VBS - Vacation Bible School

http://mgatesphoto.com​/vbs.html

Could you please tell me your favorite photo and what I could have done to make them better? Or what I should on the next occasion, what kind of photos?

Thank you, CnC always welcome...

Thank you for your words Elguapo. There were things blocking a few of my frames, but I thought they were cute so I put them up anyways. I do have a cut off chin photo, I realized that when I put it in the gallery. Again, I thought it was a good photo so I put it in there.

Not sure which one is #22 with bags of candy...

You can right click the photo, click "Open..." and then just copy the image url from your address bar into your post next time .

Anybody else =D

A quick look and they seem pretty good. I like the saturation levels and the presentation is pretty good. VBS is generally a bear to photograph and you did well.

I think you'll get more comments if you post a couple of your favorites rather than the whole group of them.

You caught some nice moments. Color and exposure look good. Some fill flash would help brighten some eyes.

Individual shots are always nice, but it's also good to include some wider views that show people interacting. That would add interest and tell the story better.

I thought so Curtis. I didnt want to whip out my kit lens (widest lens I have) for fear of low quality so I stuck to my 70-200mm f/4L. Thanks for the suggestion.

I might just post a few favs then.

Swift1 wrote in post #3567977
I thought so Curtis. I didnt want to whip out my kit lens (widest lens I have) for fear of low quality so I stuck to my 70-200mm f/4L. Thanks for the suggestion.

I might just post a few favs then.

Mercy, don't be afraid to use that kit lens. Just crank the f-stop up. Ours gets very sharp at f6.3 and above.

I used to take a week off every summer and be the VBS photographer at our church so I understand the challenges and God Bless Ya, Sister, for taking it on. My favorite pic, hands down, was the little red head with the glasses, hold the watchamacallit. Can you crop that really really tight so it is just her face and hands? She looks like she is having so much fun at VBS!

A word of caution: it is the nature of candid pics that you will end up getting some bad or unflattering pics of adults with their eyes half closed, mouths funny, whatever. It is my personal policy to never let those pics see the light of day. It is embarrassing for most adults and they will hide from you next time you have a camera out. Kids don't seem to care, but give that a thought when it comes to adults who end up looking really bad in one of your shots.

I think you had a good variety of shots as well. Detail shots of the food and the crafts and adult people and the little people. They are blessed to have you as their official photographer. sue cassidy

suecassidy wrote in post #3569519
I used to take a week off every summer and be the VBS photographer at our church so I understand the challenges and God Bless Ya, Sister, for taking it on. My favorite pic, hands down, was the little red head with the glasses, hold the watchamacallit. Can you crop that really really tight so it is just her face and hands? She looks like she is having so much fun at VBS!

A word of caution: it is the nature of candid pics that you will end up getting some bad or unflattering pics of adults with their eyes half closed, mouths funny, whatever. It is my personal policy to never let those pics see the light of day. It is embarrassing for most adults and they will hide from you next time you have a camera out. Kids don't seem to care, but give that a thought when it comes to adults who end up looking really bad in one of your shots.

I think you had a good variety of shots as well. Detail shots of the food and the crafts and adult people and the little people. They are blessed to have you as their official photographer. sue cassidy

Thank you Sue!

Just to clarify, I am not the lady in this photo:
http://mgatesphoto.com​/gallery/vbs/IMG_5820.​jpg

She is the official photographer for VBS. I only just started Tuesday, two days ago. She has a 20D with kit lens, and she sets her mode dial to Auto, so she doesn't seem to know too much. I told her that if I put the photos straight from the camera onto the disk she wants me to burn them on, they will be 3 megabytes each at least and will take up a lot of space on the diskette. She didn't understand what megabytes were, at first she thought I said megapixels. I didn't bother explaining so she asked me what I set my camera's megapixels to be for those shots. I told her 8mp. Can a 350D even set its megapixels? I know I could do this with the Panasonic camera I had, but not with the 350D...

I do love the shot with the cute little guy (not girl, again :lol)! That was my favorite shot of the bunch:
http://mgatesphoto.com​/gallery/vbs/IMG_5864.​jpg
I will find the high res version of that photo and I'll crop it as you asked . Wasn't sure how to crop that. The thing he's clutching is a big set of cloth. Every child holds onto each handle and goes up and down, with balls being in the middle. They jump up, then crouch down. Then they criss cross in the middle, switching spots with another kid.

I am a guy, as you can see on the About page on my website (http://mgatesphoto.com​/about.php). You don't see my face, but a woman does not have the same body I have in the photo .

I will have the opportunity again today to take some more photos, then again on Friday, thought I have to get her the disk on Friday. So the photos I take on Friday most likely won't be on it.

Thank you for taking the time to comment on my doings, and thank you for your blessing .

Swift,

If you're shooting in JPEG mode, you can select from three choices for image resolution and two choices for compression. Lookup "Image Recording Quality" in your instruction manual for more info.

Generally when I'm providing files on CD, whether for pay or for free, I shoot RAW and resize them down to 1800x1200 pixels during the RAW conversion (you can do this in batches with DPP or Lightroom). Then I sharpen the downsized files and save them with a mild dose of JPEG compression. You can easily get them in the range of 200-300kb this way.

This is especially useful for high ISO shots. The resizing gets rid of the digital noise, so when you sharpen them you aren't sharpening the noise, too.

It's unlikely they'll be printed any larger than 4x6, so providing more resolution than that is just wasted bytes.

I understand that Curtis, thanks. I actually have them resized to 800x600 because she said she won't print larger than 4x6, so I made them available starting at 11x6...Was this right for me to do? Or should I make them larger, at 1800x1200 as you said?

I will shoot RAW today, instead of my usual JPEG. I don't understand what the difference is in image quality terms, you can only see the difference if you're pixel peeping. Or so I've been thinking. Feel free to let me know wrong.

I haven't sharpened the downsized photos, should I?

Generally you want 300 dpi for printing. In a 4x6 image that translates to 1200x1800. It's also a 2x3 format which is what your camera produces. It just simplifies a lot of processing on your part. And I do sharpen as my last step with either Photoshop or Neat Image.

An not to get into a big issue with RAW/jpg, I shoot raw because it allows me more correction latitude. jpg is a lossy format - information is thrown away to compress it. RAW allows corrections to be made with more data and I need all the help I can get.

So, 4x6 in 300dpi is 1200x1800?

I will shoot RAW today then, to try it out. I have shot with RAW before, but it was a bother converting all the RAW files later into JPEG. Either way, the photo becomes a JPEG...And when it's a JPEG, whatever was in RAW is now lost. Right?

That's the beauty of RAW - you retain the original raw image. The jpg is converted from the raw file but the raw remains untouched so you can always go back to it. Any changes you make to raw are stored in a side-car file, not in the actual raw image so you can always go back to what came out of the camera. Look at it as a digital negative - you always get your negatives back after you print.

Oooh! That makes more sense now.

Is that really true, can someone confirm it just so I can be sure? I'm leaving to take the photos in about 15 minutes .