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^^^This is good advice, classes on marketing are valuable too!^^^ Well personally I never went to school for photography and I make a living at it. My wife did get her AA and while she makes a living at it too, she doesn't make any more money off it than I do, and I don't think it has really helped business all the much. On the other hand we do weddings and portrait photography together, and I do sports on the side. If you're planning to be a staff photographer for a magazine or something, firstly good luck, and secondly your schooling will probably be necessary for such a thing. So I think the question is what do you hope to get out of photography?
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Mar 23, 2010 17:28
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With seamless paper you'll notice that it's decently thick, but it bends and gets creases through it pretty easily. Which is why you need to tear it off once in a while and roll out some fresh paper. I think it would work fine for what you're doing. I prefer the "super white" over the regular white. I notice with both my white and black seamless paper I have to do a bit of post to make it look black/white. This is a mixture of the fact that I only have 2 lights and don't normally use one to light the background and also that my studio space is too drat small. I don't have any experience with white fabric backgrounds, but I do have a bunch of muslins and solid diamond cloth and I need to keep a steamer on hand to keep them looking decent. I prefer the look of the cloth but it is a super huge pain in the rear end to keep up with. It's also lovely for macro work as you pick up on all the little fibers and hairs sticking off the cloth. You might actually find that the poster board is the easiest/most cost effective way to go.
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Apr 8, 2010 07:04
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Sometimes I cut out regular printer paper to use as a bounce flash. Just tape it on at like a 45 degree angle and it seems to work pretty well. At least better than without. I find if you do this and then play around with your settings manually you can get some decent results.
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Apr 20, 2010 21:38
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I made a dumbass mistake. I shot a wedding with two 5DIIs but one of them had a clock that was set back 12 hours (its a 24 hour clock and I'm rather slow). Is there any way to change the file data so lightroom will put them in order? All the minutes line up pretty well its just the wrong hour. Am I going to have to manually place 800 photos in order?
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May 15, 2010 01:49
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8th-samurai posted:If you select all the wrong time code photos in the library module shifting the time is an option under the capture time box. Thanks for this, you saved me a lot of time.
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May 15, 2010 18:42
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Nausea posted:I don't know if this thread is the place to ask, but i couldn't figure out a better place. My camera is hosed up and i'm curious about a few things. Did the mirror fall out?
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Jun 14, 2010 17:03
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squidflakes posted:http://gallery.prairiesquid.com/v/squidography/sanjapan2010/ What's with the squid? It really kind of bothers me throughout the album. The posed shots without it are mostly good, but I don't think I like any of the ones with the squid. Props can be good and all, but it seems that most nerds only look creepier when they hug and molest plushy sea creatures.
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Jul 24, 2010 18:45
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General Gingersnap posted:^^^^ I've been doing interior photography on the side for a few extra bucks for about 4 months now. Here's a few pointers that would have helped me a lot when I first started. Get there early and take out all the clutter. Everyone has a house that is full of junk that just looks bad in photos. This includes insane amounts of throw pillows, big stacks of coasters, and ugly coffee makers from 1998. Also, take all the magnets and junk off the fridge. It never looks good. A wide lens is invaluable. I shoot with a Canon 16-35mm 2.8 on a 5D2 and I still wish I could go wider. Especially in bathrooms. If you do rent the 10-22 try doing some vertically oriented shots. The perspective really stretches the hell out of everything and makes the room look tall and long. Here's one I did of my moms living room that made it look like a cathedral.  Make sure you turn on every single light in the house. Ambient lighting is your friend. Its also important to stop down to at least f/8 to make sure your depth of field is nice and wide. Both of these facts mean that a tripod is your best friend. Make sure to either use cable release or a 2 or 10 second delay on your photos to make sure you don't blur your exposure. I have found bracketing to be really important. Especially when I am on a job where time is limited. It allows me to worry less about my settings and also make composites out of a couple different exposures. It's really easy to blow out your windows on a bright day and sometimes its nice to be able to bring them back a little. I started doing this on a Rebel XT and a rented 17-40mm and now I make several hundred bucks on it every single week. Once you have a small portfolio you'll want to contact real estate agencies and tradesmen in your area. I have a long term contract with a local cabinet company that gives me constant work. And it never would have happened if it wasn't for one phone call and a half way decent portfolio (it wasn't even that decent). 
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Aug 13, 2010 03:40
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pwn posted:I'm seriously considering trying my hand at it. wooten*, I have a question. Would you ever feel comfortable doing your job on film? Trade off bracketing for higher dynamic range? I think medium format would be great for interior photography. The fact that you can get so wide, have so much dynamic range and so much detail would really be great. I don't know how comfortable I would be, as I don't ever mess with film. I do spend a lot of time dreaming of a decent medium/large format camera though. Maybe some day. As for stress, I make 80% of my money from wedding photography so doing interiors is pretty lax. I got started by going to a bunch of networking groups, mainly BNI as a substitute for someone who was enough of a sucker to actually pay for one of those things. I introduced myself to every real estate agent and tradesman and set up meetings with several of them to show them a portfolio which I had shot entirely in 3 different family member's houses. I totally didn't know what I was doing at the time, and I'm a bit embarrassed looking at the photos I started with now. It worked so well I ended up going to 2 other BNI groups and doing the same thing. It kind of perpetuated itself and now there are several people that call me regularly to set up shoots. I also got a crap load of head shot sessions out of it. Getting into the business isn't that difficult, I'm not woot fatigue after all. My photos are mostly okay, but his stuff is at a totally different level. I think for most forms of photography the ability to talk yourself up to anyone who will listen is more important than actually taking amazing photos. FAKE EDIT: As an added note, I am now banned from 2 BNI groups for going to close to a dozen meetings and never signing up and paying the fee.
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Aug 13, 2010 07:44
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Martytoof posted:This might sound dumb but what's a BNI group? I'm literally throwing every word I can think of at that acronym and nothing's coming back out Business Networking International. Basically 20-40 different professionals pay $500 a year to meet once a week in a restaurant and give one minute speeches about what they do. Only one member is allowed from each kind of profession, and each member is supposed to recommend each other member to their clients who are in need of whatever service. Attendance is mandatory or you can have a sub come in for you, who then gives your one minute speech and is allowed 30 seconds to talk about their business. Obviously everyone who is a member is dying to get out of their weekly meeting, so finding one is pretty much a sure thing for getting to go. They also host recruit meetings where everyone can attend once a month or so. It gets a little bit more complicated and shady in some areas, but its pretty easy to exploit as a photographer. They meet pretty much everywhere (probably including Canada) so it's pretty easy to find a group. There is usually a group for every chamber of commerce, so you can usually find several in a small area.
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Aug 13, 2010 08:16
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I've had good luck with the promaster HGX protection ones. They are double glazed and I have to really pixel peep to see any difference with them on. They aren't made to block UV either. Of course they are super expensive and hard to find. People can rag on my filters all they want, a lot of lenses need a filter to complete the weather sealing. It also lets me clean mud off my lens with the inside of my t-shirt without caring.
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Sep 7, 2010 19:54
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brad industry posted:Move to Northern California, awesome fog every day Most of the Maine coast is the same way. I do a lot of race photography in that area and I'm always amazed by it. I think coastal areas in general produce a lot more fog. A night with thunderstorms followed by a cool morning usually does a pretty good job just about anywhere though.
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Oct 7, 2010 21:01
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spf3million posted:I thought it was to people wouldn't know that your 5d2 is what it is making you less of a theft target. I always thought this was rather dumb since a thief won't care if your camera costs $400 or $2000, it's still more than the $0 they have in their pocket. Yeah, I spend a lot of my time in public trying to read the logos and model numbers on DSLRs that random people are carrying. It's really drat hard. I can usually tell pretty closely by the body syle or whatever but I'm always thinking "was it a 5D or a 5DII?" or "I think it was a D300, but it might have been D200." I really don't think a thief is really going to put this much thought into it. I do notice a considerable amount of people taping over all writing on their camera's though. It's only making my job of gawking at your camera harder people.
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Nov 7, 2010 13:59
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BobTheCow posted:Also, at the same aperture (say, f/2.8) the background will be more out of focus at 200mm than 50mm, if that's an effect you're going for. It really just magnifies the background more. Which makes it appear to be less in focus. There was a cool series of examples shot with an Alf doll and the space needle but I can't find it. Does anyone have a link to what I'm talking about? FAKE EDIT: Here's one that explains it with a truck and a barn instead.
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Jan 5, 2011 23:05
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Abnegatus posted:It's been a while; and frankly I quite miss them. Me too, it always added some kind of goal to my otherwise aimless photo walks.
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Apr 9, 2011 21:22
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I've been working on making a really big time-lapse project, the problem I'm running into is that my 7D has developed many stuck pixels that ruin any high ISO shots. Normally lightroom takes them out automatically, but I think the fact that I'm shooting on small RAW is loving that up. Normally I could just clone them out and go on my merry way, but this being a time-lapse makes that really difficult. Is there anything I can do? 30 Seconds at f/11 800ISO   You can see this shot as a time-lapse at :46 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68mmsDXxqJ4
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Aug 6, 2014 20:04
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Expensive glass is definitely more important than an expensive body, but I really enjoy my expensive glass a whole lot more on my full frame. On the wide end there is a huge difference between APS-C and full frame, and the amount of distortion you are going to get to achieve the same FOV is actually really noticeable. I also shoot with an 85mm A LOT and it's just too tight to fill the same role on a crop. I feel like he makes his argument in that video without ever really explaining any of the benefits of full frame other than "it's bigger, and who really cares about that?!" There are a lot of variables to choosing the right set up to fit your style of shooting and basically none are discussed in that video.
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Aug 21, 2014 19:00
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mr. mephistopheles posted:And I had my mind blown the other night when a photographer I met who has a ridiculous portfolio and is getting ready to attend the School of Visual Arts and intern with Harper's Bazaar told me that the only setup he has shot his entire portfolio with has been a Nikon 50mm 1.8 on a D800 and a single Alien Bee light with some $30 umbrella he got off Amazon and occasionally a reflector. Gear honestly means nothing. The only reason he has the D800 is because the agency he worked with a lot forced him to upgrade from a D5100. I've worked with several photographers who put out amazing work who use setups like a used D300, a 1980s era manual focus only Zeiss 85mm they found on craigslist, a couple ancient vivatar flashes, and that's it. You can achieve great things in photography without spending a lot on gear. It doesn't mean that gear means nothing though. Professional gear allows you to be versatile and adapt to shooting in situations where you need to get the shot no matter what. Decent gear also takes a beating way better than cheap stuff, my 50mm 1.4 and 35mm f/2 have both broken twice during "light" use but my 24-70 has been dropped more times than I will ever admit and has never needed a repair. There is a reason professional journalists don't walk around with a T2i and a nifty 50 and it's not because all of them are pretentious hacks that think they can rely on gear over their own creativity.
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Aug 21, 2014 19:55
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8th-snype posted:A good approximation is: This is correct, but if you go by perspective and not FOV it's closer to 70mm.
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Aug 23, 2014 16:40
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I do it once, at the beginning of wedding season every year.
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Sep 1, 2014 03:15
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VelociBacon posted:WB is so easy to correct in post I don't know why anyone would try to nail it in camera with the non-AWB options. If you are taking lots of photos it's easier to batch images if they were all taken at the same WB even if it's the wrong one.
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Sep 8, 2014 19:02
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xzzy posted:Ditto, after a few months of using my camera I was noticing I was manually setting the white balance on every single picture anyways, so in response I set it to the "sunlight" setting and left it there ever since. At least that way when I load everything up in lightroom the temperature doesn't change randomly whenever AWB decided to do something else. This is what I did too, I guess it's not what most people do. News to me.
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Sep 8, 2014 22:50
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As long as you use a filter you should be fine, just make sure not to change the setting once it's submerged.
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Sep 10, 2014 01:11
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I take 30k-50k images a year and I delete 90% of my raws after about a year. It's just not worth keeping them around and I'm confident in my editing enough to know that if I exported it there is no chance I'm going back to do it again. Data hording is a disease. That said I never throw out my finished JPGs.
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Sep 13, 2014 05:07
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Mightaswell posted:But every time I take a picture of my children I'm stealing part of their soul, and if I delete it then I'm throwing their souls in the trash! Photos of my kid are an exception to not saving raws.
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Sep 14, 2014 22:05
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Have you considered Nikon? I send my stuff into Canon once a year and they do a fantastic job.
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Sep 19, 2014 05:53
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HPL posted:Well anyways, like others have said, sensors are tougher than they seem. You're not actually cleaning the sensor, you're cleaning a piece of glass in front of the sensor. As long as you exercise due care, you should be all right. If you have a soft, clean brush and it's only dust you're going for, and you use very light strokes, you'll be all right. The worst is when you get greasy crap on the sensor because then you're in for a fight. Sensor cleaning is serious business and is the sole reason I keep CPS every year. I can't stress enough that you can gently caress this up and ruin every photo you ever take in the future. You really should send it in to sony/nikon/canon.
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Sep 19, 2014 18:13
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Musket posted:Its very easy. But if you fear cleaning it, then yea send it off. I used to be scared of cleaning mine until I did it and it was easy. Also you can just take your time in LR5 with the dust tool and play a drinking game. Take a shot every time you have to clone/heal a dust spot. If I went past f/8 I would need my stomach pumped.
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Sep 19, 2014 21:55
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How do you deal with really bad fogging? I was shooting a wedding a couple weeks ago, and inside the reception the AC was cranked but outside it was hot and muggy. All day long people kept pulling me out of the reception to take group photos on the veranda. Every single time I knew exactly what was going to happen, but it's not like I'm going to be like "sorry grandpa Joe, you can't get photos with your nieces on the veranda, it's too loving muggy". All I could do is stand there with a microfiber cloth and a rocket blower looking like a douchebag going "hold on, just a minute". I considered just leaving a camera set up outside to deal with the issue, but that would be a really easy way to lose a camera. It's such a frustrating problem.
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Sep 20, 2014 03:39
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mobby_6kl posted:Need some help with a speedlite here. I'm at a wedding and got a 580ex2 from a friend but it won't work with my 550d. The flash is recognized and I can configure it through the menu, but when shooting the camera doesn't expose for the flash and shoots without it firing. The pilot led is red and it follows the zoom so I'm clueless as to what might be the missing piece. Just hit the mode button until it says M and mess with it until you're comfortable. If its not firing it might not be seated correctly on the hotshoe.
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Sep 20, 2014 23:38
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As long as it's not on your rear objective or a huge greasy smear you will never notice it in a photo.
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Sep 22, 2014 14:57
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life is killing me posted:In any case, it's time to have a backup anyway. I have no plan for what I'd do if I had a shoot in 30 minutes and my camera was hosed. If I take a backup, at least I won't have to worry about it, the actual chances of my camera just wearing out or breaking notwithstanding. Though if you're not careful, dropping a camera can finish it. I had a tripod leg fail on me while photographing a house and it chipped the outside plastic part of the lens (a lens which cost more than the camera itself). I keep two tripods for that reason, though that day I was lucky I also had my backup tripod's mount. If my camera or lens had been hosed that day after falling over, we might have lost the client's business because I had no backup. This really highlights how important having a backup is if you intend to shoot for money. Which is a great reason to buy another camera. It also means backups for your flash or any other piece of equipment you will need to get the job done right. Insurance is also a really good idea that is cheap as hell. Upgrading is something I think about a lot lately. I've been shooting weddings with my 5DII for 4 years now and I'm really starting to feel like it's autofocus constantly fails me. I frequently take doubles and triples of the same photo because I really don't trust the focus. Even worse, when I'm shooting candids and that isn't an option I end up throwing out what would have been amazing photos. This is even with a flash that has AF assit. I keep a 7D for back up and for when I used to shoot triathlons, and it's autofocus is seriously amazing and everything I want from an autofocus. Unfortunately the low light performance of the 7D makes me weep. Would I benefit enough from buying a 5DIII to make it worth it though? Wooten fucked around with this message at 20:01 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 19:59
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^^ Photos.Pukestain Pal posted:How about the 7D2? My lens selection is really weighted toward full frame.
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Sep 23, 2014 20:08
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triplexpac posted:I want to try making a little home studio setup in my apartment. Anyone have any suggestions for a cheap decent backdrop? My favorite backdrops are a couple green/blue muslins I got on clearance years ago, they are great in most situations and are easy to transport. White paper is also a good choice. You can light it a bunch of different ways and adding gels to your lights lets you make it any color you want. It's a bitch to transport in the size that you are going to want though. The hooks will work if you run something rigid between them, trying to work with a backdrop that isn't supported all the way across is a pain in the rear end. Wooten fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Sep 24, 2014 |
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Sep 24, 2014 01:15
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I have a Fong Lightsphere I bought secondhand and it works great in a lot of situations, both on camera and off. If I use a stand I usually use one of these and an umbrella.
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Sep 25, 2014 17:15
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