Oh No – I Erased the Flash Cards!!! & Technique Tuesday: Problem Lighting – HDR To The Rescue!

Good Afternoon Everybody,

I sure hope everyone had a relaxing few days off over our long Memorial Day weekend, at least my USA readers. It was a short weekend for us and I cleared 3 weeks worth of images from flash cards and  got all of them organized on the studio’s hard drives. I only ran into one hic-cup – I mistakenly deleted two of the folders on three of the cards before I had copied them to the studio drives – YIKES!!!

Oh-Oh! I Deleted the Files Before Backing Up All the Data!!! Photo Rescue to the Rescue!

I wasn’t so much worried that I couldn’t recover the images – it was just going to be a time consuming “pain” to do so.  I quickly headed over to DataRescue.com, paid my $29 and downloaded the latest (expert) copy of Photo Rescue.  Photo Rescue is my “go-to” card recovery software. I haven’t needed it very often, but it has never failed me yet.  It’s been a while since I last downloaded it so I thought for the small $29 price, I’d just pick up the latest copy.

I can’t believe how quickly Photo Rescue recovered the data.  It took about 30 minutes to find all the images – not bad for a 32 Gig card.  Once found, I quickly created a Recovered folder and simply instructed Photo Rescue to “Save To Desktop”.  Piece of cake, right?  Well, almost.  In the recovery process, Photo Rescue renamed all the files so I still had to visually verify that I indeed had all the images recovered and place them in their proper folders on the studio hard drive.  4 hours later I finally finished and called it a day at about eight that night.

Nevertheless, if you ask me, there is no better recovery software on the planet – highly recommended!!!

Quick Studio Update!

Too little time and still so much to do!!!.  Boy, we just returned from a few weeks on the road – vacation, sure maybe part of the time but we still were going like crazy. Anyway, our feet are back on the ground and we hit the decks running this morning.  Our PhotoPro Network Summer School is coming up in about 7 weeks and there is still lots to do getting it organized and getting the word out.

Plus, the BIG project hanging over my head is the new book, Make Your Lighting Exciting: A Practical Approach To Making People Look Good.  No more time off for me on that project – I made a promise to my friends at Kelby Media that it would be ready by the end of August and I’m working full steam ahead for the next few months on the project.

I’ll plan to keep DPT updated regularly as time permits these over these next few months.  Summer is going to be busy, but like LaDawn says, “What’s new in Ziser World ;~)”

Technique Tuesday: Problem Lighting – HDR To The Rescue!

I’m pretty fired up about today’s tutorial.  I was shooting a wedding this weekend in the 95 degree heat with most of the formal images being captured outdoors. In spite of the heat, the weather cooperated nicely and we captured some great images of the bride and groom. Not only that, but I have been working with the family since both of their children were quite young and it was a real joy to see their oldest, beautiful Alyson getting married this weekend!

In the course of the shoot I always want to get some photographs of the ballroom before all the guests enter.  I had a few minutes to grab a some images before the doors were opened.  Yes, it was beautiful – only one “slight” problem – the “lighting dynamic range of the scene was extraordinarily wide, my best guess, about 10 stops!!!  That meant that even shooting RAW, I was going to have problems holding detail in both the super bright highlights and the very dark shadows.

But then it hit me – I was holding the solution in my hands – my Canon 5D Mark III with built in HDR capabilities!  By shooting the scene in HDR mode I could let the camera do much of the post-production “heavy lighting” and capture the result I wanted.  I have to say, it worked like a charm. I was in a hurry, typical wedding day rush, to snap the photographs and shot them all hand-held. 

If I could do it it again, I would shoot the HDR images on a tripod to ensure the proper alignment of all three images the camera uses to create the new HDR image.  It wasn’t a big problem for me on Sunday, but being more prudent would guarantee the best result.  I’ll have another chance in just a few weeks ;~)

The very cool thing is this: It’s not always about getting it right in the camera.  It about getting to the end result as expeditiously as possible and our new hardware AND software tools allow us to do just that.

Why not hit the PLAY button below and let me show you all the camera settings I used and how I finished the image in Lightroom 4.  This is quite an info-packed tutorial, including the Lightroom 4 portion so take you tame going through it to pick up all the tips and tricks along the way. I sure hope you enjoy this week’s Technique Tuesday.

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Hey gang, that’s it for me today.  I know it’s late and after I post this, I’m calling it a day.  Hope your week goes great and I’ll plan to see you soon.

Have a good one, David