So, You Wanna Be a Rock & Roll Star (long post)...

[racingpinarello]

Good story, and congrats on the cover. The story really shows that a little luck is so necessary in photography.

If anything, your day 2 photo has a better feel to it. She obviously is extremely beautiful and the day 2 photo captures it.

So luck hit you twice.... You were able to have a re-do, and then then that image allowed you to get a better shot(s) than the first day.

No re-shoot, no cover. Whewww... okay I said it.

I also agree with Sebastian, that a brief zoom-in on the lcd to make sure the image was in focus wouldn't of hurt the shoot. They have to do 5-10 takes in front of the movie camera anyways...

Anyhow...great story, congrats, and yes... you are a "rock-star".

Loren

[freygr]

Good point about the diopter, Michael. It's possible...

I don't want to sound too old, but I never used auto focus with film, never wore my glasses when I shot, and could always tell when the shot was in focus manually. It was mostly due to the great Canon focusing screens with the F-1 and EOS film cameras.

I had the split prism center circle and the ground glass edges, and it was flawless. When the top and bottom halves matched up, it was in focus...

Now, I shoot all the time with my DSLRs in auto focus, and it works very well. I've even gotten good at quickly adjusting the focus point depending on what part of the frame my main subject is.

With the dim light, I couldn't get the auto focus to work. It kept focusing in and out, so I switched to manual.

With the manual focus on the 5D, you should still get a beep and see a focus point light up in the viewfinder when it focuses on a specific spot, but I don't remember it doing that.

Basically, I got sloppy. Had the damn lens wide open probably at too slow a shutter speed for the heavy camera with the zoom. I may have not held it tight enough. Anyway, my margin of error was tiny, and it obviously wasn't enough...

Well I hate the view finder screens in the DSLRs. They don't have the goodies for manual focusing, the micro prisms and the split prism center circle. Makes it very hard to use them in manual focus, or full manual mode with older non AF lenses.

[Asylum Steve]

Congrats on another successful project - and another cover!...

Thanks, Steve. Again, this is not an issue of whether one should check the focus while shooting or not. That depends. For me, it was all simply a matter of being lazy, and of course getting wrapped up with the people I was shooting at the time.

I almost always have a good idea of what my relative DoF should be based on my camera settings, and the fact that I shot these wide open alone should have been enough for me to double check to make sure.

But, really. If I'm shooting a scene f/8 at 1/125 in normal light, and I see things in foucs in the viewfinder, there is no way I'm going to take the time to check my focus on the LCD screen. Like I said, it depends...

To answer your question, there actually is one frame from the group that was sharp and in focus enough that I could have gotten away with in a color-seperation printed mag if they didn't run the shot too large. The halftone screening would have masked it just enough...

[another view]

But, really. If I'm shooting a scene f/8 at 1/125 in normal light, and I see things in foucs in the viewfinder, there is no way I'm going to take the time to check my focus on the LCD screen. Like I said, it depends...

Agree on that. Bottom line, you're a pro and you came back with the goods. Very interesting story in how that all came to be, but you did a great job!

Me, I'll keep shooting for the Rock & Roll Star!

[Asylum Steve]

Well just carried out some experiments - I had the AF off and the camera on Av and thanks to the sun coming out as I took one of the shots I've narrowed my problem down to body shake at low speeds...

Thanks, Roger. I agree, I think this is a sharpness problem as well. And much of that is from me shooting a slightly smaller film camera with a prime wide angle for so many years.

My Canon F-1 and Eos film cameras with a 35mm prime could be hand held easily at 1/30th without giving it much though. Now my main lens is a 16-35mm zoom which is much larger and heavier. Probably close to the size of my old 100mm.

So, I have to keep this in mind when I set shutter speed. Now I go for 1/60th at least, and 1/125th if I can manage it.

[JSPhoto]

Or in this case a commercial photographer...

I read a poll somewhere once of the most stressful jobs in America. Right behind police officer and fire fighter was freelance photographer. I kid you not...

Now of course, I personally don't believe that my job should really be that high on the list, but despite the flaws of a poll like that, it should come as no surprise to anyone that trying to make a living as a freelance commercial photographer is indeed stressful.

Steven,
Nice job in the cover!

I can see any kind of freelance photographer being extremly stressful, commercial or otherwise. My weekend starting Friday through 2am Monday morning I worked 32 hours or something like that and put 300 miles on the Jeep. I guess the payoff was seeing three of my air show photos on the front page of todays paper and then opening it to the sports page and seeing one photo taking up almost a third of the page, rare for this paper to run a photo that large. All total they ran 13 photos from the weekend in todays issue and probably another 10 or so in the weekly's. But the entire weekend was stress filled once they postponed or stopped the football games Friday night due to lightning and that meant playing the games Saturday and completly disrupting my schedual... and making me miss the Blue Angels on Saturday
Oh well, the paycheck from this weekends already spent .....

JS