adamczyk

<p>Having no equipment at all: 1. I would get used d300, 1 good wide ange, 1 good normal probably a 50mm, and 1 tele or a zoom, and spend rest on a long exotic vaction to sharpen my skills. </p>

<p>Lightroom and get the silver efex plugin from nik. To me that is the ultimate in BW.</p>

<p>+1 for G12 or new G15</p>

 

<p>I have a AF 36m extension tube that I picked up on ebay that I use on 70-200 mm f4 and I love the results. You will only have a short range of depth of field to work with, but that is not a problem for me. The autofocus works great, but I usually use manual on a tripod. <br>

Tom</p>

<p>Canon G12 is my choice, good range, good images, small enough to fit in a larger pocket, large enough to handle like a DSLR.</p>

<p>Hello,<br>

Don't take all the "harsh" advice here as an attack on you. I remember when I came here first and I thought the same thing about some of the comments. But if read them carefully you will get some insight that you can't get anywhere else, I know I did. <br>

On that note, I have shot quite few weddings since I have joined this forum and I have to say that some of the advice here saved my "butt" in few circumstances. <br>

1. Get a contract.....it does not matter if you are shooting a wedding for your best friend or a total stranger, the expectations and results have to be spelled out on paper, because this is your only defense against potential problems. <br>

2. You have told the people that this is your first or second wedding, right? As a client I would love to know that information, just to set my expectations, and If you exceed, great! If you meet, that is good too.<br>

3. The client should have seen some of your previous work so they have an idea of what they should expect as the final product. <br>

4. Weddings can be very fast, so make sure that you ask for all the details of the ceremony. I remember one wedding where the bride's side had traditional African roots and the groom was Jewish. The told me that there were going with the traditional civil ceremony only, so I was back out after the first kiss to capture them leaving the ceremony site, the officiant announced the traditional Jewish breaking of the glass. I ran back, got the shot. I moved back to my position for the walk shot, and the officiant announced the traditional "jump over the broom" African custom....so i ran back again.<br>

5. If you can go see the place of ceremony, to scope out the lighting situation...the 75-300 mm might be too slow, or to long. </p>

 

<p>I got the G12, friend got the S100. I love mine, he is not too thrilled about his. He says its slow...I don't know if he is refering to the lens or the speed at which you can go from turning on the camera to taking a picture. But I am very happy with the controls, the full or semi-auto controls are great for a seasoned or new user. The articulating screen is bright and working with a DSLR for many years I didn't think that this feature would come in handy, but is better then I would have imagined. </p>

<p>Tom </p>

<p>+1 Steven , about the flat look of uprocessed RAW files. One thing that I have noticed is that when I import files and convert them to DNG, regardless of camera calibration settings, the initial image is flat looking. When I import a RAW, (im my case CR2, I use Canon) in the camera native RAW format, the images get a coat of the incamera JPG settings, so they do look like original from the LCD in the back of my Canon.<br>

I think that the OP may not understand the full benefit of the RAW vs JPG. When you shoot in RAW and imort your files with the JPG preset from the camera, you have the same image that you saw in LCD. RAW files then give you the added flexability in terms of tweeking your images, such as Tom Mann did with the OP NEF file (it looks more vivid in Tom M's version). So think that this is what Pierre is getting at, the flexability of the RAW file.</p>

<p>Lighroom 3 also offers a way to display you RAW with the same JPG presets used in camera. As it was said above, your raw files need to worked on before they give you a satistactory results. In Lightroom 3 you have to select your profile from the camera calibration section and you should get pretty close results. </p>

 

<p>+Jpeg<br>

1. ready image<br>

2. smaller size<br>

3. I can't think of anything else<br>

+Raw<br>

1. information, information, information. For those who can't tell the difference between Jpeg and Jpeg from RAW, good for you, avoid RAW and stick with Jpeg. For those with more keep eyes, shoot Jpeg and don't answer question in forums "Jpeg vs. RAW". <br>

2. Blow out your highlight with Jpeg, and then you will wonder "geeee I wonder if that would happen with RAW" Offcourse it will, its all about the exposure, but those who shoot in raw, know that sometimes you will find something in those highlight, while in Jpeg, foget bout it.<br>

3. Can't think of anythig else either at the moment, but 1 and 2 under RAW keep me away from Jpeg as the acquired image. </p>

<p>Just shot some tricky (high contrast) situations with both RAW and Jpeg on, and see if you get anything out of it. Otherwise this is pretty much waste of time. GIGO.<br>

Tom</p>

<p>What's the difference. Use the camera that you know how to use, with lenses that do the job. Images quality depends more on the photographer then the equipment, pick one format, learn eveything you can and then go out there and shot weddings. I still use a 40D as my primary camera, with few pro quality lenses and I had never had a customer tell me that there is too much noise in the pictures or not enough DOF. Image quality has to do more with the lens and the light then the camera body. As everyone pointed out, the 2 formats are different in some respects but at the end of the day it is customer that tells you weather you did you job or not. I suggest you practice to shoot at high ISO like 1600 or 3200 and use some software to clean the noise, you will quickly find out how much you are underexposing. On my 40D, I often crank up to ISO 1600 and then in LR 3 remove the noise, run it through CS 5 for further noise reduction. It may take few more minutes but once you get the hang of it you will see how easy it is, and you will not worry about noise as much. That is my 2 cents.</p>

<p>I don't know about Aperture, but I use Lighroom with dual monitors so I always have a full size preview on the second monitor (live). I don't know if that you can do that with Aperture and that is the deal seal for me.</p>

<p>Lightroom 3. Every few months they release updates that cover the latested cameras on the market. Does the same thing as ACR, and you can export your files to photoshop in native photoshop file format and bring it right back to lightroom for further adjustments. Once you "learn" how to use Lightroom properly you will be amazed how rich of a program it is. <br>

So +1 Richard Hatch, I too use it with Nik and CS5 and i don't think you can get a better intergration then that. </p>

<p>Reduce the EXPOSURE a bit from what you have posted in the example, less then a 1/3 stop, then use the RECOVERy slider to about 50 or 60 (may have to fine tune), and up the CONTRAST a bit if you like, and the BLACK slider may have to been adjusted too. When you get it close to what you like, use the brush tool to adjust exposure to individual areas of the photo that you think need more or less exposure (this too is a fine tunning that takes practice and time). You can use the GRADIENT tool on your sky and trees to fine change the exposure levels there. This can take you 3 minutes or 3 hours depending on how much you want to play. BW conversion? Sometimes a photo will look so much better when converted so think about it. TOM</p>

<p>Reset your camera, reinstall the firmware update, take your CF cards and if possible use them on a different camera, go to your local electronics store and stick the card in, take 20-30 shots bring them home and see if you can open them up with your computer. I would try it with two or three different cameras that take the CF card.<br>

Disable autoplay features in windows, when inserting a card. after you instert the CF card into the computer, right click on the "drive" that the card is in and select properties and see make a note how many files and/or folder are there and how much space is used vs. empty. You could have downloaded some sort of a program on to your card that creates all the issues. <br>

Clean your card slot in your camera, sometimes a piece of dust or dirt can get stuck in the pins and cause a connection issue....blow some air on it while the camera cf card slot is pointing downward and see if anything "falls out".<br>

Those are the steps I would take. The most likely issue here is that there is a corruption with the camera software so, rest and reinstall the updated firmware. <br>

Tom</p>

<p>Here is mine...<br />40D 70-200 f4</p>

<p><a title="girls 2-1 by TwA Photogrpahy, on Flickr" href=" src="http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6105/6236244875_5a85519250_z.jpg" alt="girls 2-1" width="640" height="426" /></a></p>

<p><img src=" alt="" /> ok the link from flickr does not work</p>

 

<p><img src=" alt="" /></p>

<p>40 70-200 f4</p>

<p>And...since you said that you use the center autofocus poin, that the focus to me seems in the center of the photo....I think I am right....misfocus...user error. TOM</p>

<p>In your second photo, the focus seems to be on the neck of the middle subject. That's what I see...Tom</p>

<p>In lightroom, you process your first file, then select all the files, right click--->develep setting-->and I don't remember the exact item on the menu, I don't have LR in front of me , but it something like apply setting to all. A box will pop up and there you will have all setting that you have done to first picture checked, hit Ok and then you are done. I would suggest, and so does Adobe and number of books, that you start your adjustments on the top of the menu with WB, Exposure and so on in that order...</p>

<p>Both are photo editors, both are catalog programs. Lightroom allows you a greater flexability when it comes to choosing that one of two phots from hundreds and thousands photos you might have on your drive. A nice feature of lightroom that I don't think anyone has mentioned is the ability to choose and create photo presets. You don't even have to click on a preset to see how the photo will be affected, you only need to hover your mouse over it and see the effect right away in the preview window. You can now launch several programs while still in lightroom and when you are done editing the photo comes back to Lightroom (or a copy, depending how you choose it) ready for further editing. <br>

I do about 85-90% of all post work in Lightroom with other plug ins, and the rest (such as High Pass Filter which I love) in PS 5. Lightroom has evolved over the last few years, I have used all versions of it, and the new de-noise tool work great ( a feature that was not a part of the LR 1 asn LR 2). On the other hand PS 5 has now the content aware tools that make allow you to remove unwanted objects from photographs with much ease and mostly pretty accurate.<br>

To sum up, it you shoot 100 photos a week, you should be fine with PS 5, if you shoot 1000 photos a week, get Lightroom as well, you will then wonder how you managed with out it.</p>

<p>Lightrooom is: easy downloand, where you organize your photos any imaginable way you want;allows you to back to another drive as you download the photos; and there are few way to delete photos, as you are importing them, or one by one, or you can select a batch to delete. Best of all all your RAW shots can be stored in an original and unprocessed way, so you can go back and tweek the photos million different ways or until your hard drive fries. <br>

Tom</p>

<p>If it doesn't into my jacket packet, it stays home. Don't have to think about loosing anything. Have fun, talk to people, have a drink, dance with my wife. Once in a while pull out my little PS and snap one of those arms' lenght self portraits together.</p>

<p>Is that Old Town Warsaw?</p>