Same day reception slide show

Matrixphoto

Hi Everyone

Ive been asked by a couple of customers to do a same day slide show at there reception of ceremony and formals

Does anyone have experience with this? I was thinking of the process and a couple of problems crept up.....

1st is I shoot RAW so I would have to ether render images or shoot Jpegs as well ( Yuk )

2nd is Im nervous about downloading images at reception , incase some goes wrong and I loose any images 

I have a dual slot camera , but that means I would have to purchase much bigger cards , since I don't like changing cards  during event.

I prefer to keep cards in camera any event .

Im I too paranoid.

Any insight would be appreciated how others do it would be great...

Lou Recine

Owner Matrix Photography and Design

Trev

Lou,

A couple of things from my own experience, and I've only done 3 times, and am loathe to do it again. Make sure you factor in a price for it, regardless if other photographers do it for 'free', bet my boots they factored in some charge to make it look 'free'.

I do know one Photographer who does it all the time, part of her package deal, but she has a dedicated assistant to keep shooting while she does it.

For 'quick' edits on the files she uses the free very basic program 'Picasa' for the sorting/editing. I tried it once, and you need to be aware of not allowing it to dedicate RAWs/Jepgs to be opened by default in this program, extremely annoying if that happens.

Some steps.

1] You need a second person adept at either doing that or shooting while you do it otherwise you are on 'time out' so no shots getting done if by yourself.

2] You obviously need a good/fast portable Laptop with HDMI connector/cable to connect to a large screen, which you should not have to provide, the venues usually have those.

3] There is no need to shoot RAW+Jpeg, you can get a program to extract the Jpegs out of the RAW file the one which I have is: HERE and free for both Windows/Mac (he is the owner of Imagenomic's Portraiture Plug-In) although it would be simpler and easier to do so and save some steps.

4] You need a Card Reader, I never use Nikons/Canon's software utilities to do that as I most definitely would not try downloading from camera via software but direct from the Cards themselves. However you would have to download the entire card, then you will have the files still on Card plus on the Laptop.

5] Once downloaded, and if you did not shoot jpegs alongside the RAWs, normally you cannot 'see' RAW files, but I have Microsoft's Codecs which allow you to view the jpeg embedded in the RAW files so you can see which images you want to use. What you do then is right click on the file/s and select Instant Jpeg from Raw and you get an options window, OK and done. The Jpegs are small in size but full res and you are ready to go.

6] You will then need something on your system to be able to do the slideshow, plenty of programs out there, if you have Lightroom installed you could go through there, import the Jpegs into it, do some quick tweaks, then go to the 'Slideshow' Tab and set it up, or some other simple program.

Got a headache yet Lou? 

7] Picking say around 50-100 files (I was bloody optimistic the first time, and did 130, waaay too many) to run continuously as a slideshow is the best way and you are probably looking at around an hour at least to do all of that.

If you shoot RAW+Jpeg, to eliminate a couple of steps by extraction, and a bit less work that will be much easier, however you would need at least 32G cards, I run 16G/32G but RAW only and not often I have to swap out the 2 cards from full up.

I NEVER use the second slot as 'Overflow' or for Jpegs, always only as Copy/Backup so it writes each image to the dual slots. Simply stupid if you use it as overflow especially with weddings as you need the security of having dual images being written.

The aforementioned Photographer did that and her main dedicated RAW card failed, no images, left only with the Jpegs on the second slot, took her 17 hours to extract them with special software @ a cost of around $350 from a specialist but she lost around 30 files, but made do with the jpegs, she never did that again.

This is all time consuming and you need a bit of quiet/concentration to do it, and not in front of guests, a corner or another room at venue, then you can hook up the Laptop to the connector cable/s to their screen, as I said the vast majority of venues have that facility with corporate functions anyway, and you need to check this before agreeing to do it at their venue, otherwise you are up for another cost of a portable roll-up screen, and the set up is quite a bit.

That is my experience, only 3 times, never again.

Trev.

Skipperlange

Matrix, I would just say no, you do not do this. This request is fraught with potential land mines. Here are a few thoughts. Hope it helps.

1. I once worked as an assistant for a photographer who routinely did this. It worked for her and her clients. You absolutely will need the proper equipment and software for this as well as an assistant who is only doing this, at that time. As Trev says, you will also need all the display hardware like projection and screen(s). So if you don't have the equipment or dedicated assistant, forget it. 

2. My concern is that once they see the images and get their fill of them and enjoy them for several hours, their need to purchase them from you later is watered down and it may hurt sales. I do not know if this was the case with the photographer I worked with or not. 

3. If anything goes wrong or if you or assistant choose the wrong images, you will look bad. This will dampen their confidence in you and make them nervous. This will hurt sales down the road. 

4. If you are fussing with a slide show (despite having an assistant) you are not taking reception photos. 

5. You are obviously nervous about this, do not have experience with it and it sounds like you don't want to do it. Don't take on something you do not know how to do unless you master it ahead of time. 

Unless you really want to do this, I think the benefit-problem ratio is way stacked against you and I'd just decide you are not going to do it. And, honestly, on a personal note, I don't see what this adds to a wedding or reception. It's a distraction. They just saw the wedding. Let them enjoy the reception without reviewing the wedding they just saw. 

I see you posted this a few days ago. Let us know what you decided. Good luck. 

Trev

Succinctly put Skip.

Skipperlange

Thanks Trev. 

Matrixphoto

Hi Trev I had a Headache at step one…

I agree with everyone , just best not to offer , the risk of some thing going wrong or images being lost  is to great.

Im happy to do a day in life of , Ive seen video guys do  same daybut they have dedicated runners and a editing person ( that always looks like they about to have an brain Aneurysm )

I really don't need another layer of anxiety to deal on the that day , I already  have enough to deal with  thank you very much.

Thanks all for the advice…..

Lou Recine

Owner Matrix Photography and design 

Neil vN

You don't need to shoot RAW + JPG. 

Shoot RAW, and then viewing your RAW files (even on the memory cards), using Photo Mechanic, you can highlight a few images, and select those to extract the embedded JPG from. 

Very fast, and you don't have to wait for download times, etc. 

Neil vN

"I NEVER use the second slot as 'Overflow' or for Jpegs, always only as Copy/Backup so it writes each image to the dual slots. Simply stupid if you use it as overflow especially with weddings as you need the security of having dual images being written."

As Trev said, NEVER use Overflow, ALWAYS use it as back-up ... and do it as RAW + RAW.