Last Weekend

Last week, my friend and mentor---Todd from Picture Perfect of Easley (http://www.pictureperfectofeasley.com/) asked me if I would assist him with a wedding. I jumped at the chance to finally do the assistant's part of a wedding. We rolled out to Clemson, to the Clemson United Methodist Church and found that it was a perfect setting for any wedding. It has tons of outdoor spots for shooting, along with large windows on the right side of the sanctuary.



There is a balcony-type sound booth at the rear of the church, where you can get amazing wide angle shots.


It was nice to see how someone else handles the rigors of wedding shooting, especially someone with so much experience! I really learned a lot. The most important thing I learned was the usage of TTL flash. After joining the strobist ranks, I pretty much kicked TTL into the weeds. I could get better results with the strobist techniques.....mostly due to having a shutter speed of 1/200 available, so everything stays sharp.

I always had the problem of the camera (Canon), choosing some ultra low shutter speed when I used my 580ex in TTL mode---in the Av setting. I'm like, why in the world would I want to have a flash with blur stopping capability on my camera, if I am guaranteed blurry pics with the low shutter speed?!!! I found that I could shoot at 1/60 in priority setting, but it wouldn't let me take advantage of my lenses low DOF abilities. Well, after watching Todd, I figured I needed to take a look at TTL again.

I started at the http://www.canonusa.com/ site, where I went to the learning center. I remembered seeing a tutorial where it showed some TTL techniques. Well, with a little digging, I found that there is a setting in the custom functions area, where you can set the min shutter speed to 1/200 when shooting in Av mode!! Woooohoooo! That will let you shoot at 1/200, with any fstop you wish! The camera comes set to Auto as the default (who knows why they would set it to that?!) Anyway, I've been experimenting like crazy to get back into using TTL because I saw how important it was with Todd's approach.

The only other drawback that would have to be dealt with is range/sunlight. If you've ever used the Canon/Nikon speedlight systems, you know that they use infrared triggering. The range is very limited, and it's like cactus in your undies when used in direct sunlight. Well, Pocketwizard is about to change all that with the new MiniTL and ControlTL modules. They are supposed to be releasing this month, for Canon!! They give TTL control, with Pocketwizard's insane range! It's the best of both worlds. I'd love to get my hands on some of them, but I'll have to save up my Obaba money forever first. They are rumored to be $300 for the MiniTL and $400 for the ControlTL. It's looking like you'll need one MiniTL for each speedlight, so these could end up being a super-size investment.....in Haunting Images terms ;)

You might be able to shell out the pesos, if your income tax refund hasn't gone to get your power and water turned back on. Hopefully you live in a state where you are actually getting a refund, and not an IOU! Or, you might spring for them anyway, if you happen to have a Maytag fridge box lying around! (LOL, just my attempt at humor, surrounding the current economic anemia.)