think big...big umbrellas or softboxes for best results.....
butterfly lighting.....soft butterfly shaped shadow cast under the nose....

shoot through will give better results with low powered flashes as they generally lose less light than bounced.

results are good both ways, but bounced tend to have more even lighting without the hotspot you'll get from a shoot through.

not so much an issue of which is better, but an issue of using whichever you got properly. Which means it depends on many factors including the subject matter.

an example might be a group shot indoors:

using shoot throughs, I'd place the lights wide apart at 45 deg angles on either side of the camera aiming the hotspots to the people furthest from the umbrella, to feather the light on the people nearest the umbrella, to get nice light all the way across. (both lights equal power)

using bounce, I might prefer to have one light over the camera lens pointed down at the group, and one under the lens pointed out towards the group for fill light. (main light 0.5-1.5 stops brighter than fill)

in both cases the subjects will wind up being evenly lit with main and fill light balanced to give pleasing soft light with a proper ratio of main to fill light for modelling.

well JR...I used to shoot jpeg for these functions.

What changed me was Aperture. The ability to set up a Raw conversion and save it as a preset for the k10, gives me all the benifits of a Raw conversion, but the workflow doesn't take any longer or any special steps (other than the initial set up I did a year ago). There is no pains or headaches...it works just like jpeg....only better (true there is no noticable differences in a 4x6 print, but at 11x14 + there can be huge gains).

Aperutre even does the overlays, copyright, and even borders on the images faster than photoshop actions.

As for the stress, well, my mind snapped years ago...so if ya start with nothin' ya gotz nothin' looze.

what I find on these events is threefold:

I wouldn't do it without help...you have to at least have someone watch the cashbox.......

you have to have the venue place "no camera" notices (explaining that it interferes with your lights). once one person walks up with thier own camera, you'll have a dozen, and they won't hesitate to butt in front of a paying customer to get thier shot.

set up a spoiler light. I throw a green or purple gel on one strobe, and turn it off before I take my shots, because there's always one jerk that tells you off, pulls out his camera and takes the shot anyways. I always wind up explaining to him that, he "has no right to put wear and tear on my equipment, after being told in writing not to. If you don't want the service I'm offering, you are not obligated to buy, your child can still see Santa."

I'd be interested to hear what other users (software / hardare) would try to handle a job like that. (it's one of those jobs, you do for exposure in the community, hardly a big money maker).

here's the challenge:
you have to set up in a banquet hall (they provide the set and thier own Santa).

You got two waves of guests comming for a buffet (35 tables serving an 10:00 am and 12 noon.

you're shooting raw, and getting the finished product in thier hands before they leave.

you also have to be freed up to collect the money, organise and pose the shots.

I'm truly surprised by the lack of interest in this post.

I'd actually hoped it would spark some dialogue on use of geycards...exposure set to the right of the histogram.....using the lift and stamp feature of aperture to set adjustments to a large project, as the images were created, the use of applescripts, automator in conjunction with aperture to automate a workflow....

the workflow could be used for many types of events.....but I guess there aren't enough aperture users in the forum.....

While I can't show the finished products (without model releases), here is a sample of a test shot (done while setting up) from todays shoot.

by using aperture, I was able to create a work flow to shoot santa pictures at a venue.
We were able to shoot, import, select the best from each set, overlay a "Happy Holidays" and copyright logo, and print the images. We placed the images into xmas folders and delivered within minutes of shooting.






(note...my greycard shots are Always done slightly outa focus...saves me from having to reset the size of my white balance dropper, at higher magnications).

I think itunes will accept most audio formats.
as for video, it needs to be formatted for the apple tv, the ones i mentioned are great, and for non protected discs quicktime pro does the job....
I don't profess to know all, but I get by with the stuff I've been using just fine.
you have a macbook, so if you've tried using "iTunes" and "Front Row", then you'll find it very familiar using the apple tv.......
plug the hdmi port into your tv. plug the audio outs into your stereo. Itune will ask you to let the device connect.....
press menu on your remote and you should have access to your photos and music and movies (if you deactivated sharing, you may have to turn on sharing in your itunes and iphoto libraries).

While doing your research, you might look at versiontrackerhttp://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/
for mactheripper and handbrake.....very useful utilities for getting your **Paid for*** collection of dvds (under ***Fair Use***) into iTunes to play on your apple tv.
I don't advocate piracy!

true..different beast...but if you already have a hdtv then you'd be amazed at the image quality...we do video and still photography and we shoot hidef...the lack of standards and the format war between blu-ray and hd-dvd left us looking for solution to deliver multimedia content to our customers...ipod classic and apple-tv fit the bill, the image quality on the apple tv is astounding! for the record the other media streamer mentioned looks like a great value, if the image quality is good.....I'd certianly consider it worth my time to look into.