Are these continious lights or strobe(flash) lights? What is the brand and model#?
My bad. mafadecay answered your question.

The Million dollar question. In photography it is hard to put a price on investment of your time, equipment and cost of operation (lights, water, heat, office, mileage, etc.). If it were a retail store it is much simpler to figure since you can put a finger on the raw cost of operation. What will the market in your area handle. The main thing is, don't discount your work. If your selling it, you are now a professional. If you are giving it away, you are still competing with professionals. General rule of thumb for easy figuring: Take your raw cost (the money you have to pay to get the end result) and if you multiply it by 3, you might break even with overhead but probably not, if you multiply it by 6, you might make a profit, if you multiply it by 10 you are probably making a profit and so on. But it is all relative to how your perceive yourself as a professional. You are selling yourself as part of the end result. If you don't believe in your product (and yourself) then it's not worth 2 cents. How long will your product last? Is it printed on your home inkjet or professionally printed? With this digital era, your main cost is your equipment and mostly your time. What is your time worth? Don't cut yourself short.

Vietnam Photographer----I was a Navy Photographer in the Phillipines with short TAD's in Vietnam & Bangkok and then continued it as a business for the past 45 years. I have enjoyed dodging bullets at weddings for all of those 45 years.

Studied under Monte also. Learned how to shoot an organized wedding and let the moment happen.

oops!

I'm a pro of 45 years. I quit counting how many weddings I have done. Digital has completely changed the thinking of quality and experience. The price you pay for a professional is all relevant. You get what you pay for and it's a fine line if you are paying for the photographer's ego or the service and peace of mind he provides. I quote one of the bloggers "You pay peanuts you get monkeys"! As far as other photographers and contracts, I have gone against the grain for all my years. No contract but 2 consultations with both the B&G present. I tell them that other cameras are allowed but they must stay to the side, not next to me, only take pix when I lower my camera and I will not wait for them to take pictures. Before I made this rule I was photographing a wedding and it was a slew of cameras going off and one person stated "I would have gotten that picture but the photographer got in the way". I sat my camera down, walked up to the B&G and asked if they wanted me to photograph their wedding or them. They said they wanted me and didn't know how I put up with it this long. I asked if I could speak with them, they said by all means. I took control and there was no problem the rest of the day and I added it to my requests of the B&G and guests. There is a great responsibility put on the photographer of an event that won't happen again and cannot be retaken. A professional has an investment in his experience and equipment and is spending his time to make an event remembered for a lifetime. What he is paid can only be correct if him and the other party agrees it is a fair price. The party paying it is the one that has to be satisfied. It is not up to us as outsiders to criticize it. That price for some photographers is a steal but for other photographers it is out right stealing. Let the Bride and Groom have their day. Use the images they get to make the DVD. It's their decision. Do as they say or if they sign the contract do as it says. As I tell my B&G's, "It's your day, I am there to make it happen for you." As a professional photographer I have that control and it's up to me to make sure they have the memories.

I shoot raw 100%. I have a 5D and a 7D and I use Canon's DPP to process and it is fast. I shoot thousands of portrait images per year. Other than showing images immediately I see no reason to shoot in jpg. I never delete the original raw image. I would never want a jpg file to go back to, to re-work with it. Why compress then compress then compress, etc., etc., etc. Storage is to cheap to delete my raw files.

If it's really cold, keep an extra set of batteries next to your body or in a warm place. Keep your backup camera warm also. Keep a good lens cloth handy for when a lens goes from cold to warm or is it the other way around. Your bride and groom, as most are, are living in a fantasy world, they and you should be ready to tuff it up. Have a plan B for the weather. Keep the camera next to your body under a coat when not shooting. Have an assistant to help keep your stuff warm. Good luck & practice shooting in the cold. The stuff inside will be a piece of cake in comparison.

I assume you are talking about Canon DPP program. I have used DPP since 2004 and have used no other. Why? I had a guy work for me that had a Nikon and he said the DPP was much superior to anything he used to process his raw photos. Also have a professional that shoots Fuji and he said the same thing. DPP is fast, easy to use, batch processes, Batch exposure changes, Batch color corrections, on & on. This summer I did guests at a dude ranch where I shot from horse back for 5 hours, averaged 800 shots in raw, would get in by 4:00 pm, load shots onto computer, glance through them in DPP, would fix over & under exposures, delete mis-fires, highlight all of them & change their file names/numbers, highlight them all and batch process them to jpg of size I wanted for showing in a slide show and have them all ready for showing during dinner at 6:30 pm. If I would have shot them in jpg or tiff and had to change exposure it would take twice as long. It's a powerful program and it's free with your Canon camera. Feel free to email me at chrisjd@kci.net if you need help with it.

Some things learned from my mentors that figure out all the technical stuff. Never compromise on the shooting of the original image. Shoot at the max resolution (raw) not with a compressed image (jpg). Storage is cheap. I have 2 external hard drives at 1.5 terabytes each and each are mirrored storage so if one goes bad I have the other as back up. Never erase "on the fly" in your camera or as you are shooting. Always download images to your computer and storage as soon as possible. Never erase your camera memory card with your computer, do it in your camera and then always re-format the card in that camera after the files are erased. Always save the original uncompressed file and keep it to fall back on. Always work on an uncompressed file (raw, tiff) and not the compressed file (jpg). Every time you resave a jpg it recompresses it and you lose more information each time.

If you are using the program that came with your Canon called DPP(Digital Photo Professional) there is no reason to shoot both unless you need to view them on your computer right away. Yes, shooting both takes more room on your card. I am a working pro and shoot thousands of images per year and started out shooting both, but when I finally realized what all the Canon DPP program did I quit shooting the jpg and now only shoot raw. You should always keep your raw image and you can alter a raw with DPP. In DPP you can change the exposure of your raw image and each click adjusts the brightness, contrast, hue & saturation all together, in one click. If you work with a jpg you have to do each one of those separately. It will also adjust the sharpness separately and it can white balance the image also and it can batch process many images at one time. It is a fantastic program that is free with your Canon. I only use jpg for viewing & printing. If I work on the image in other programs that won't accept the raw I work from a tiff and not the jpg. That's another post entirely.

General rule of thumb for car pix: 45 degree angle or if from front, showing front and side. Lower angle like on your knee. Shade or overcast and the background the same light as your car. If you have glare off of chrome or glass, try a star filter or I think you can photo shop that in if you want. A telelphoto lens is better than a wide or normal.A little flash fill might help but can't over do the available light and won't work if you are to far away. But then all of this is only for general pix. By all means try the other suggestions and be creative.

I to have had this problem with 2 clients. I burned them in the option of "Like a USB Flash Drive" and I checked the discs and the images were there but they won't show up on an apple. One client took the disk to Kinkos and they transfered them for her but didn't tell her how. I do not know any one in my small town that has an apple and my 2 clients are half way across the United States so I can't readily check this out but I was told that if you use the other option "With a CD/DVD Player" (Mastered) that it would work. I would like to know for sure if that works.

How do you burn a DVD in a PC Windows 7 that will work in an apple? I shoot from horseback, pictures of guests riding, then sell them the images on a DVD. I have a couple of them that have Apple computers and my DVD won't work in their Apple?

to PalePictures:Do you just change the dpi to 72 and if someone wants to use that for facebook or view it on a computer, for instance, it will look great but if they try to print it, it will not look good? Or do you resize it also?