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I'm really digging...
... tethered shooting and combo (RAW + small JPEG) mode ...
With the advent of the decent laptop (complete with 15ft USB cable) I finaly was able to try this thing.
And I must say: I love it. :lust
Even with lousy/slow canon s/w we were able to use the 17" screen easily to adjust the poses, get new ideas, etc. And once I get a hold of few more things I'll probably move 27" to the studio too, so it would be even better.
As to the adding small jpegs to raw... it greatly simplified my workflow.
First of all, once the shoot is over, I'm capable immediately burn them to the cd and hand it over to my model, so she doesn't have to wait until images are online or for CD in the mail (save on postage, too:-)
Second, I don't need to wait for hours to generate proofs. As soon as I'm back at the main station I launch Bridge, set the filter to show RAWs only, and quickly split them in folders (by look, scene, or whatever). Since each set is typically contigous time-wise it's a very easy operation. Then I run my little tool I wrote to put the jpegs where Image Processor would put them (which takes mere seconds). Finally I fire up Star*Explorer, create a new (sub)category, drag all the folders from Bridge into S*E and hit Upload. Galleries are created automatically and jpegs fly onto Smugmug. The whole thing takes about 30 min for a 4hr shoot. Naturally can be more if it's a large event with thousand of pictures, yet again, it would probably be less than an hour of my time and the rest would be S*E in its unattended autocreation mode.
Basically, these two things took care of the proof delivery and upload process. Now I simply have more (much more!) time to spend on the final culling and winners post-processing... :ivar
With the advent of the decent laptop (complete with 15ft USB cable) I finaly was able to try this thing.
And I must say: I love it. :lust
Even with lousy/slow canon s/w we were able to use the 17" screen easily to adjust the poses, get new ideas, etc. And once I get a hold of few more things I'll probably move 27" to the studio too, so it would be even better.
As to the adding small jpegs to raw... it greatly simplified my workflow.
First of all, once the shoot is over, I'm capable immediately burn them to the cd and hand it over to my model, so she doesn't have to wait until images are online or for CD in the mail (save on postage, too:-)
Second, I don't need to wait for hours to generate proofs. As soon as I'm back at the main station I launch Bridge, set the filter to show RAWs only, and quickly split them in folders (by look, scene, or whatever). Since each set is typically contigous time-wise it's a very easy operation. Then I run my little tool I wrote to put the jpegs where Image Processor would put them (which takes mere seconds). Finally I fire up Star*Explorer, create a new (sub)category, drag all the folders from Bridge into S*E and hit Upload. Galleries are created automatically and jpegs fly onto Smugmug. The whole thing takes about 30 min for a 4hr shoot. Naturally can be more if it's a large event with thousand of pictures, yet again, it would probably be less than an hour of my time and the rest would be S*E in its unattended autocreation mode.
Basically, these two things took care of the proof delivery and upload process. Now I simply have more (much more!) time to spend on the final culling and winners post-processing... :ivar
"May the f/stop be with you!"
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Does this mean that you supply all your shots as proof with no culling or any PP at all?
Let's say, out of 200-300 images 20-30 are clearly setup/test shots, and 10-15 more would have been culled out by me for the technical purposes. So now they have to ignore/delete those themselves.
I'd say - no biggie, as opposed to waiting considerable amount of time.
Once again - it's a new option I wasn't able to offer before. Thus far everybody likes it, so it looks like win-win.
Was just surprised because to seem to go against the advice given by most on this board. Which is simply that nobody ever sees photos you would cull.
I know myself, under very different conditions and most important with a very different level of experience, I am generally only displaying 30-40% of the pictures I take.
Thank yo for sharing your workflow and especially the number of photos you cull.
Modeling photogrpahy is not your typical "portraiture" one. I wouldn't do this to a customer who would commision the family, xmas or senior portrait. In those cases, the less you show, the better. Models, OTOH, are pretty much in the same boat as we are - they are professionals whose job is to be in the picture and look good (or however we together want the picture look). So, just like we learn from our mistakes by looking at an outtake and thinking "hmm, I wish I framed this differently", it is important for them to look at pictures where their pose looks awkward and being able to decide what they have to do to avoid that in the future.
That is an interesting point to keep in mind if I ever get into shooting models. Again thank you for sharing your experience.
Thanks!
All the following only applies to Canon cameras and Windows-based computers. I'm sure other brands can do the same or better, but I don't have any experience with those.
In my case:
1) Canon 5D2 or Canon 50D
2) a laptop with Windows XP, Vista or Windows7 (Windows 2000 would probably be OK too) and available USB 2.0 port
3) Canon EOS Utility and other software from the Canon CD that came with the camera
4) Relatively long (I got 15ft, seems OK) USB2.0 A/B male cable
Connect camera to the laptop via the said cable, turn then camera on. EOS utility shoud start automatically, but even if it doesn't - launch it manually. It should "see" the camera and allow you to accept the images and even control it.
By default it only stores images directly to PC (not on the card). I'm trying to be on a safe side and prefer to save images in two places. Also there are a few more initial settings I didn't like, so a trip to the Preferences is a must (it's not hard though, since there are not many).
If you take a frame it will appear on the PC screen.
That's it.
Thought it was a little over the top but it would eliminate beating a dead horse while shooting. And I couldn't find anything but editing stuff (PictureProject 1.7)that came w/ my camera when purchased new (at least a couple years ago).
I follow a very similar work flow for posting images for the model. One thing I'm still struggling with is how to make it easy to identify the final post processed images. I have done sorting so they appear at the front of the gallery but what would be ideal is a 'folder' where we have the post processed images. I would use subcategories but i really need two sub categories, ie Photo Shoots > Model Name > Final Images.
Has anyone come up with a good idea for this?
Thanks,
bit
Hmm, I guess it's gonna be simply "me-too" post.
I'm using Bridge to select and cull the images (I believe you can do that in LR too, but I don't use LR). As a result of the filtering process I end up with a limited amount of "finals" which are defined as those with the maximum rating for this shoot (my typical "final" values are ** or ***, rarely ****). Then I create a "smart collection" based on those number, name it appropriately (e.g. "Jessica 3+") and begin processing, being it just ACR or ACR+PS. IN any case, I save the processigns results (PSD/JPEG) into a separate "Selected" folder under the same shoot, and then upload it to a separate gallery, typically linking it to the same sharegoup I originally created for the shoot's drafts galleries.
HTH
Nikolai