I'm taking a course on Photigy. Alex Koloskov has a white wall in his studio. I have a white cloth background (some kind of muslin) that's supposedly wrinkly free. It's OK for high key because I can blow out the background but for a gray or gradient, you can still see the wrinkles. I can't use seamless paper because I'm in my house and need something I can pack up and store easily. It also needs to be fairly big because some of shots require bouncing light. So, I'm trying to find a background that will work. Any ideas? I've included an attachment so you can see the issue.

The issue with using Carbonite or any other cloud based system for backup purposes is not the slowness of the program, it is the slowness of your internet connection. The initial backup may take a long time due to the size of your files being uploaded. After the initial backup everything is done in the background and is speedy. Using the cloud for storage is much faster since you are only accessing one file at a time. Carbonite can be set where they will overnight a portable hard drive to you with everything you had backed up if you need that. It must be remembered programs such as Carbonite and similar ones are designed for cloud backup not everyday cloud storage.

I had carbonite for several years until I had a hard drive crash. The I found out all of the things that it did not backup like emails, videos and programs. Fortunately, I had many of my photos backed up to external drives. Unfortunately, the most recent shoot of around 1000 photos was not backed up. It represented a weekend professional shoot which could not be recovered. I had assumed that it had been backed up in the week since I uploaded it, but no. Trying to restore from carbonate was painfully slow, so, it ended up being of no use at all. Then came the task of stopping the carbonate payments. They would not cancel my service until I finally had to cancel my credit card. Not nice people to deal with. Funny that the positive reviews are all from people who have never had to use them.

I've used Carbonite for a few years, very pleased so far. No apparent restrictions on file size as my RAWs are there (as well as JPEGs, DOCs, PDFs, etc.) no limit for storage. The files are encrypted when stored. I like that it keeps track of what is/isn't backed up and has little dots on the file names to indicate the backup status. They backup "standard" directories, and I can add directories to the list. The initial backup took about a week because of the number of files, subsequent additions are automatic and rather quick. It costs about $60 a year for my one PC. (This is in addition to my external drive backup and a copy on my laptop.) The primary reason for me using the cloud is it is off-site without having to take a drive someplace periodically.

This is a confessional comment of a shoot from last weekend that I awkwardly stumbled through.

I really blew my first experience as a group, probably 35 years ago. I was shooting with a Canon fTb. To shoot flash, the shutter speed had to be set on 1/60. Somehow I inadvertently moved the shutter speed to 1/70. Each picture was 1/2 what I wanted to shoot and the other 1/2 was black. My photos were unusable, and I was embarrassed.

35 years later, I guess memories of my photographic blunder had faded. I was asked to be the group photographer at a friend's birthday party. The experience was quite an adventure.

The party was in a long and narrow room, at night, with large picture windows facing a street, with views of a "lit up" shopping center with lot of car headlights and taillights. To make matters more challenging, the room was decorated in part with mylar balloons floating at the ceiling. The balloons had long, colorful ribbons hanging to perhaps 5 feet over the floor (about shoulder or face level on most people).

In a relatively small room containing 60 or 70 people, I assumed my mission was to simply photograph the faces of everyone in attendance, typically in groups, and to photograph the birthday cake.

I brought both of my cameras to the party, a Sony a7ii with a 35mm f2.8 Zeiss lens, and a Sony RX10ii with its built-in Zeiss zoom lens. My flash, a Youngnuo 560 III, which I used in the shoe on top of the cameras. The flash did not communicate well or consistently with either camera (my fault, I feel certain), and sometimes the flash didn't fire at all. I quickly found that the flash communicated better with my RX10ii, and I used that camera most of the time. I would appreciate any advice you might give me on how to set up the "on camera" flash.

I shot in RAW, using shutter priority mode, and set the shutter speed at 1/60, bouncing the flash off of the ceiling and walls. I started with a low ISO of 200 but moved ISO to 800 by the end of the night. I thought that my flash and fast lenses made the use of higher ISOs unnecessary.

I intentionally did not use "AF Assist", which would have shined a light immediately before shutter release and made focusing much faster. I felt the light beam would be a distraction. This was probably a mistake.

After a night of playing with my cameras and being frustrated with the flash, I collected my compensation, a piece of birthday cake (which I believe everyone else got as well), and I went home with low expectations.

When I first glanced at the photos the following morning, immediately after import to my computer, panic struck. Almost all of my photos were too dark, and a large number were totally black.

I rarely use the exposure slider in post-processing, but I found in some instances that increasing exposure was a life-saver. Noise was very manageable. I had to remove a lot of small lights and other distractions from all shots with the window in the background, and I tried to remove as many ribbons as possible. I cropped many of the shots to eliminate people in the background and the drinks most people were holding when I photographed them.

To my surprise and in spite of my fumbling around, the photos were very good. They aren't works of art, but they are fairly complementary portraits documenting attendees of the event. Here are a few samples.

Iphone picture of my Ace wearing his new collar. I am only an amateur photographer but love taking pictures. I always have my iPhone with me, and rarely have my DSLRs with me, so most of my recent photos are iPhones. The inconvenience and bulk of carrying the DSLR gear was a game-changer for me. I have sent emails to local professional photographers to ask if I can be a second shooter, for free, so I can use my DSLR gear, but have never received a reply. I also have been asked by neighbors not to take pictures while walking in the street with my DSLR around my neck taking pictures of holiday lawn decorations. So lately my DSLR gear has stayed at home. Such a shame, I much prefer the DSLR photo over the iPhone photo, but it is better to take an iPhone photo than no photo at all.