Photography is just like any other service based business. The brand recognition is the style of images each photographer or photography studio has. Take for example, photographer Dave Hill and his unmistakable style of photography. When you see one of his images, you know it’s him. It’s the same thing as other photographers such as Ansel Adams, Chase Jarvis, and so forth. But just having a style of photography isn’t always enough for your potential clients to remember you, you need something more. This is where the amazing husband-and-wife team of COVERITALLCO comes in.We usually plaster the Bui Photography logo our images in our gallery for copyright reasons  and also on our business cards and for the most part that’s great in helping people identify our images, but we’re missing a big and important part: our team! They are the ones that create the image, but yet how do you identify that? How do we easily indicate to the guests at a wedding that we are the official wedding photographers and not “Uncle Bob” with a camera? We use our tangible brand that we can wear: our logo.

By proudly displaying our logo, it says a couple of things to our clients, their family, and their guest: we proudly represent Bui Photography and we are visibly identifiable by people who may not otherwise know we’re there representing our clients. In essence, prospective clients gets a feel for our services and what we offer.

Screen print shirts and apparel may work in other industries, but I don’t think it quite scream “professional” like a great quality custom embroidery. I’m not saying that you need to have custom embroidered apparel to say that you’re a professional, but little things that differentiate you from the next person goes a long way in establishing your brand.

And that is where we turn to COVERITALLCO for their high level of quality & workmanship, amazing customer support, vast apparel knowledge, and the ability to make the ordinary look extraordinary. By selecting Bay Area based COVERITALLCO, we’re not only supporting our local economy but we have the ability to see mock-ups, design ideas, a personable relationship, the ability make last minute changes with ease, and so much more; things that you do not get with larger companies such as CafePress. To some people this may not mean much, but consider this: would you hire a wedding photographer without being able to meet with them one-on-one? I had made a test order with CafePress, a t-shirt screen printed with the Bui Photography logo, and not only did it take weeks to receive my one order, when I received it, I was not very happy in the least bit. Why? Well the turn around time was ridiculous (some two weeks), by the time I received my one t-shirt from CafePress, COVERITALLCO had just finished my second order of seven items of clothing. Each one came out perfectly and cost a fraction of what the CafePress t-shirt had cost me. Second, granted it was a screen print and that they only take JPEG uploads (COVERITALLCO can take Adobe Illustrator files, which is the format my logo is to take advantage of vector resizing), my logo looked anything but professional and high quality because there were some white artifacts around some of the characters (my logo was printed black) that looked messy and quickly done (see picture here and here). Also using the online designer was a pain in trying to position the logo exactly where I want and sizing of the logo. To their credit, the shirt quality is quite nice, but after a few washes, I’m sure the screen print will peel off. I’m not bashing CafePress, like Wal-Mart, they are big identifiable company that many people recognize so it’s easy to make the point.

So how is COVERITALLCO so different? Bui Photography is no where as large as some of their other clients and will probably never spend nearly as much money either, but we were never treated as a small business cast to the side because our budget isn’t as large or our volume is too small. They mocked up three different size samples of our logo stitched on a small swatch of cotton apparel (on their own dime) so not only could be see how amazing it would come out, but we could decide what size logo best fit for us and try different placements on the shirts; if that’s not the VIP treatment, I don’t know what is. I could call or email Cover It All and get an answer to any question I have very quickly and because they are local, I can stop by to see the work-in-progress and by the time I get the final delivery, it is exactly what I want and expected. An example of how this is a huge benefit was choosing the color of the line that is under Richard Bui and above Photography. I originally had selected a dark blue, and when they had made a sample stitch, it turned out the dark blue was too dark and blended in too much with the shirts. What did they do before I arrived to check it out? They made another sample, all on their own dime, with a color that they selected and thought would work better and guess what? It’s the color we adopted. Imagine how many orders and money we would have had to waste making samples from an online place.

So if you’re looking to make some custom embroidered apparel like t-shirts, polos, jackets, team jerseys (for baseball, golf, and about any other sport) and even custom stuff such as embroidering our logo onto both my Think Tank Photo Glass Taxi and Urban Disguise bags, check out COVERITALLCO. They also do screen printing and have an amazing graphic artist on staff who can help design your stuff.

You can contact them by calling them at 1-650-520-1020 or by email at sales@coveritallco.com.

• JustMarried.Us
• Cheer For Life
• Senator Mark Leno
• Shannon Minter
• Community Grand Marshals Molly McKay & Davina Kotulksi
• Community Grand Marshal Andrea Shorter
• Knights Out and Celebrity Grand Marshal Lt. Dan Choi
• Celebrity Grand Marshal Cloris Leachman
• Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and Senator Tom Torlakson
• Senator LeLand Yee
• Celebrity Grand Marshals Howard Rosenman & Bruce Cohen
• Sheriff Michael Hennessey
• Police Commissioner Theresa Sparks
• Police Chief Heather Fong
• Mayor Gavin Newsom
• District Attorney Kamala D. Harris
• City Attorney Dennis Herrera
• Community Grand Marshal Joe Hawkins
• Celebrity Guest Ongina
• City Treasurer Jose Cisneros
• City Accessor-Recorder Phil Ting & Supervisor Carmen Chu
• Public Defender Jeff Adachi & Chief Attorney Teresa Caffese
• Community Grand Marshal Helen Zia
• Supervisor David Chiu
• and many more in the gallery

And be sure to also check out some of our other photographer friend’s amazing SF LGBT Pride Parade galleries by clicking on their names below:

• David Yu
• Rendy Lai
• Lynn Troung
• Bill Taylor
• Herm Pugay

Also if you’re on Facebook, be sure to friend San Francisco Street Photographers group and also Bui Photography. It was a fun and exciting event, we’ll see everyone again next year! As always, you can find more information about the SF Pride Parade on their website at http://sfpride.org. Here are some samples of our favorite shots:

You can view the event map (PDF) by clicking on the image:

Bui Photography was at last year’s SF Pride parade and will be there again this year to cover the events. If you are looking for something exciting to watch, come on out! Below are some select images from last year’s SF Pride parade and you can also see the album here.

July 01, 2009 UPDATE: The 2009 SF LGBT Pride Parade pics are now up! You can see them by clicking here.

My first experimentation of the “Brenizer Method”:

In one of those few cases, my good friend Dr. Tibor Duliskovich, happened to get some snaps of Eric, Oscar, Elbert, and myself “working”. It’s sometimes interesting to see behind the camera and see some of us photographers operate.

Also Oscar had written a very nice little article on his site about his experience shooting with me to which I had made some brief comments also. I’m glad you had fun and certainly look forward to doing it again!

Oscar managed to get some behind-the-scene shots of me also:

You can see more on Oscar’s website by clicking here.

My Settings

Note: When I refer to “Mark III”, I’m referring to the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III and when I mention “Mark II”, I’m referring specifically to the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II, unless otherwise stated.

Before we get into the review, I want to briefly mention how I setup the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III. For one of the shoots, I set the file type to RAW to get an idea of how the SLR would perform but switched to JPEG once I got a better feel for the camera. I’ve been primarily a RAW shooter, but recently been shooting JPEG (Large, Quality 8 ) more and more because I’m needing to do less post-production; but for weddings, I still do RAW as standard operation.

I always use back-button auto focus. On the Mark II, I have star button (*) configured to do auto focus and the shutter button for auto exposure lock only; set it by going to Custom Functions (C.Fn) > C.Fn 04 Shutter button/AE lock button > 1:AE lock/AF. On the Mark III, there is a dedicated AF-On button where the WB +/- (you can also use that button to switch to a most used AF point, which I do, very useful) use to be. People ask me all the time why I do this, the short answer is because in a number of situations I need to lock exposure (when not shooting in manual) that is different then where I’ll be focusing. It’s cumbersome if you are not used to it, but once you are, it becomes second nature and more intuitive to do it this way, but everyone is different, so YMMV.

I primarily used the Portrait Picture Styles with the default values except I set the sharpness 1 notch higher. I also use One Shot, 5 frames-per-second, and I manually select my focus point to focus on the eyes when doing portraits and photo shoots.

I’m not saying these settings are right, it is what I use and like and works for me.

Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III vs Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II Chart Comparison

Focus Issues and Auto focus

When someone mentions Canon’s Mark IIIs, first thing on many minds is: are there any focus issues? The 1Ds Mark III, supposedly, does not suffer from the same head-banging focus issues that it’s little brother, the 1D Mark III, did. While that seems to be the case, I admit that I had many frustrating focus issues. Even another photographer that I know who shoots with a 1Ds Mark III has attested to focus issues, but for the most part, the problem does not seem as widespread. I don’t want to spend too much covering this topic as it has already been thoroughly discussed at length, but I will touch on my experience with it.

The lens that I used on the 1Ds Mark III is my favorite workhorse lens, the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM. I also, for the most part, unless the situation warrants otherwise, shoot wide open at f/2.8. When doing portraits, I almost always select my focus point and aim for the eyes. I do, on occasion focus and recompose because, believe it or not, at times the 45 auto focus points do not offer enough coverage (because they aren’t scattered enough). BTW, the only time I do not shoot with Image Stabilization (IS) is when the switch is accidentally knocked to OFF. I’m sure a number of people can see all the things that can go wrong with how I photograph. Yes, shooting wide open means a very small depth-of-field (DOF) and can lead to a higher rates of OOF (out-of-focus) shots. Second, focus and recompose is actually a bad technique (Lloyd explains this best) when photographing at f/2.8 or faster because of how razor thin the DOF is.

After a bit of testing, turns out my focus issues are more related to lens/camera calibration than camera auto focus issues. When I used my buddy’s 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM, I had a higher number of keepers and it was also the same case when using the Canon EF 200mm f/2L IS USM and Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM. Unfortunately because of the shooting schedule and limited time with the Mark III, I did not have the opportunity to play with the micro adjustment feature, which could have solved my problem.

One of the nicest improvements of the Mark III over the Mark II is that it certainly focuses faster; I would say almost 25% faster than the previous model. The difference in focus speed is most noticeable in low light conditions, the 1Ds Mark II would take a half-second or so to acquire focus where the 1Ds Mark III would lock-on almost instantaneously. This is an important factor, especially in fast moving, low-light situations such as wedding photography, which in our case is our bread-and-butter.

One thing I’ve found frustrating is the new AF selection. On the Mark II, I can set AF selection to 45-points (all), 11-points (strategically placed), or 9-points (outer circle) which is useful depending on the situation. For portrait and studio work, I like being able to select the precise AF point to use, but when shooting fast moving objects or at a fast moving pace I change the setting to 11-points because I can select a focus point faster than having to scroll through 45-points. Just because you use 11-point selection does not mean you lose the 45-point AF, but rather the 34-points are used to assist the 11 you can select. It works great. Canon went ahead and changed that. The new Mark III is still a 45-point AF, but now your selections are limited to 19-points or 9-points (inner or outer). It’s very irritating for me because I can’t quite get a focus point on the eyes when doing some creative poses and/or angles. After two weeks of use, I’m still not liking it and would love full 45-point control again. But to the Mark III’s credit, it does have 19 cross-type AF sensors spread out versus the Mark II’s 7 cross-type AF sensors lumped together in the middle and does contribute to making the Mark III focus faster than the Mark II especially when shooting in camera portrait orientation.

White Balance

The Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III (and the newer cameras) have an improved white balance system that works noticeable better than the previous generation Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II. I find shooting in AWB tends to do quite well, but I tend to do custom white balance as much as I can because it dramatically reduces my post processing time. I find there is less of a color cast with the Mark III’s AWB versus the Mark II’s AWB, although neither camera can nail fluorescent or incandescent situations perfectly, but the Mark III has does look slightly better.

One complaint I have about Canon in general is that they can do a much better job implementing custom white balance. On the Nikon bodies, you can set a button dedicated to custom white balance and the Nikon D700 takes it a step further with a dedicated WB button! With my 1Ds Mark II, I have to:

1. Set the camera’s WB to AWB
2. Take a shot of the Lastolite EzyBalance, filling as much of the frame as possible
3. Press Menu
4. Select Custom WB from the first menu icon
5. Scroll and find the image of the Lastolite EzyBalance and select it to register it
6. Set camera WB to the customer white balance icon

The 1Ds Mark III is a bit of an improvement but the steps are about the same:

1. Set the camera’s WB to AWB
2. Press Menu
3. Select Custom WB regist. from the first menu icon
4. Scroll down to Record and register image (or Register image on card if you already taken a picture of it, I like Record and register image because it stores in the camera memory rather on CF card, but it’s sometimes useful to have the white balance reference image on the CF card because you might to use it for LightRoom2 reference.)
5. Take a picture of the Lastolite EzyBalance making sure to fill up as much of the frame as possible
6. Set camera WB to the custom white balance icon.

With the 1Ds Mark III, you can record and save up to 5 custom white balance reference images over the Mark II’s 1. Another gripe I have Canon’s white balance system is that when I do a custom white balance, I need to remember to reset my camera’s WB to AWB. The camera should assume that if I’m doing a custom white balance, it needs to automatically set the camera’s WB to AWB. And after doing a custom white balance, I still need to select it! What a waste of time with so many steps! If I’m doing a custom white balance, chances are I want it selected for this specific shoot or shot!<!–nextpage–>

Improved Features

The Mark III offers a number of improvements over the previous generation Mark II, some noticeable, others a bit more subtle. We can all agree that the new 3-inch LCD is an improvement over the 2-inch LCD, but it’s unfortunate that Canon did not implement the new 922,000-pixel high-resolution screen earlier but rather waited until the 50D and 5D Mark II to do so. The larger screen is nice, but I do have to say that things appear sharper on my Mark II than on the Mark III because while the screen size changed, the screen resolution did not (230,000 pixels).

A subtle, but certainly big advantage is the recording of different file types to different medias first seen on the 1D Mark IIn. This is a great feature because you can have Large JPEGs recorded to the CF card and RAW recorded to the SD/SDHC card as a backup. This is a great because if you blew out your highlights in the JPEG, you can retrieve the RAW version of the file and fix it and not have to process hundreds of RAW if the JPEGs out of camera are perfect. You can also still do RAW on one card and RAW on another or RAW+JPEG on both.

Dedicated ISO button, there isn’t much to say about this except: finally. On the Mark II, you have to hold 2 buttons and use the Quick Control Dial (QCD) to select ISO. On the Mark III, you press the dedicated ISO button and spin the dial. Also love the inclusion of the jog dial joystick first seen on the Canon EOS 30D. I used it to primarily select my focus point which frees up the jog dial to do exposure compensation.

Larger viewfinder is always a plus. It’s still 100% frame coverage, but the magnification has been increased from 0.7x (Mark II) to 0.76x (Mark III) and it’s certainly noticeable. If you’ve never seen through a 1Ds viewfinder, you’ll be in for a big surprise of how clear and beautiful it is compared to the 5D and the other prosumer and consumer bodies.

The increase in resolution from 16.7 MP to 21.1 MP is certainly nice, but for most usage, not noticeable unless you are doing some major cropping. I’m a fan of more megapixel, not for the sake of more megapixel, but because I do find that sometimes I have to crop pretty liberally and the additional MP is helpful in retaining quality. Despite the increase in resolution, noise is still very well controlled, being about half a stop better than the Mark II.

Dual Digic III is also very nice. The Mark III is able to move larger files than the Mark II (single Digic II) in less time. I never noticed any delay in processing which affected my ability to continue shooting whereas on the Mark II, sometimes I have to wait a bit to either let it clear the buffer so I can review the image. The 1 additional frame-per-second (5 FPS vs 4 FPS), while seemingly not much, is a welcomed addition. The increase in buffer is always nice, 56 JPEG vs 32 JPEG, although there is only an increase in 1 more RAW frame, 12 vs 11.

With batteries installed, the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III is 180 grams lighter than the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II, which my forearm is thankful for after a long day photographing. This weight reduction is primarily achieved through a smaller and lighter battery. Speaking of which, the new lithium-ion battery is a major improvement! I’ve been able to shoot over 2,300 frames before the battery died versus the ~1,000 from the Ni-MH battery in the the Mark II. With the Mark III, I can confidently pack 1 spare and know I may not even need it whereas the Mark II, I’m generally carrying at least a couple because Ni-MH batteries are funny and sometimes, fully charged, can lose an entire charge for whatever reason and I’m stuck with a useless paper-weight.

The new menu layout makes it easier to find and set settings. I like the inclusion of My Menu settings where you can set and register your most frequently used menu settings such as Custom White Balance, Live View, Highlight tone priority, Record func+media/folder sel., and so on. I also like the inclusion of the picture styles menu, which I use quite a bit depending on the situation.

Highlight Tone Priority (HTP) is a nice new feature that helps prevent blown highlights. It’s especially useful when you are shooting only JPEG where you have a much narrower room for margin versus RAW. I used it on a couple of my last shoots and definitely can say it works well. Keep in mind when using HTP, you are limited to ISO 200-1600.

Conclusion

The Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III is a great camera. It’s very responsive and very fast. I used it for multiple photo shoots, multiple events, and even a baseball game and it performed flawlessly other than for the calibration issues with my Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM. The larger screen is a welcome addition, but at times limiting because the quality is actually degraded due to no increase in resolution. The increase in resolution is welcomed especially since there is no degrade in noise level. As much as I like it, I don’t think it’s worth the upgrade from my Mark II. Why?

• I didn’t find I really use Live View
• Highlight Tone Priority (HTP) is nice and useful, but shooting in RAW negates most of the need for HTP
• Being able to record JPEG to one card and RAW is nice, but at the very least I can do backup (RAW on both cards, JPEG on both cards, or RAW + JPEG on both cards)
• The 3 inch screen is nice, but the quality is lacking especially compared to the newer cameras like the 5D Mark II, Nikon D3, and Nikon D3x to name a few.
• Digic III processor speed is nice, but I don’t shoot sports and rarely hit the buffer limit. Now if it had Digic IV…
• No significant increase in ISO capability. I don’t expect the 1Ds Mark III to be able to do ISO 25,600 like the Nikon D3 or the 5D Mark II, but it should at least be able to match up with the D3x’s top ISO of 6400.

Needless to say, I’m waiting to see what the (currently non-existant) Canon EOS 1Ds Mark IV has in store. For kicks, how does the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III compare to Nikon’s new mega pixel king, the Nikon D3x? Let’s do a quick chart comparison:

To be frank, the new Nikon D3x kicks some major ass! I’ve seen the images from it and it’s phenomenal. As you can see the new D3x benefits from newer technology getting the amazing vibrant new LCD (from the D3), a better ISO range, more mega pixels, a larger buffer, the same 51-point auto focus of the D3, and more. If the new Mark III had specs like this, it would be very much worth the upgrade from the Mark II. One other great thing about the D3x is that it uses the same exact battery as the D3, D300, D700, D2x, D2xs, and even D2h! That makes having spare batteries a breeze, especially if you use a D3x and a D700! Amazing. In all honesty, given the choice between the 1Ds Mark III and the D3x, I would easily choose the D3x. I’m still committed to Canon at this point as I have a number of their L lenses that there is no Nikon equivalent for (Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L USM, Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM, Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM, and Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L USM, to just name a few) and I have some patience to see what Canon has in store.

You can also read other people’s reviews of the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III:

• Phil Holland (phfx.com)
• Simon Joison (dpreview.com)
• The Digital Picture
• Outback Photo
• William L. Castleman (wlcastleman.com)
• Michael Reichmann (lumious-landscape.com)

Gallery Pics

Here are pictures of the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III and comparison shots with the Canon EOS 1D Mark II (same exact body as the Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II):

Why Use A Light Meter

For general, standard photography such as quick snaps of the kids, a day at the beach, and even sports photography, a light meter would be difficult to use because of the high speed pace, there wouldn’t be much time to meter before taking a shot. You’ll end up missing more shots than it’s worth.

So where do light meters shine? Portraits, mainly. We at Bui Photography shoot a lot of our portraits outdoors and with flash strobes off-camera. Because of that, it’s far easier to photograph in the Manual mode exposure because we know exactly the look and feel of what we want to achieve whereas our camera doesn’t. In case I’ve lost you, unless your camera is broken in Manual mode, there is no auto exposure metering because you have to set the shutter and aperture yourself.

So how do figure out what shutter and aperture to use in relation to the power of flash and ambient lighting? What if you want more flash power than ambient? What if you want to balance ambient and flash? Unless you can meter the scene with your eyes and translate it to a f-stop and shutter speed values, you’ll have to do what many people do: guess and chimp. By guessing, you would set your shutter speed to your max sync speed (1/250 on a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III, 1/200 on a Canon EOS 5D Mark II) and set your flash power to half or quarter power for faster recycle times and guess an aperture of f/5.6 or something and take a shot. Then you review on your LCD to see if it looks good or not. Repeat and make the changes as necessary. Terribly inefficient wouldn’t you agree? And even if you think you nailed the exposure, wait until you extract those images on your computer, you’ll find you were still off. Look how much time you are wasting on the technical aspect in setup and post processing! I don’t know about you, but I rather be spending time being creative. Also keep in mind, unless you are using one the new fancy cameras with their high resolution (920,000 pixels) LCD screens, the LCD screens on your camera are not good tools to judge color or exposure because it’s not accurate! You can use the brightness histogram which will be a bit more accurate, but in certain lighting conditions, it won’t help you much.

This is where the light meter comes in to ensure that you don’t just have good exposure or close to perfect exposure, but perfect exposure. After you’ve properly calibrated and learned to use a light meter, you’ll find that you’ll trust the values from your light meter more than what you see on your camera’s LCD. When I use the light meter, I put my model where I want her to be, put a strobe based on how I want to light her, pull out my meter and set it to my max sync speed and ISO  and do a test pop and it tells me the exact aperture and how much flash power versus ambient. I can either bring my light source closer to the subject or dial up the flash power to get less ambient lighting or lower my flash power for more ambient lighting. Set those values in camera and start the creative process!

By getting perfect exposure and setting custom white balance, everything is properly exposed and the colors just pop. Not only that, when I extract the images, instead of wasting time correcting color and white balance issues, I’m spending time selecting keepers and cropping.

You’re probably wondering why a light meter is more accurate than the camera’s built-in exposure meter, the answer is simple. The camera’s built-in meter works off reflective metering which functions with the camera metering light reflecting off the subject. This works well for the most part, but in situations where lighting is all over the place, the camera can be tricked and meters off the brightest part and under-exposes the entire scene. In a case of a forest with some light beams coming through, the camera might be confused with the light beams and try to expose for it which would make the entire scene under-exposed. With a light meter, usually used as an incident meter (you can get light meters that are incident meters with reflective meters built in) which measures light directly as it would fall on the subject and gives you a very accurate metering of the scene. In addition, you can move the light meter to meter multiple sources an average all the readings for a proper exposure. An example would be a portrait shot where you have your key light, hair light, and fill light. Each of the light sources are pointing in various directions and with a light meter you can read the output of each light.

Light meters also work extremely well for ambient metering for the very same reason. Even if you’re not using strobes and shooting only with ambient lighting, you can meter your subject and dial in a precise aperture/shutter values to get perfect exposure.

Which Light Meter Should I Buy?

For the most part, any light meter will work plenty fine. I personally use a Sekonic L-358 with RT-32 remote trigger module because we are heavily invested in the PocketWizard system and the L-358 lets us remotely trigger the strobes when we press the measure button. If you don’t use PocketWizard, but some other wireless trigger technology, you could still use the L-358 and just not buy the optional remote trigger module and trigger the strobes manually. The second biggest reason I like the L-358 is because it tells you how much flash power is being used versus ambient. This is a real plus because you don’t have to guess at values if you want more ambient than flash or more flash than ambient; a very powerful tool that I use very often.

One of our other staff photographers uses a Gossen DigiPro F and likes it for it’s slim profile and no-nonsense use. You can’t really go wrong with either Sekonic or Gossen. It really comes down to what your needs are and which light meter offers what you need.

Conclusion

Getting perfect exposure doesn’t have to be difficult or pain-staking. It doesn’t have to even be done in Photoshop or Lightroom. It’s much faster and less destructive to get the exposure at the time you take the image as opposed to fixing it later. One of the best investments in this area is a light meter, whether it is a Sekonic or Gossen, you don’t need a $600 light meter. The entry level Sekonic or Gossen do more than plenty for many people and saves you time and saves your sanity, it more than pays for itself. Be on a look out for how to use a light meter in a future post.

Like many other photographers, we at Bui Photography had a number of private photo shoots lined up. In total for Sunday, we did 4 scheduled photo shoots with 3 more random unscheduled photo shoots. For those who are interested in just seeing the pics, click here. To read more and see pics from the photo shoots, click in.

We started out with an unscheduled photo shoot: Miss Nintendo cosplaying as Yoko from the Anime series Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann complete with the long range rifle.View the entire set here.

Next we did some walking around and random photography (pics here). I have to say that I much more enjoy the quality of shooting photo shoots as opposed to quantity of walking around and just photographing whatever pops up. I like building a rapport with the models and having the time to plan the scene and light it; has a much more interesting look rather than shooting with distracting backgrounds.

Our next photo shoot was scheduled with LauraC with her cosplaying Gundam Wing Deathsythe, a conceptual costume. It’s always a pleasure to work with LauraC. View the entire set here.

We then went to photographing KittyKatChi and Shinobi Yukari cosplaying Matsumoto and Renji Arbari as Arrancarrs from the Bleach series. Excellent costumes and models. View the entire set here.

We also photographed LauraC again as Chun-Li from Street Fighters. I love how great her costume looks! View the entire set here.

From there we went to The Fairmont San Jose Hotel to do a photo shoot with bubydub cosplaying as Saber from the newly released Fate/stay night game. View the entire set here.

The final photo shoot was with the wonderful Lunar Loop group cosplaying Tsunasa Resevoir Chronicles. View the entire set here.

I also wanted to take a moment to thank all the people who made all this possible. First, I would like to thank Elbert for all his hard work in holding light stands, reflectors, doing battery runs, and Diet Coke runs. His assistance was invaluable. Also a special thanks to Oscar who photographed alongside me. Without his help, I would have been a bit lost at times. And a special shout-out to my buddy Tibor who was also of assistance.  As always, my second photographer, Eric. His contributions are paramount to the success of Bui Photography. And last, but certainly not least at all, my beautiful wife Andrea for her patience and understanding.

One of the best costumes from all day was a knight whose armor was made purely of leather. The armor is so accurate, it even buckles like a real coat of arms would. It takes another person and 30 minutes to put on the complete armor. The armor was professionally crafted and took 6 months to make and the results are absolutely breath-taking. Click here to see more.

Also for those who are interested in the technical details, I shot the majority of the pictures with a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III with Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM and Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II with Canon EF 200mm f/2L IS USM.