FAQ: Reader Questions

Now that we've done a handful of our FAQ Friday posts, the questions from you guys are starting to really pour in! So I'm going to use today's FAQ installment to answer a bunch of the questions that are definitely worthy of talking about, but don't require a full FAQ post. As always, if you have any questions you'd like us to answer on future FAQ posts, post them up in the comments!

If you only could use one lens for an entire wedding which would you choose? And do you guys shoot wide open? The light is always so awesome in your pictures!!

That's easy - the Canon 50mm f/1.2 L. I can tell you from looking into Lightroom and filtering based on metadata that I actually used this lens 31.2% of the time in 2009. Erin agrees completely. However, if we could use TWO lenses, it would be the 50 mm f/1.2 L AND the Canon 135mm f/2.0 L. That what I'd call a dynamic duo. The reason I love the 50mm so much is that it's the perfect focal length on a full frame sensor, and is actually very close to how our eye perceives the world. Additionally, it's incredibly crisp and sharp all the way through the range.

Erin and I are firm believers that people look best in natural light, which means that we spend a majority of the time shooting "wide open" which means using the lowest (biggest) aperture possible. Not only does shooting wide open allow us to shoot in conditions that would ordinarily require a flash (like right after sunset), but also shooting wide open separates the subject from the background (making the background extra blurry). An important thing to note about shooting wide open is that you MUST be very very careful with your focusing due to the shallow depth of field that is created. This causes us to have to over-shoot our subjects to ensure that we get the perfect focus. To be specific, I shoot the 135 at f/2.0 all day, and the 50 at f/ 1.8 all the time (you have be very careful with the focus if you're going to open up all the way to f/1.2, even though its beautiful).

This questions just so happens to lead nicely into our next one...

All of your images have a special "crisp-ness" to them. What's the secret? What sharpening method do you guys use?

When thinking about the sharpness and clarity of any image, it's important to remember that there's (at least) 3 things that contribute in a major way to sharpness. 1) LENS QUALITY. The biggest thing is the quality of the lens - better quality glass does less to distort the light as it travels from your subject, through your lens, and eventually to your sensor (or film as the case may be). Since sharpness is a super important thing to Erin and I, we've selected only the sharpest lenses to have in our bag. To read about all our gear, check out this post. 2) FOCUS & EXPOSURE. The second thing that makes your images sharper is focus and exposure, and these should be obvious. You've got to have your images in focus in order for them to look sharp, and they MUST be properly exposed. Keep in mind that our brains associate brightness with sharpness and so an image that isn't too dark and isn't too light will look sharper to our eyes. 3) MAGIC SHARP. Finally, when putting images on our blog, we run the one and only action we use - Kevin Kubota's Magic Sharp. We first size the images for the blog, and THEN run the action. This causes the sharpening to induce higher local contrast (ie brightness), thus making the images look nice and sharp. There's the special sauce, folks! Magic Sharp is ONLY available as part of Production Pack 2, but that is worth it for Magic Sharp ALONE!!

Just to give you guys some examples, here's some images that we took with our two favorite lenses as stated above. The image below was taken on the 50mm at f/2.0, and you can see the details of Stephanie and Sean's eyelashes are sharp and in focus, and the rest fades off into blurriness.

This image was taken on the 135mm at f/2.0 as well. The longer focal length allows for more of Jen's body to be sharp and in focus at f/2.0, while the composition and wide aperature allow for yummy bokeh (blurriness).

Where do you meet up with clients or where would you recommend for photographers who don't have their own studio?

If you've been following our blog for any length of time, you've probably noticed how relational Erin and I are. Because of this, we LOVE meeting with our clients in our home. We invite them over, open a bottle of wine, and spend a few hours (yes hours) chatting about them, their love story, their wedding, and where we fit in the midst of all that. Since Erin and I only accept a limited number of weddings each year it's important that we know we're a good fit for each other, and we love how the relaxed environment of our home lets everybody be themselves.

That said, we have a growing number of clients in various parts of the US and international clients as well. We meet with them over Video Chat (iChat or Skype) or at least conference call between the four of us. The important thing to remember with any client meeting is that the point is to get to know one another. If the only purpose was to disseminate information, you could do that in an e-mail or a cute little PDF. So you should just do whatever you need to to simply connect with your clients.

Before we had a home in which we felt comfortable to host clients (we used to have a 1 bedroom apartment with our office in the living room/kitchen. Seriously.), we met with clients at Starbucks or Coffee Bean. If you're doing this, I'd suggest becoming friends with the folks that work at your local coffee place, introduce yourself, and create a nice environment. Bring albums, prints, etc, but most importantly bring yourself and showcase what is unique about you. I met with one of my favorite couples of all time at a Starbucks where I showed up wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and sandals. I was the most casually dressed photographer they met with (they later told me), and they hired me simply because it felt like they just had coffee with a friend. Create that environment with your clients, and everyone wins.

I'm shooting RAW+JPEG and find that I never end up using the JPEG for anything except maybe previewing in the Finder. I'm thinking that I should shoot in RAW only to save space on the CF card, but can't convince myself to drop the JPEG. What do you guys do - RAW+JPEG or RAW only?

We also shoot RAW+JPG, but we have a specific purpose in mind for that. We use the small JPGs to create our slideshow at the wedding reception - we can stick our cards into our card reader and just grab the small JPG's and quickly put something together instead of dealing with large RAW files. This way the slideshow takes much less time, and we don't miss anything important during the reception. Writing the small JPGs isn't going to protect you against write errors or card failures, so if you don't have a specific purpose for writing the small JPGs, then there's no reason to be shooting both; you're just taking up space.

What are the most important things you got from reading Fast Track Photographer, and how have you incorporated them into your lives/business?

For me, the most important thing I learned from reading Fast Track Photographer was to realize that I needed to make a decision as to what kind of photographer I am - am I a signature brand photographer, or a freelance photographer? Both have tons of positives and negatives, but seeing them clearly laid out before me made me realize that what I thought I was in my head may not have been what I was being to my clients (which I think is a big struggle for a lot of photographers.) The other major concept which I found really affirming was the notion that no matter what I think (or how tired I am, bummed out I am, discouraged I am) I've got something so unique I can bring to the table, and that uniqueness if valuable.

Be sure to check out our other FAQ Posts by clicking here.

-Jeff