Not aware of any clear self stick material for dye based inkjet, only for higher end solvent based inkjet printers. Check with a local sign maker who uses a digital printer, many are capable of printing on clear material for backlit signage. Cost should be around $4 per square foot plus their setup time to print.

For wildlife and macro photographers it will be a great asset, being able to capture a few more pixels at far off or really up close subjects will always be welcomed, but for those satisfied with 8x10 prints of the kids or the family pet it is a waste of money and pixels. I hope to afford one some day.

I'm pretty sure that you need to clean the contacts on your SD card and in the camera. A quick in the field fix is to remove the card and inspect the contacts, wipe them with a pencil eraser and then wipe off any eraser residue. Insert the card then release/insert it several times, this should wear through any dirty places within the camera's contacts. Sometimes a hair or piece of lint gets stuck on a contact.

You're welcome, the "t" key toggles it on and off. Under the HELP menu click on Develop Module Shortcuts (or use the shortcut Ctr+/) to open a list of keyboard hot key shortcuts to most all features.

While in the Develop module, hit the "Q" key to turn on the spot removal tool or click it in the tool box, type "T" to show the "Visualize Spots" button at the bottom of the image window and click the box beside it.

Chef, whatever works for you is the best. We all have preference of how we like to organize and mine was started LONG before there was a Lightroom program so I saw no need in changing my system to accommodate a program that may be replaced at some point with whatever comes along that might prove to be a better raw editor. As long as I understand 'my' system is all that matters to me and what makes sense to me might be confusing to others. I have used the Windows file system to organize my files for 25 years and see no reason to change now or allow a program to be in charge. I file my photos by category, if I take a photo of an eagle it ends up in an hierarchy of Windows Library, My Pictures, A-My-Pics, Nature, Birds, Eagles, filename. The photo session would be downloaded from the camera card to a temporary folder 'Pictures' on my hard drive. Lightroom is then used to preview the shots and those I know will not be used are deleted. The rest then imported for further scrutiny and either deleted or edited. The few that got this far are then exported as JPG at full resolution/size and no compression to a temp folder. I could use LR to rename but a lot of the time I have a mixed variety of subjects and it takes too long to batch export several times with differing names, I use a file renaming utility to do this after they have all been exported. The original file name stays the same, such as JC6A2376.cr2 and if it's a photo worth future editing from the raw it is archived under that name in a folder named RAW, but the exported JPG would become for example eagle-male-landing-JC6A2376.jpg I can easily find the photo and I have the original file number to locate the raw file if needed at some point. After I'm through in LR I delete all the images that were imported and it now has no control of where my files are stored. Picassa does a great job of cataloging all the files on my system and updates each time the program is opened, you can search by folder or file name and get a thumbnail of what's on the drive. Once a week all new photos are copied to two different portable hard drives for safe backups. Works for me, but to each his own. Maybe the push by Adobe to get everyone to use LR to catalog their images is to kinda keep you dependent on them once you have several thousand photos cataloged and you wouldn't want to start all over with another program. My system is open to whatever program I decide to use to as an editor.

I needed an 18-135 IS STM for an older t3i and bought one a few months back from a camera dealer in Hawaii for $280 (with free shipping), it had been part of a Canon kit that had been broken up and sold piece by piece. He stated that it was a genuine Canon lens and provided me with the original sales receipt where he had purchased it from Canon. Got it in, it was brand new, focus was a bit out of adjustment, sent it to Canon and they adjusted it free of charge, works great now and saved a few $$. I'm a frugal but cautious buyer and read all I can about the eBay dealer first, if they've made several sales and their feedback rating is high and if they offer your money back or replacement then go for it. eBay weeds out the cheats quickly, if the dealer has been doing business on there for a while you can bet they'll stand behind their sales or get booted out. Small stuff from foreign companies has so far been worth the chance, but $25 is my limit, everything else comes from U.S. dealers only.

You're right, more shooters should adhere to safely removing a card from the reader and also when inserting a card into a reader. Static electricity can zap a card easily. Anytime electro static is high enough that you get a small bite when you touch something metal you're certainly in danger of destroying a memory card or anything else you touch on your computer or camera if it is attached to the computer. I've made it a habit of NEVER letting the card be the first thing that touches the reader, I always ground myself to my metal desk to discharge any static and then touch the card reader with my hand before placing a card into it. If the discharge goes through your card from your body it can ruin it, how do I know static can kill a card? Experience! This can happen year round when the conditions are right, although it's worse in the Winter.

Probably not the end but it is changing. I always hated wedding shoots anyway, I'm a lot more satisfied doing nature photography now, the cellphone shooters won't wade through the weeds or climb a tree to shoot an animal but they'll elbow anyone that gets between them and their object of desire in a public place. Or you could do like Hillary and rope yourself off with armed bodyguards to keep everyone out of the way.

Sometimes it comes down to just plain luck. I make every effort to take photographs, I'm conscious of my composition, exposure, DOF and what's in the background that would be distracting. One of my best wall-hung shots is of a doe and her two fawns, I saw them from my back deck standing about 100 yards away, and figured by the time I got to my camera and got outside they would be gone but I took the chance and slipped out, walked towards them hid from view by a garage. I peeped out around 60 yards from them, took aim and they all three looked directly at me as if they were posing for a portrait, so what to me was a snapshot of some deer turned out to be better than some well planned and staged shots. You never know in nature photography how the animals will react and either make or break a shot. You can control the camera, but you can't always control the subject, as been said, "art is subjective" depends on who's looking at it and whether they like it or not. Hope you can define a philosophical point for your purpose of explaining to yourself and others what photography is, to me it's many things but mostly fun. I think if it ever got to the point that every shot was a winner or perfect in every aspect, the fun would be gone as the love to learn and do better is a great part of my desire to use a camera.

Haven't lost much due to equipment failure, but a few user error mishaps enhanced by people unaware that anyone else is on this planet but themselves have come close to disaster. A few weeks ago I was shooting a night time dirt track stock car race, had a couple speed lights on a stand at a safe distance from the normal track traffic. A car spun out and here comes Bubba in his wrecker, got the car off the track and on his way back to the pits he made a turn directly at my speed lights, I got him flagged down and turned just in time. The official track photographer said it was a good thing it was Bubba driving the wrecker, if it had been his cousin Bubba Jr. he wouldn't have stopped and would have went ahead and run over it just for fun. Overall it was interesting, not my desire to do it regularly but got a few shots of my friend's car, a bit harder than BIF's these SCIF's (stock cars in flight) are running around 80 MPH in the turns and that's where you get the action shots.

Photography is no different than any other profession when it comes to determining an hourly rate. There are some good online forms that will help you find out what stuff you HAVE to charge for in order to cover your overhead, then you add a profit margin for what you need to make a living from the work. What the shooter down the street charges, should not be used to set your price, they may have very low overhead or may have higher expenses than you. Too many people start a business thinking they can charge just a little more per hour than what they are currently making at their regular job only to find out that they now have ALL the expenses coming out of their pockets and are soon broke and can't understand why. You also need to figure in the time it takes to "run" the business not just the hours you spend at your photography. I have ran a graphic design business for 47 years and I can tell you out of a 5 or 6 day work week, you will spend about 8 to 12 man hours just doing the business routines of bookkeeping, ordering materials, taking phone calls and a thousand other things that crop up in order to keep your business going. Most cities/towns have a local Chamber of Commerce, contact them to see if they have a business mentor program, your mentor doesn't have to know the first thing about a camera but they can give you some invaluable tips on how to create a rate sheet and run a successful business.
Here's some food for thought:
In a 'normal' job you work 40 hours a week, with a two week vacation and a few days thrown in for sick days. That relates to about 49 weeks per year, so multiply that by 40 and you work 1,960 hours per year. If you now spend 10 or more hours per week 'running' your new business that's 490 hours or more off the top of that 'normal' year of work that has to be paid for by someone (your clients) or else you're taking money out of your own pocket to operate a business and that's not a successful business. I would say for the first couple years your 'running the business' hours will be much more than when once you get established, lots of things to consider.
Now, if you're just going to be shooting part time, charge what the customer is willing to pay to put a little spending money in your pocket every now and then, but if you're serious about a career in photography, you need to learn business management as much or more than learning to push a shutter button or you'll end up hating your job.
Sorry to have gotten off track on your original post, but to answer those questions, you should charge by the hour starting out to get a feel for the number of hours for the different type shoots you do. Once you have an idea of the amount of time for certain type shoots you could do them at a set price for the initial shoot plus extra for prints. The only problem I see with doing shoots at a set price, the customers usually want to start adding demands for shots that you didn't charge for, you'll have to be a very slick businessperson to be able to stop their demands before they get out of hand and without making them mad. As long as the customer knows they are paying 'by the hour' they are a LOT more aware of not tying up YOUR time, if it's by the job, they have a tendency to be late, take forever changing clothes, wanting to stand around and talk or waste your time talking on their cell phone.

Joe, I've used it on a couple of Canon T3i cameras, it is mostly enhancements for video but there are a few features that work for still shots as well. I have not used the intervalometer, but I would think the time lapse feature would work quite well as it is only a timer to tell the camera when to make a shot. I do like the focus overlay that shows where and what in your shot is focused. I'm waiting for the version that supports the 7D MKii to give that a try.

Thanks Rocketride, as I said it's not perfect, don't have time to polish at low res JPG, just wanted to show the OP that their images could be somewhat salvaged if there is an important shot in the bunch, they just need to learn some PP techniques and files like this are a good training tool. As for muddy, that comes from not having a full spectrum recorded in the shot, this image will never have the pop and clarity of a properly exposed and color balanced shot, and yes, your monitor may be off a bit, the puss in your avatar has a pink face?

Thanks Bushy, just a couple minutes in LR, though not much to work with, low resolution and not a full spectrum captured, a raw file would have been a salvageable challenge, another reason why raw is a valuable asset to the photographer. With several minutes of layers/masking more could be done with this one but I'll have to leave that to others with more time, might be a good one for the OP to learn PP on. quote=Bushymonster]Elliott Design you cleaned it up pretty nice.
-Bushy[/quote]