Just curious. How do businesses and governments keep up with the information that they collect? Punch cards to magnetic tape to RAID to ...I don't know what comes next. I guess they have to periodically rerecord old stuff on to the latest and greatest device.
I was cleaning out a junk drawer and found some photo CDs that were 15-20 years old. Most of them loaded OK although they seem to take longer to load than I would have expected. I then tried to transfer them to my offline drive. It looked like the transfer would work but then my system locked up - no mouse, no kb, nothing. I would then reboot and try the transfer again. Sometimes it would work, but more often than not it would hang up again. This might be happening for several reasons, but I'm curious if anyone has had problems with old CDs.
I have been in a similar situation. My son was the chef-owner and I was the photographer. So here are my lessons learned:
What are the pictures going to be used for? PR shots for a web-site or glossy food magazine. Pics from a cell phone may be good enough for a web site.
Lighting is super important, but before you buy a bunch of lights try natural light from a north window. You can use white poster boards to make a suitable backdrop.
It would be extremely helpful to know some post-processing basics. Become super-critical of your work. Look at other people's work. Why does a photo of a McDonald's burger look so good? Where is the light coming from; are shadows hard or soft, etc. There is a ton of stuff on Google.
I enjoyed the comments on portrait photography and the excellent advice about lighting, but let's not get ahead of ourselves in making assumptions. This is a photograph for an American Legion on-line newsletter of which I and the subject are both members. This is a non-commercial / volunteer project. Since my original post I met with the subject and did the shoot. I think things went very well. The bottom line is that I learned a lot it was a hoot trying to remember all our your advice. It certainly made me appreciate the skill of professionals who do this sort of thing on a daily basis.
I have been asked to do a portrait photo of a famous retired Navy Captain and author. My experience with portrait photography is extremely limited. The session will be at his house. My camera is a Canon 5Diii with a Canon 24-105 1:4L I have black, white and green backdrops and photo lights, but all that stuff takes a long time to set up so I thinking of using only flash. I believe the picture will only be used on a website. I would appreciate any advice.
I am the photographer for a couple of large golf tournaments at my club. I would like to set up a tent near the registration table and offer to take photos of the contestants for a small contribution to charity. I would take the picture against a green background screen. The resulting photo would be sent to a computer where the green screen would be replaced by a nice background. The resulting finished photo would be available for delivery during the reception at the end of the tournament. I think I have most of the necessary hardware – a tent, camera, lights, a green screen, etc. On the software side, I have Photoshop and I know that several utilities can make the green screen substitution automatically. What I need help with is the workflow – how do I keep everything in order? What steps could be automated? For instance, I could set the frame counter in my camera to 1. I would give this number to the golfer. While the golfer was out on the links, I would print the photos with the sequence number on the photo. The resulting photo would be placed in a cardboard frame, and then into a numbered envelope. At the end of the tournament, the golfer would give this number to the receptionist who would find the envelope containing the correct photos. There are obviously lots of possible variations to this process. I would appreciate any advice from someone who has tried this.
In retrospect, all the comments make sense. My computer is starved for memory. Not all the photos were converted to tmp. The first 150 or so were not converted. So I suspect that the computer processed the first 150 and then said "whoa" I can't handle all of this and converted the rest to tmp. My camera is Canon 5Diii which I got a week before my trip. I didn't realize it had 2 card slots until after the trip and I started going through the 400-page owner's manual. My computer is a Lenovo M70Q with 8GB Memory and 256GB SSD drive running Windows 11. I have a 1TB aux drive where I keep most photos. No wonder I keep getting memory-full messages. I have ordered an additional 8GB memory card and a 1TB internal drive. I will let IBM do the installation.
I have committed the ultimate photographer’s sin. I was in a hurry and ignored my own rules on backups and lost a bunch of pictures. My wife and I took a very nice trip where I took about 700 snaps all in jpeg. I loaded the pictures onto my external drive. At this point, everything looked good. I also loaded them onto Photoshop Elements. I was busy with a lot of other things at the time, so I’m not sure what happened but the next time I looked at my photos the file type had changed from jpg to tmp. I don’t think there is a way to correct this problem but I’ll offer this problem to “experts”. I’m sure everyone is thinking “what about your backup”. The short story is that I didn’t make one. No excuses, too rushed, etc. Lesson learned.
Thanks for all the info. One is suppose to learn something new everyday and I got more than my fair share. I bought the 5D under the assumption that my existing Canon lenses would work. Well, there goes the budget. Now off to find a wide angle + telephoto (~135mm) that will work with my 5D.
With my new camera, a Canon 5Diii, I have tried to use a Tameron 18-200 lens. The results have not been good. The pictures look like I am looking down a tube. The corners of the photo are out of focus and rounded off.
I have used this same lens with my old camera, a Canon Rebel XTi with great results. The 5D works fine with my other Canon lens. Why won't it work with the Tameron?
Chessysailor
I am an amateur photographer but will often offer to take photos of events that I am associated with - American Legion, tennis, conservation events, etc. I offer to send my photos to anyone who wants them - ie. the publicity chairman. This person will typically then post them on the group's website. Although I am doing this just as a courtesy (and fun for me) I feel that I am spending too much time post-processing. Here is my current flow.
- Trash the junk pictures.
- Attach a star rating to the remainder.
- Review 4 & 5 star photos and Photoshop as necessary.
- Change file type from RAW to jpeg and reduce file size from 3-4 megs to a few hundred K. (my assumption is that the photos will be used on a website. If I know the picture will be printed I will leave the photo at its maximum size.
- Sort the 4 & 5 star photos from the rest of the collection to a folder and send to the PR persons. (or use a DropBox link).
Does this flow make sense?
Chessysailor
Camera: Canon EOS Rebel XTi; Lens: Canon 18-55mm 3.5 and Canon EF 75-300mm 4-5.6.
I was recently asked to take some photos at a high-school baseball game. Starting at 7 PM, shooting at 1/1000th to capture some action initial shots were satisfactory. It quickly became apparent that this wasn't going to do the trick. Increased the ASA to 800 and slowed the speed to 1/500. By 8:00 PM (sunset was at 8:30 overcast sky) I am out of gas. I can only take pictures of the team mascot, who was stuffed and didn't move. The field was lit but not like Yankee Stadium. Pictures were unsat. Grainy. Any suggestions for action photos in low light?
Before you invest a lot of time and money scanning slides, film strips, and the 5 shoeboxes of "snaps", I suggest you consider the "why". Why are you doing this? --kill time, bring back memories, or give the photos to the kids...? If you are like most amateur photographers you have thousands of junk pictures. Pictures of people you don't remember, 12 photos of the Eifel Tower, 100 photos of the Arizona desert, etc. I strongly suggest you break out your old 35mm slide projector and start culling your collection. No matter how fast your scanner is, it will take more time than you can imagine just to select and scan the photos you want to keep. Secondly, give some thought to how you are going to index your photos. Do you want to integrate pre-digital travel photos with photos from the last 10 years or keep all your scanner photos in a separate "history" file. And finally, how fussy are you on quality. You may have a great scanner but it is likely that a lot of your old photos have scratches, dust, faded, etc. Fixing is no big deal but can take forever. Good luck!