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Digital Wedding Sin?

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You would be surprised by how many PJ shoot in "P". It's there for a reason, and it makes shooting a lot easier, and allows you to concentrate more on composition. When things happen at a fast pace, that "p" mode will save your butt.
RJR said:
Joel,
I just returned from a weekend getaway in the Pocono's. I chatted
with the resort photographer to learn about her technique/workflow.
DSLR w/ an external flash mounted on a bracket. She shot almost
the entire weekend using "P" mode on her camera.

At the end of the weekend, the photos were on a table available for
purchase. Were they works of art? No. But, they were sharp,
colorful and consistently well-exposed.

-- Rob
Click to expand...
--
http://www.garylambert.us/gallery
http://www.onemodelplace.com/jahfakin
 
So 99.9% of sports reporters have no basis to comment on the games they cover, because they never played pro?

I don't need to have played pro ball to know bad form, nor do I need to be a pro wedding shooter to know when somone is going to under or overspose a shot.
 
I work for a studio with almost 40 photogs. As for the RAW vs JPEG, it's split right down the middle. Fact, you can get a very good quallity 16x20 or 20x30 print (exceed 35mm close to MF film), from a 20D or MKII with jpeg file.

RAW or Jpeg, it's a personal choice, and we get sick and tired of talking about it in the studio. Some of our photog go out with a min of 8gigs of memory , and shoot all RAW. Some shoot all Jpeg on 2-3 gigs. Me and most of the guys shoot both. Use RAW during an indoor church ceremony (which is difficult to a perfect WB, with all the mixed lighting, especially with light from those stain glass windows), and jpeg from outdoor and single light source environments.
jtelling said:
I just want to make sure everyone knows that I didn't start this
post to bash a photog because of camera settings. I'm guessing, as
previous posters have suggested, that the MOB and bride saw their
work and liked what they did, so they hired them because of that.

I just posted this information as I was curious of RAW vs. JPG and
what I've read oh so many times (shoot RAW, shoot RAW, shoot RAW).

That's all. I'm glad this has evolved into a good discussion, but
I don't want the message to be skewed and to have people think I'm
bashing.

--
Joel Telling - Photographer at Large
Click to expand...
--
http://www.garylambert.us/gallery
http://www.onemodelplace.com/jahfakin
 
Your anology is flawed. a sports reporter knows what they are talking about, because it's their job. It's not the same on DPReview, there are some who knows what they are talking about, and others don't. Some think they do, but don't have the expereince to back it up.
Ominous said:
So 99.9% of sports reporters have no basis to comment on the games
they cover, because they never played pro?

I don't need to have played pro ball to know bad form, nor do I
need to be a pro wedding shooter to know when somone is going to
under or overspose a shot.
Click to expand...
--
http://www.garylambert.us/gallery
http://www.onemodelplace.com/jahfakin
 
Jahfakin said:
You would be surprised by how many PJ shoot in "P". It's there for
a reason, and it makes shooting a lot easier, and allows you to
concentrate more on composition. When things happen at a fast
pace, that "p" mode will save your butt.
Click to expand...
I began my photography career in P mode. On the 20D, flick the power switch to the notch above ON and you have creative power in P Mode. The ergonomics of the 20D means you can choose a variety of Aperture settings very easily and very easy via the Quick Control Dial. Choose the aperture you want and let the camera decide the appropriate Shutter Speed. Couple with the Multi Controller for instant AF Point selection and you have an extremely usable camera, more usable than the 1D MK II. In P mode, turning the Main Dial changes shutter speed and the camera decide the appropriate Aperture settings too. The photographer needs to know what the correct ISO value is for the shooting environment he/she is in though. I now shoot almost exclusive in M mode except for "ass saving" moments where I cannot react fast enough where I would revert to P.

--
Jan Shim
Professional Events Photographer
Canon Professional Services Member
http://www.janshim.com
 
Shutter. said:
There are many many very well-known wedding photographers that
shoot jpg. Many.
Jim Fuglestad
Click to expand...
Yes, I believe that, and I bet there are also still many successful wedding photographers shooting on film. Doesn't mean there isn't a better way from a technical perspective, but I guess if you have to make a living at it and time is money, then and going with what you know is more efficient timewise and therefore gives a better payback. And I suppose sometimes "good enough" is good enough; Personally I tend to spend more time on post-processing each photo than I ought to, and I'm rarely completely satisfied with the results, so I'm clearly not a good candidate to be a pro at this. My original question was based on my wondering whether the pro's were tossing a large number of otherwise good shots with blown highlites or dark shadows, shots that could often be rescued if they were available in RAW. Obviously this is not as important an issue as I wondered it was.
  • Cecil
 
I am a wedding photographer and have shot about 500-600 with film and about 150 with digital. My understanding is that medium fine on a 20d is the same as large fine on my 10d's. 6mp's is no problem even with enlarging to sizes above 11x14. I have a beautiful 24x36 inch photograph (.jpg) in my studio that everyone likes. Interpolated? yes and it looks great at viewing distances of 2 to 3 feet. The 8mp 20d would give me more crop room for large prints but then again a pro-photographer takes that into consideration when he takes the shot. What settings I use makes no difference, it is the final result that counts. I don't feel there is one and only one setting for a shot. I surely wouldn't criticize a good shot because the photographer used settings I wouldn't use.

You have to realize wedding photography is mostly artistic and is used to capture moments and moods. This does not mean perfect WB nor does it mean technically perfect images. Some of us have gotten so wrapped up in the technical we lose sight of the artistic. If the client likes the image you present them that is all that matters. RAW vs JPG is a myth, both are tools in producing the image. Both have their advantages and disadvantages but RAW should not be the excuse for sloppy exposure or the lack of understanding of color balance.

The only "sin" would be if the photographer you shot took a bad picture with the settings she used.
BTW did you get a signed release from her to use her image for the forum?
 
DRG said:
I'm curious about something. On my primary PC (a P4 2.6GHz,
overclocked to 3.3GHz), a RAW converter such as RSE takes 8.4s to
convert a 20D file to a 16-bit, aRGB TIFF file, based on
batch-converting 10 randomly-selected images. That means that you
can come home from a shoot and batch-process images at a rate of
over 200 per hour. Although I don't find the quality as high, Adobe
CR takes about 7.4s per image on the same PC. Since batch
processing is no worse than shooting JPEG to begin with, why not
shoot RAW, batch process for most shots, but give yourself the
insurance of having the image in RAW format in case you need to
take advantage of the greater highlight headroom (for recovering
1-2 stops of overexposure), need to boost shadows considerably,
need to make a major WB correction, etc.?

You can also shoot in RAW + JPG if storage isn't an issue. As you
said, that's cheap. This option costs you nothing in workflow or
system upgrades (since you'd use the RAW file for just the problem
images and thus don't need a super-fast system).

David
Click to expand...
I work exclusively on my DELL Inspiron 8500 P4 2.6GHz laptop with 1GB RAM, 60GB 7200 Hitachi disk, 64Mb GeForce 4 1680x1050 wide screen, Paint Shop Pro 9. I travel for my shoots a lot so I do everything from presentation to post processing. There are two lots of batch jobs I do: file reduction for web gallery and file reduction for the mini lab/clients CD. I do not batch process to correct WB and I look at every one of the image to ensure correct orientation, crop, WB ... over a thousand images get checked this way from a wedding shoot. You've given time estimates for processing but have not factored in times each RAW file takes to load. I shoot only Large/Fine and PSP9 loads each uncached 3504x2336 JPG file in a second while a 3512x2340 RAW file takes approximately 8 seconds to load in PSP9.0. You could argue that other RAW apps can process them faster but since I don't use RAW it doesn't matter.

Storage is cheap but getting RAW files to load as fast as JPGs need a huge infrastructure change and that ain't cheap.

--
Jan Shim
Professional Events Photographer
Canon Professional Services Member
http://www.janshim.com
 
Cecil Williams said:
Yes, I believe that, and I bet there are also still many successful
wedding photographers shooting on film. Doesn't mean there isn't a
better way from a technical perspective, but I guess if you have to
make a living at it and time is money, then and going with what you
know is more efficient timewise and therefore gives a better
payback. And I suppose sometimes "good enough" is good enough;
Personally I tend to spend more time on post-processing each photo
than I ought to, and I'm rarely completely satisfied with the
results, so I'm clearly not a good candidate to be a pro at this.
My original question was based on my wondering whether the pro's
were tossing a large number of otherwise good shots with blown
highlites or dark shadows, shots that could often be rescued if
they were available in RAW. Obviously this is not as important an
issue as I wondered it was.
  • Cecil
Click to expand...
Hi Cecil,

If we have to toss good shots, we have to toss them where it makes business sense to do so. On the 20D, you can configure the SET button to change Image Quality on-the-fly so for those really difficult shots, flick to RAW + JPEG then quickly flick back to JPG afterwards.

--
Jan Shim
Professional Events Photographer
Canon Professional Services Member
http://www.janshim.com
 
I mean many of the best photographers choose to shoot jpg because it's good for their workflow, not just because they don't know or understand it, as you imply. I know plenty about raw vs. jpg... I've always been digital, but I find that for my workflow and business that shooting raw just isn't a good alternative. And don't think for one minute that if I thought I'd get consistently better results shooting raw that I wouldn't do it.

Frankly, I just think RAW is generally overhyped. I do chuckle when I hear of people saying they now only shoot their family snapshots in raw because it's so much better as I have a studio hallway of 20x30's all shot in jpg.

Jim

--
Jim Fuglestad
http://www.fuglestadphotography.com
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/galleries
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/366
  • You're not in third grade anymore. Take as many recesses as you want!
  • Why simply live and let live? Live and help live.
 
I shot an affair thrown for my wife with my Tamron 28-75.
It was indoors and I wish I had a Canon 17-40 to use.
Shooting tables would be much easier.
Any comments as to my thoughts.
 
Ben Strasser said:
BTW did you get a signed release from her to use her image for the
forum?
Click to expand...
No, I did not. If that is required, I will of course take the image down.

When exactly is a signed release needed? The wedding was shot outdoor and there were others that had cameras. The image posted isn't for profit or anything. Like I said, I'll take it down if a signed release is needed, though, I'd love to know, in this situation, why it would be needed.

--
Joel Telling - Photographer at Large
 
Shutter. said:
Jan_Shim said:
. PSP is .8F plug-in complatible and I use a number of very
good ones in my work.
Click to expand...
Hi Jan... what does this mean? Thanks in advance.

--
Jim Fuglestad
Click to expand...
Hi Jim,

I meant to say .8BF plug-ins. PSP supports majority of plug-ins that are written for Photoshop and there are just too many commercial and freeware plug-ins that enhance the PSP experience. For instance, the AGD Color Temperature I use is a Plug-in.

--
Jan Shim
Professional Events Photographer
Canon Professional Services Member
http://www.janshim.com
 
Have you thought about the idea that you could have caused harm to this photographers business? Whether you meant to or not, you basically posted her pic on the internet and said she is a screwed up.
jtelling said:
When exactly is a signed release needed? The wedding was shot
outdoor and there were others that had cameras. The image posted
isn't for profit or anything. Like I said, I'll take it down if a
signed release is needed, though, I'd love to know, in this
situation, why it would be needed.

--
Joel Telling - Photographer at Large
Click to expand...
--
http://www.garylambert.us/gallery
http://www.onemodelplace.com/jahfakin
 
anyone looking to get married doesn’t spend their time reading our cr@p :)

No harm done.
Jahfakin said:
jtelling said:
When exactly is a signed release needed? The wedding was shot
outdoor and there were others that had cameras. The image posted
isn't for profit or anything. Like I said, I'll take it down if a
signed release is needed, though, I'd love to know, in this
situation, why it would be needed.

--
Joel Telling - Photographer at Large
Click to expand...
--
http://www.garylambert.us/gallery
http://www.onemodelplace.com/jahfakin
Click to expand...
--
EOSMan

http://www.pbase.com/eosman

 
Jan_Shim said:
Hi Jim,

I meant to say .8BF plug-ins. PSP supports majority of plug-ins
that are written for Photoshop and there are just too many
commercial and freeware plug-ins that enhance the PSP experience.
For instance, the AGD Color Temperature I use is a Plug-in.
Click to expand...
Really? I've never used a plug-in with PSP. I'll have to check that out. Thanks!

Jim

--
Jim Fuglestad
http://www.fuglestadphotography.com
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/galleries
http://www.pbase.com/jfuglestad/366
  • You're not in third grade anymore. Take as many recesses as you want!
  • Why simply live and let live? Live and help live.
 
Shutter. said:
Jan_Shim said:
Hi Jim,

I meant to say .8BF plug-ins. PSP supports majority of plug-ins
that are written for Photoshop and there are just too many
commercial and freeware plug-ins that enhance the PSP experience.
For instance, the AGD Color Temperature I use is a Plug-in.
Click to expand...
Really? I've never used a plug-in with PSP. I'll have to check
that out. Thanks!

Jim
Click to expand...
Yes Jim. If you're already a big fan of PSP 9.0 be ready to be blown away by a sea of available Adobe-compatible plug-ins. For example, MediaChance makes a host of standalone and Adobe plug-ins including my favourite DCE Tools http://www.mediachance.com/plugins/ you'll find these tools very useful.

--
Jan Shim
Professional Events Photographer
Canon Professional Services Member
http://www.janshim.com
 
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