I had an hour to get all my stuff in from the car, up to the chamber, and set up before the people started at 5. It wasn't long enough. I needed longer, or a helper. But since this was for the glory, meaning free, paying someone was right out. In fact keeping costs down was darn hard for I wanted a good offering that would impress people. And yes I do think that worked. Very few print, nevermind print at A3 (12" x 17" ish; 297mm x 420mm). And since I was using a three flash array on one side and a single on the other side of the face I had full control of the light, giving well exposed and shaped images.
Yes, it would be great to have time to truly develop beyond the basics. But since I had just 10min per person I think things came out good indeed.
There was only one true catastrophe. I was shooting tethered to the PC. Meaning the image file moved seamlessly off the camera and into the PC's programme Lightroom. Now I was usually putting the camera on the floor. But once I left it on the table with the PC and printer, when moving over to the lightbox to adjust it a bit for one of the people. I hooked the tethering cable with my foot. CRASH, BANG. Bits of electronic guts scattered all over. The 6 Philippine nurses flew. My heart went into my mouth. But pfew, the camera, and the lense both were OK, it was only the $€60 radio trigger I was using.
Since I had a double for almost everything, I simply undid the corpse and replaced it. There was a heart-stopping moment right then when I fired the shutter and, only got a black transfer to the PC. But I'd forgotten to change the flash and rotate the controller unit on the flash.
All told the last print I did was well after 10pm. And by then I counted 33 people with 150+ files. And printed about 50 in total.
In conclusion. I was worried, but not. Like that idiotic film with the baseball playing ghosts, I could only build it. The coming in, that I had no control over. And I'd assessed that it would work, and I'd be busy enough. Or I'd be sitting on my folding chair for the 6 hours playing with Twitter and Facebook on my phone. But everyone from a baby to a grandmother and grandfather came.
Yes, it would be great to have time to truly develop beyond the basics. But since I had just 10min per person I think things came out good indeed.
There was only one true catastrophe. I was shooting tethered to the PC. Meaning the image file moved seamlessly off the camera and into the PC's programme Lightroom. Now I was usually putting the camera on the floor. But once I left it on the table with the PC and printer, when moving over to the lightbox to adjust it a bit for one of the people. I hooked the tethering cable with my foot. CRASH, BANG. Bits of electronic guts scattered all over. The 6 Philippine nurses flew. My heart went into my mouth. But pfew, the camera, and the lense both were OK, it was only the $€60 radio trigger I was using.
Since I had a double for almost everything, I simply undid the corpse and replaced it. There was a heart-stopping moment right then when I fired the shutter and, only got a black transfer to the PC. But I'd forgotten to change the flash and rotate the controller unit on the flash.
All told the last print I did was well after 10pm. And by then I counted 33 people with 150+ files. And printed about 50 in total.
In conclusion. I was worried, but not. Like that idiotic film with the baseball playing ghosts, I could only build it. The coming in, that I had no control over. And I'd assessed that it would work, and I'd be busy enough. Or I'd be sitting on my folding chair for the 6 hours playing with Twitter and Facebook on my phone. But everyone from a baby to a grandmother and grandfather came.