Tomas Mendoza Photography

Yes, I hate to confess to a great sin of omision: got a new camera and did not fully test it before an actual shooting.
A couple of weeks ago we were shooting at a pumpking patch and got about 180+ shots on a cloudy Saturday. Everything went great until I got home and downloaded the pictures.
To my surprise most of the pictures had a ‘soft’ look and I spent most of the afternoon shooting in a controlled environment to make sure there was no camera shake to blame and then most of the night doing a lens calibration or microadjustment for each one of my lenses… needless to say, frustraded and sleep deprived I called Canon Customer service and I was told to reset my camera to factory defaults and test using one of my ‘sharpest’ prime lenses if possible. I did and hours later I was shipping my camera for repairs.
At least I was shooting my kids and not a paying client, should that have been the case the liability would increase exponentially

Now the real question is… Why didn’t I notice the ‘softness’ before? Well, I shot a series of family shots and because I was shooting in my home studio I was using strobes and my apertures were about F11 or smaller and of course everything was in focus. At the Pumkin Patch I was shooting with my lens wide open at F2.8 for the most bokeh and to separate the kids from the people around. I know, I know… I got fooled by the LCD and what I thought were ‘in focus’ shots were…’soft’
Lessons learned? I was glad I had registered my camera and my lenses at the Canon Web site and I had scanned the receipts/invoices for warranty repair. Next time I will make sure I spend the whole morning/afternoon testing new equipment and do exactly as I preach
However, the best advice I can share is to always have backups and redundant equipment for times like this. I had a couple of shootings that would not be possible if I had no backup camera while my ‘main’ camera is in the hospital for open surgery

Last night’s Class on lighting certainly was interesting and reaffirmed some old believes I have. It might be bulky and heavy (but not as heavy as an Army Back pack) so bring as much equipment as you can… it’s better to have and not need than need and…Sorry, I don’t have it.

I asked a friend to join our class and be the model for the night and when the shooting begun… my main camera decided to take the night off, the strobe filter holder broke…I had to improvise and use my backup camera and another flash and set it as slave. Now, this is something that doesn’t happen often and when it does we have to be prepared and think on our feet.

If we are going to freeze a moment in time then is only fair for us to adapt as fast as the moment we’re trying to capture

The best part? The students were directing me to correct the light as they kept seeing the results on the monitor…and I have never worked with anybody directing me so it was a great experience and I hope the students learned how directional light works. It pays to have Backups, take the time to know your equipment and learn how to use it

Yup, we were there when Janine got engaged and it feels as if it was yesterday