Trying. Slow start, but I need to eat and pay bills and it is hard to make up the salary of a software engineer with a new start in the photo business. But I'm making some extra money for new gear at the moment, so I'm happy.

I think any field of photography will be vastly easier than the business side. If you cannot handle the business side, making a living off photography may not be your line of work.


I'm starting to think I do not have the business mind for it. But I'm still having fun at it so we'll have to see how it goes.
Sadly, I think staying part time at it will eventually result in failure. I'll either go back to being a hobbyist-only or have to bite the bullet to go full time and suffer on lower pay for quite a while.

Using online backup (BackBlaze) I uploaded over 200G of data in about a week or so.
NOT FAST! But not too bad either. Now if my house or entire neighboorhood goes up in smoke, my data is safe. (once I get a new PC, I suppose
To me, worth the initial effort and the small annual fee.

Now I shoot several hundred RAW images, copy to my hard drive. Duplicate to the RAID box, and let the online backup go at it over night.

Oooh, gotta save my pennies!

That is one of the issues I'm waiting to hear about as well.
I'm looking for a second body. The K7 would be real nice, but that would force me to fall back to looking at a second K10.

Don't know which NAS drive you own, but those generally cannot be directly connected via USB or other to allow undelete to work properly. Removing the drive from the enclosure and directly connecting it to your computer should work, but you will likely need to know what format it is. e.g. It may not be a Windows (FAT, FAT32 or NTFS) drive, and you therefor might need special software to handle the drive's format.

[EDIT: apparently I sat too long eating my lunch and missed the comment about Active Undelete above while writing... I'll have to keep a note about that in case I need it. ]


I'd be interested in hearing if you can get you images back. I have a NAS, but only use it for shared storage of files that already exist elsewhere. Sadly, I also store my backup files there -- no problem unless I have dual failure.

FYI, for cheap reliable backups, you might want to look into BackBlaze or Carbonite or similar offsite backups service. I currently use BackBlaze and like it a lot. For $50 a year, I know my data is safe even if my entire house gets hit by a giant meteor. (or more likely, set ablaze by one of the neighbor kids playing with fireworks).

Oddly, the last time I lost data, both the main drive and the backup drive had catastrophic failure at the same time. (yes, both in the same box. IDIOT!) To add to the pain, they were Linux format, so minimum non-refundable cost was about $2K just to investigate v.s. $500 for Windows.
So now I backup to an external box in another room and I back up to offsite. (My pics also get backed up immediately to a mirrored RAID box as I import them from the memory card. Yes three backups, and yes I am a little paranoid now).

For photographing moving objects or in small spaces, I would have to agree... do not bother with continuous lights.

I am guessing that for engine parts,your ability to find larger spaces and ventilation may not be an issue. Engine parts usually do not mind a little bit of heat.

Pick up a couple of cheap shop/construction site lights. They are about as bright as continuous photography lights for 2% of the cost. (play with one set, if it doesn't work as you expect, it is not a big loss -- probably also a lot easier to return than photo equipment).

Remember, power output of the lights are not much of an issue. Simply keep the shutter open until the object is exposed properly. This is trivial for still objects. (e.g. try photographing a puppy at a 1 second exposure)
For that reason alone, I hardly see the value in spending that much on high powered strobes.

Thanks Matt. That might explain some things.
I would suspect everything I use is capable of handling LUTs but, I will have to look into that.

I calibrate my monitor although I don't really see much point in it.
Although the color hue seems about right, I have yet to see the calibration make any sense of how to determine consistent brightness.
I have a GretagMcBeth eyeOne and although it does require adjusting brightness and contrast, the results are very dependent on the starting brightness and contrast of your monitor. i.e. there is no defined "correct" brightness. For instance, my monitor is not adjustable to get a low enough brightness to fall in line. Instead of calibration dimming down the results, it keeps them extra bright. I am sure there is some limitation and a desire to balance out loss and gain in certain areas, but it all seems to be a lot of smoke and mirrors that just doesn't work as well as advertised.

My prints always come out a bit darker, so I just lighten them a bit before printing.

Most of my work is seen "out of context". In other words, for the most part, no one will know if the color is a little bit off unless they were actually standing next to me at the same time the shot was taken and are very color aware.

So I pretty much perform calibration to stay reasonably self-consistent, and not trying to get a perfect match to another source.

I think it would also be worth while to see with ISO 100, 20 and/or 400 to compare how much detail is lost with the noise reduction.

I picked up a pair of Elinchrom D-Lite 4's. They work great, although I've had some personal experiences with Elinchrom that would take a lot to make me buy form them again.

Mainly the Elinchrom Skyport remotes do not meet up to advertised specs. I argued with Elinchrom for months and when they finally responded with information from one of the actual technical people. The response included the exact information I had supplied and has asked for clarification in my first letter to them. Up to that point they handed me a pile of bull that just didn't make sense.

They are rude, pompus and have no interest in helping the customer.

The equipment works for about 80% of what I do, but if you ever need support from the company, I would recommend you stay away from them.

The Skyports work just as god as the eBay remotes from China. (the Cactus line). A bit more range, but not enough to be worth ten times the cost!
The Skyports do not keep up to 1/180s sync speed. Both the Catcus and the Skyports work equally well up to 1/125s.

I would recommend the cactus to start. Then save up for PowerWizards. You pay a lot, but I have yet to hear anyone complain about them!

FYI, the new I bought last year DLites blew out in under 50 shots. Bad capacitor that Elinchrom knew about but didn't think it worth the effort to pull the line. Instead they let customers buy it, then blame the issue on bad parts from one of their vendors. The repair was under warranty. Fine. Still, I had to wait four weeks for the repair to be done!!



If you were in the US or Canada, I would recommend looking at strobes by Alien Bees. Maybe see if they ship overseas yet.