I need some advice for my shoot tomorrow that I CANNOT mess up!

[fetching]

I'm sure this has been talked about before, but I'm starting a thread anyhow...

Tomorrow I have an event I have to shoot outside. I don't know exactly what I am photographing yet, but I think it may be architecture...I am doing it for someone and they haven't completely filled me in on all the details. The shoot is in Oakland Ca. so it will be in bright mid-day sun (like anywhere from 10am - 3pm or so).

I'm worried about glare and washed out images from the sun. Does anyone have any suggestions about how I should shoot...any advice at all...from what program i should shoot in to whether or not a lens hood would help. I am thinking of going to buy one today. what about a filter? what can i do to keep my skies blue?

I have the 350XT, kit lens and the 50mm 1.8.

thanks in advance for your help! i am going to go outside and do some test shots.

[mdm]

Pray !

[CyberDyneSystems]

1. Shoot RAW or RAW plus jpeg... this will help with the post processing to save any images that have bad exposure or other factors may be less than perfect.

[Tom W]

Definately use the hood. Try to keep the sun to the side or behind you (yes, I know straight up is hard to put behind you, but you want you subjects lit up if there is any angle to the sun to do so. Skies lose their blue usually when you're shooting a subject that is in the shadows with a bright sky behind them - the camera meters for the shadows and overexposes the sky. Sometimes, this can't be avoided, but do the best you can to shoot the bright side. Keeping the sun towards one side or the other can add depth to detailed structures.

Remember that the sun moves across the sky - what might not be a good shot early, may have better lighting later on.

Filters - the only one I'd bring is a circular polarizer. That can come in handy for deepening the blue skies and eliminating some reflection.

Use a lower ISO - 100 or 200. Evaluative metering, or partial if you have to isolate the middle from the rest of the scene.

[mdm]

How do you set the raw + jpeg? I thought it was one or the other.
Don't forget to drink at the photo shoot. You won't be too uptight.

[fetching]

How do you set the raw + jpeg? I thought it was one or the other.
Don't forget to drink at the photo shoot. You won't be too uptight.

the xt lets you shoot both.

and yes, maybe a drink would help! :D

[robertwgross]

For Oakland, the weather forecast is for cloudy and showers, so I would not sweat the sun.

---Bob Gross---

[fetching]

For Oakland, the weather forecast is for cloudy and showers, so I would not sweat the sun.

---Bob Gross---


ha, yeah...about an hour after i bought the filter and lens hoods it got overcast. that's okay tho, they'll be useful for next time.

[felix21685]

take protection incase it starts to rain.. be prepared for anything

[markubig]

How do you set the raw + jpeg? I thought it was one or the other.
Don't forget to drink at the photo shoot. You won't be too uptight.on your 300D, you can't do it unless you install the Wasia Firmware Hack

[fetching]

i thought i'd report back about my shoot.

it turned out to be a very bright, sunny day. i was shooting both inside and outside from about 10:30 to 5 pm. i used a polarizing filter and a lens hood. i tried to use a low ISO on outdoor shots and higher inside. i shot mostly JPG but sometimes I shot both RAW and JPG.

I brought my laptop with me but it was so bright that when I tried to download a bunch to make sure things were looking good, I couldn't see them. So I looked at my histogram alot and hoped that would do the trick. it did...and it didn't.

i'm actually pretty disappointed with alot of the pics. my exposure was way off. things weren't as crisp and sharp as I had hoped for.

i hate to say this but i consistently shot better photographs with my manual focus canon ae-1. i don't recall having so many issues with exposure or focus.

color me frustrated.

[epeace]

what mode were you shooting in? aperature priority right? if not you probably should have been . . . with autofocus . .

i know theres some soul shooters out there that call blasphemy anytime you use any of the mechanized assistance (that we pay good $$ for) . . . "all manual" they protest . . . i know because i was one . .

but when you're shooting for someone else . . and screwing up is not an option . . . . let the machine do its thing . . . alot of research went into the automation that comes with your camera . . . and for the most part . . its dead accurate

[Tom W]

i hate to say this but i consistently shot better photographs with my manual focus canon ae-1. i don't recall having so many issues with exposure or focus.

color me frustrated.

Yikes!!

I'll say what I can, though I'm not sure whether it will help or not.

First, focus. One of the D-Rebel's weak points is the viewfinder. AF is great, but you can't always tell if it caught the right part of the image or not. Yes, I know that the little light will show what focus point was used, but it won't tell you if you caught the edge of Marge's blue hair, or Bart's Butterfinger bar 10 feet behind her. And you can't always see that in the viewfinder.

The second issue about focus is the size of the final image. I'm sure that you've looked at plenty of 4X6 inch shots from the AE-1. Probably some 8X 10's as well. They usually looked crisp. Well, now you're looking at a screen that is considerably larger than that. And you can zoom in to 100% - or more!. Put an image the same size as your AE-1 prints on the screen and the some of the focus issues will disappear. Not all, but some.

BTW, while I'm on the subject of monitor screens, I hope that you're using a good monitor to work on your images. I found my laptop, despite its good color, to be terrible for image adjustments. Move your head 1 inch up or down and the contrast changes drastically. No way to do it right.

Now considering the exposure - one of the best-kept secrets in photography is what goes on in the darkroom. If you've ever gone to Target or whatever store you take you film to, you may see the Kodak Kiosk that advertizes "color corrected" or some such blather. What they are saying is that they "tweak" the images. Yes, every roll of print film you take to the typical developer today gets tweaked - automatically. Auto-contrast, auto-color, auto-everything. Your prints - your film prints - have effectively been photoshopped.

So, if you're comparing your untweaked prints with what comes from the normal lab, you're missing a step in the process - the development step. And you can do quite a bit in that step.

I'm on a bit of a roll here, so I'll settle down with this last thing. Take each image, look at it, look at the histogram, look at what you can and can't do with it. Increase color saturation, or decrease it. Play with levels in photoshop. Play with Unsharp Mask. Use curves if you have the "big" photoshop (or the hacked plugin that I got for Photoshop Elements 3). Evaluate what you've done and see what may be right or wrong. Take that information and go to the same place and practice with different positions and exposures. Learn from this experience.

[fetching]

you know, after the shoot sunday i looked at my pics and i was disappointed. i have kind of avoided looking at them, but I have to get them to the client soon and so tonight i sat down and started looking through to find the best shots. i realize now that i was way too hard on myself. there are many good shots, many more than I originally thought, and some that can be good once i fix some levels and do some cropping. So I am not as worried about what I have to show for my time and effort and feel fairly confident that they'll be happy with what i did as well.

thanks everyone for the advice and support. :)

[epeace]

nice . . thats happened to me on more than one occaision . . you go in with certain expectations . . get dissappointed . . then later you forget what those expectations were (or at least your memory of them get skewed) . .

i think going back after a cool off period allows a bit more objectivity . .

[mbze430]

you know, after the shoot sunday i looked at my pics and i was disappointed. i have kind of avoided looking at them, but I have to get them to the client soon and so tonight i sat down and started looking through to find the best shots. i realize now that i was way too hard on myself. there are many good shots, many more than I originally thought, and some that can be good once i fix some levels and do some cropping. So I am not as worried about what I have to show for my time and effort and feel fairly confident that they'll be happy with what i did as well.

thanks everyone for the advice and support. :)

It is a good idea to go in to a shoot to have very high expectation. Even if you think everything is gonna go wrong. This WILL prepare you when the situation where everything is going wrong.

This is not always feesible when you get hired on a job, but if you can plans things out, do it. Make sure you have Plan A thru G. The last thing you want doing a shoot is have a blank face, and have ZERO idea.

As to your post about shooting film. You didn't mention if you were shooting prints or slides. but if you were shooting prints, the reason you don't have to worry about your negatives as much, is that during the printing, the operator/machine fixes your exposure. If you shoot alot of slides, than shooting digital is just about the same.