quiet), is plenty sharp, and plenty fast. It also weighs nothing. My only complaint with this lens is that it doesn't have the instant manual override of the AF-S lenses. I like my Nikkors more than my Tamrons and Tokinas, but the 17-50 is my favorite non-Nikon lens.

 

The SB-900 is probably the best purchase I've made other than the D300 itself. It is amazing. I just turn it on, dial in the exposure compensation (on or off the camera) and fire away. It magically figures everything else out.

 

I guess what I'm saying is that the combination of a good lens and an excellent flash will expand your photographic pallet more than an excellent lens alone, IMHO.

I was always partial to Brentwood and Beverly Hills for ridiculous "look how rich I am", "not aging gracefully",

and "I'm an 'aspiring actress'" types. I suppose it depends on what you mean by "unique individuals". Walking

West from Brentwood to the ocean I saw someone jogging in a straw hat, gloves, ski mask, sunglasses, pants, and

long sleeves.

 

Compton and Inglewood just look like suburbs to me--might as well drive around The Valley.

 

I like the areas far East and North of LA where it starts to get rural. The population density is a lot lower,

but there are some fantastic and most definitely unique people. Parts of Whittier where the city abruptly ends

remind me of Mexico--provided you can find views without a giant Fry's Electronics in the background :)

 

 

My favorite part of LA is how the ethnicity changes from block to block, such that you can walk past hookah bars,

street vendors with various skewered meats, and plenty of Arabic writing in Westwood to Palms where you can find

outdoor Brazilian markets, or parts of the Valley full of Russian markets... Outdoor markets, whether they be

Farmers' Markets in Santa Monica or "barter markets" in San Gabriel, are everywhere if park your car and walk

around a bit.

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Haleemur: The generic printer driver is free, but if I want to print at high-quality I need to use turboprint's

reverse engineered driver. If you're running Ubuntu, I would suggest installing the following packages (all of

which are available through synaptic/apt): dcraw, exiftool, imagemagick, python imaging library, raw therapee,

ufraw (and ufraw-gimp), the gimp, and you can test-drive bibble to see if you like it (bibblelabs.com). There are

a zillion rsync/cron tutorials out there--just google around. If you want to check out a couple of my python

scripts that use these tools you can download them here (http://tinyurl.com/62a5jc), but you will probably have

to edit them for your needs. I use the Spyder2Express to calibrate my monitors, which a program called Argyll

supports. Once you generate the monitor profiles you can load them with xcalib. Glad to hear that there are other

Linux users floating around this place!

 

Joshua: I'm definitely not a pro photographer, but I do take lots of pictures! If I made money with photography I

could probably afford Photoshop and a fancy Mac :)

Since photography is a money sucking hobby for me, I would rather sink money into lenses than expensive Macs with expensive software...

 

Thus, I do everything in Linux (Gentoo specifically). Before you roll your eyes: all of the benefits of processing in Linux can be had in OS X except the speed advantage--all you have to do is get familiar with Python and Fink. There are a gazillion free tools available for *NIX (that is, OSX, Linux, FreeBSD, etc.) that are all infinitely scriptable. The magic of cron + rsync + python (or any scripting language) allows completely seamless backups, organization, batch processing, file naming, EXIF modification, geotagging, etc. I personally use Bibble for the actual RAW processing which isn't free, but is a nice cross-platform program that comes with Perfectly Clear and Noise Ninja. My girlfriend (a Linux convert) uses Raw Therapee which is completely free.

 

I drop my CF card in (it opens automatically of course) and copy the NEF files to a directory. A script then sorts them into "raw" "preview" and "processed" folders automatically; raw contains the NEF files and preview is populated with small JPEG previews that are generated from the NEF files using dcraw (which does an amazing job of making exposure/white balance of the previews uniform). I then run Bibble and point it's batch output at the "processed" directory which becomes filled with full-size JPEGs/TIFFs/whatever I happen to be exporting from Bibble. Then a python script resizes and sharpens everything (using Imagemagick) to whatever size I want for emails, blogs, etc. When I'm all done my computer happily clones my /home directory (which contains all my photos, settings, scripts, etc.) to an external hard drive without me even noticing (that is where cron/rsync come in). And this is just scratching the surface... GNU/Linux loves manipulating, categorizing, and searching large numbers of files :)

 

The only drawback for me is printing. I have a Canon i9900 with Windows-only drivers and the reverse engineered drivers for Linux aren't free and don't support all of the features, like ink-level monitors. For this I sometimes run a virtualized Windows installation (which runs in a window--no rebooting involved), but I don't print stuff very often.

 

A huge advantage is that Linux is considerably easier on your hardware than Windows XP and blows Leopard and Vista out of the water in that regard. If you're not a geek and don't want to compile everything from source, you can stick Ubuntu on a partition and give it a whirl--the speed difference will amaze you (you can run it off of a CD, but of course CD-ROM drives are slow, slow, slow compared to hard drives).

 

PS I completely understand that some people are deeply rooted in specific software packages that are not available for *NIX. I do, however, think you'd have to be crazy to voluntarily put Vista on a helpless PC :)

Overcast in Paris! Never :) The wedding is actually close to Nantes which, in my limited experience, seems to have better weather.

 

Thanks y'all for encouraging me to pick up the 17-50mm f/2.8 Tamron--it was worth going in to debt for. I dragged it out today to go to the farmers' market and stumbled across a live band of Berklee students and thought "this is exactly the sort of thing you need big apertures for!". Hopefully I've managed to attach my favorite photo from today to this post.<div></div>

Ah! Zooming the flash to compensate for high ceilings is something I would never have known/thought to do--I should print this thread out and take it with me this weekend : )

I forgot to mention on my list of things I own, a spare battery, an A/C adapter, and AA NiMH batteries (for the flash). Oh, and plenty of plug-converters (we go to France fairly often) : )

 

I think this weekend is going to involve a "photo safari" out-of-town somewhere. I will definitely use this opportunity to get familiar with the flash in as many situations as possible (hopefully in direct sun because that'll mean the weather is nice!). I may even have the new lens by then (got a tracking number this morning).

 

As for the flash sync--the SB-900 displays a big, fat distance scale on it's LCD. Does anyone know if it is smart enough to adjust for sync speeds? My observation is that it is not smart enough to know anything about bouncing except that the head is either pointed "not straight" or "down, for close-up". It also zooms with the lens, even when pointed straight up, which seems silly (though easy to override). I can also fire it off-camera using the built-in flash in commander mode, but I probably will want to keep things as simple as possible come show time.

 

The SB-900 does come with a diffuser (apparently like the SB-800). I had a chance to play with the flash in bar with 14' dark wood ceilings. Hopefully I managed to attach a picture from the bar with the flash pointed straight up and the built-in bounce card extended.<div></div>

I bit the bullet and overspent my budget, opting for the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 (I simply cannot afford the Nikon). As much as I love my 18-200, I'm not sure that could live without decent bokeh (the 18-200 maxes out at f/4 @ 50 mm), particularly because they've suggested some shots in front of a pond, some portraits of family members, etc etc. And the responses I've seen seem to suggest that I will be glad to have the mid-range, fast zoom. Are there treatment programs for NAS? :)

It sounds like the consensus is--thankfully--that I can get away with the equipment I'm already packing, but that if I do rent/buy I should go for the 17-50 f/2.8 end of the spectrum. And that flash practice is a must.

 

I have been practicing with the flash and have started constructing my own bounce cards and diffusers in an effort to get a feeling for how they work. So far I have a giant bounce card made from photo-inkjet paper, a piece of flexible vinyl, and a plastic bottle approximately the shape/size of a Lightsphere--the difference in the amount of light these throw forward (and the quality of that light) versus straight bounce flashes is really striking! Since I almost always shoot RAW/manual mode I've been sticking with that and experimenting with mixing in the flash. Upon the advice that I try different places and after some convincing, my girlfriend has agreed to let me experiment on her to get a feeling for correctly exposing people with the flash :)

 

As for the memory cards, I can currently jam about 370 photos on each card in 12-bit RAW mode and I plan on bringing my laptop to dump everything to at the end of each day (I've been informed that it is a two-day event)--that gives me about 740 photos per day--does that seem reasonable? I typically end up dumping a lot of photos on-camera after checking the histogram (I'm still learning about metering and exposure).

 

I'm very excited about this opportunity and even though it is a for-free, for-fun situation I really want my photos to stand out against the pile of point-and-shoot pictures they're going to get from everyone else. I'd be immensely happy to visit them years from now and see a picture I took sitting in a frame.

 

I really appreciate everyone's advice so far--thanks!

I'm an amateur/hobbyist and have only really dove into the technical (and costly) aspects of photography in the

last year or so. I am flying to France in a month to attend my girlfriend's cousin's wedding and we're basically

walking off the plane and heading straight to the wedding. Knowing that my girlfriend and I enjoy photography,

the bride asked if we wanted to take pictures at her wedding. No money is exchanging hands and I've stressed my

inexperience, but they think it would be mutually beneficial for me to get the experience (and the fun!) and for

them to potentially get a few good pictures of the wedding--they have not hired a real photographer instead

hoping that people at the wedding will suffice. She has, however, invited me to take photos before the wedding

where I will presumably be the only person with a camera.

 

I'm taking this as seriously as I know how to and have been reading up on portrait photography (right now Bryan

F. Peterson's book), these forums, Planet Niel, etc. Here is what I own; Nikon D300, 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 VR, 50mm

f/1.8, SB-900 flash, flimsy ultra-portable tripod, and two 8GB CF Cards. I chose to invest what money I had in my

NAS budget in the flash because I figured I would need lots of practice with it before hand. This plus plane

tickets leaves me on a very tight budget--I can probably squeak out $200 at most on camera stuff before we leave.

 

Given the circumstances (i.e., not being able to see the place beforehand, not knowing where/when I can use a

flash, having no experience, etc.) I would appreciate advice on what I can best do to prepare and if there are

any lenses that would really make a difference, for example a 17-55mm f/2.8 DX for low-light or 70-200mm f/2.8 VR

(the 18-200 doesn't treat me well in low light on the long end). That said, I'm pretty sure they're not going to

care if there is high-ISO noise, vignetting, or other small technical flaws--they will care far more about

well-framed, well-exposed, well-timed, etc. pictures. I would really prefer not to risk rental equipment and

would rather put the money into a diffuser, memory card--something I get to keep that will benefit me in the long

run. I am double-checking on this, but I believe that there will be indoor and outdoor aspects to the wedding.

French weddings often include a parade through the town and a ceremony in a really old church.

 

Are there any books, exercises, websites I should take a look at? Any suggestions for places around Boston that

might be good for practice? General advice? Oh, and I should add that I do not speak enough French to communicate

anything complex so for posing/group photos, etc. my communication will be limited to my girlfriend's patience

and willingness to spend part of her cousin's wedding translating for me. Is limited communication inhibitory to

decent wedding pictures? I've already had people express their dislike of the SB-900's ability to temporarily

blind them even when bouncing off the ceiling--is there a diffuser that might help me be less annoying indoors?

 

Thanks,

Ryan

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