Wackyness - Paid camera guys

[Guineh]

During the first week of October, My wife and I enjoyed a cruise.

Anyone whose been on a cruise knows they have a veritable army of camera guys snapping your picture everywhere you turn.

A couple things:

This struck me as odd: Camera guy rotates a ring (I'm guessing zoom... not sure, actually...) back and forth, and counts to 3 before taking the picture. What purpose does this serve? Is it to make sure the person you're photoing is staring at you with a confused expression?

One of the shots on formal night was near a water fountain. Nice background for a shot, I thought. After the picture was posted, they either put a cooling gel on the background, or a warming gel on the foreground, and the fountain was tinted blue, which looked unnatural. Was there any reasoning behind a cool-toned background? I would have preferred it have the same color temp as the subject.

And the height of the wackyness: They used that other brand of camera equipment ;) Actually, nothing terribly wrong with Nik*n cameras, just the system they chose to use. I couldn't tell if it was the 20D equivalent or the 1D equivalent they were using (I'm guessing the former ...)

[KevC]

Might be zooming in to meter/focus on your faces, locks exposure, then zooming out to compose. Poor man's Spotmeter I suppose.

When I went on a cruise, the staff shot with a D70 and 35/2. One of them actually said "woooahh nice 17-40L" :D

[Jon, The Elder]

Last time I went on a cruise they gave me a nice blue outfit to wear and fed us 3 times a day from stainless steel trays. Then other people shot at us with big guns. I don't go on cruises anymore.

[Shutter22]

Disney was the same.

On the last day my parents and I decided to get our picture taken infront of the castle. My step-father and I were fully equiped, but thought it would be nice to have someone else take it for a change, so we asked the Disney "pros"


OH MY GOODNESS!!

Our picture was soooooo overexposed. I don't know how on earth someone could do that on accident. I'm not being sarcastic about this either. Half of the picture was white, you couldn't see our faces. It was awful.


(And they all used Nik...)

[Guineh]

Might be zooming in to meter/focus on your faces, locks exposure, then zooming out to compose. Poor man's Spotmeter I suppose.

When I went on a cruise, the staff shot with a D70 and 35/2. One of them actually said "woooahh nice 17-40L" :D

I thought of that, but really looked like a rythmic turning of the ring for effect. Reql quick, 1..2..3, snap. Hmm. Heh, I saw one guy that had the same exact backpack as mine, a Rebel XT and a SLIK tripod (which may be my next tripod after the current one gives up the ghost, maybe not: the thing looked huge!)

Would have been nice if the paid guys were using Canon :) But, nothing's perfect.

[Guineh]

Last time I went on a cruise they gave me a nice blue outfit to wear and fed us 3 times a day from stainless steel trays. Then other people shot at us with big guns. I don't go on cruises anymore.

Wow, but, they paid you to go on that cruise not the other way around ;)

OK, I'm teasing. Sounds like at some point you were in the Navy on active duty? I'm a Navy brat! My dad is retired Navy. Thankfully, No one pointed any guns at his ship. (He was on an aircraft carrier for a while, but I think it was during relatively peaceful times...) ... or at least I he didn't tell me any horror stories. ;)

Disney was the same.

On the last day my parents and I decided to get our picture taken infront of the castle. My step-father and I were fully equiped, but thought it would be nice to have someone else take it for a change, so we asked the Disney "pros"


OH MY GOODNESS!!

Our picture was soooooo overexposed. I don't know how on earth someone could do that on accident. I'm not being sarcastic about this either. Half of the picture was white, you couldn't see our faces. It was awful.


(And they all used Nik...)

Eeew, none of ours were really that bad. They were OK, and for the most part even the quickie dinner shots were fine, just that one pic made me wonder why they balanced the flashes like they did.

[ANali]

About the Disney pics with their equipment - ours were all like that too, way overexposed. I had them take shots with my camera/my settings, and they came out much better. So much better, that I did not order any of theirs.

Andrea