Tutorial Archive - Pixelfriedhof

My equipment and basic settings for wedding photography in churches

megaadmin — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 10:05:21 +0000

Of course, there is no magic formula for setting the camera, no matter what kind of photos you want to take. Neither is there any ultimate equipment for such jobs. This is also the case with the photography of weddings in churches. Motives and light conditions vary from shooting to shooting. Nevertheless, I usually move with my equipment in a certain setting range, or try to approach the location, motives and light from a certain value. Here I talk about equipment, camera settings and editing.

My photo equipment for weddings

I use the Nikon D500 with the Sigma 24-70mm F2,8 DG OS HSM Art lens as my main camera. In my opinion, the focal length range is ideal for weddings and the lens is sufficiently fast. It is a full frame lens, of which I only use the middle field of view because of the DX sensor. This has the positive side effect that the images are crisp right into the corners. And in this image field the autofocus also works absolutely perfectly.

Nikon D500 Gehäuse*

20,9 Megapixel CMOS-Sensor im DX-Format
Schnelles Autofokus-Messsystem mit 153 AF-Messfeldern

Sigma 24-70mm F2,8 DG OS HSM Art Objektiv für Nikon F Objektivbajonett*

Eignet sich ideal für moderne hochauflösende Digitalkameras
Hyper-Sonic-Motor (HSM) für einen ultraschnellen Autofokus

As second camera I use the Nikon D7500 with the Sigma 18-35mm F1,8 DC HSM Art lens. The 18-35 is actually my favorite lens. With a maximum aperture of 1.8 it produces a beautiful bokeh and is extremely fast. The 18mm focal length is not only suitable for the portrait capabilities of the lens, but also for presenting architecture and churches in an appealing way.

Nikon D7500 Digital SLR im DX Format (20,9 MP, EXPEED 5-Prozessor, AF-System mit 51 Messfeldern, ISO 100-51.200, 4K UHD Video...*

20,9 MP DX-CMOS-Filter ohne optischen Tiefpassfilter; 180k-Pixel-RGB-Belichtungsmesssensor; Expeed 5-Bildprozessor; ISO-Empfindlichkeit...
8 Bilder pro Sekunde maximale Serienbildgeschwindigkeit; 51 AF-Messfelder mit 15 Kreuzsensoren und Messfeldgruppensteuerung

Special offer

Sigma 18-35mm F1,8 DC HSM Art Objektiv für Nikon F Objektivbajonett*

Lichtstarkes Standard-Zoom-Objektiv
Bequeme Handhabung durch Innenfokussierung

To keep both cameras close at hand and to be able to switch between them quickly and comfortably, I use a storage system with clip-in function. I love the Peak Design Capture Clip V3. Just screw the Capture Clip under the camera, attach the strap to the belt and we are ready to go. The nice thing about it: With the mounted plate, I can insert the cameras into an arca-compatible tripod head at any time without having to screw anything on or off.

Peak Design Capture Camera Clip V3 Schwarz, inkl. Standard Plate (CP-BK-3)*

Mit dem Capture Camera Clip muss deine Kamera nie wieder in die Tasche, sondern ist jederzeit in Reichweite für das perfekte Foto....
Vom Capture Clip lösen - und unmitelbar am Arca-Stativ einsetzen. Möglich dank der kompatiblen Schnellwechselplatte.

My basic settings for wedding photography in churches and similar buildings

As described above, there is no such thing as “the ultimate camera setting for wedding photography”. If you seriously believe this, you should refrain from the thought of working in this field. This means that the following settings only reflect a guideline value that has proven to be useful for me and my equipment in most locations. Adjustments to the values are almost always necessary, but as a starting point these are mostly worth gold.

Preparation is everything

If you have the possibility to enter the location before the actual event, you should familiarize yourself with the exact local conditions in advance and adjust your settings with regard to the available light and possible motifs. Remember that the lighting conditions can change depending on the time of day, the weather and the artificial lighting that can be switched on and off. Preparation is everything.

Depending on your chosen and available equipment there will of course also be deviations, this should be clear.

Basic camera settings for wedding photography in churches

Exposure time: 1/250 (I don’t use longer exposure times for human photography)

Aperture: F 2.8

ISO: 2000

Exposure compensation: +1/3 or +0.3. Images tend to be too dark rather than too bright, hence this manipulation.

Focus priority instead of trigger priority, as blurred images are of no use to me.

Exposure metering: center-weighted metering or rare matrix metering.

Recording format: RAW compressed (NEF for Nikon).

White balance: Automatic white balance. This usually works reliably and saves a lot of work during subsequent image processing. Should errors occur, I can correct them in the post-processing thanks to the RAW image.

Photo development and image processing

Some time ago I switched to the image development software and Lightroom alternative “Luminar” from Skylum. The available subscription options from Adobe for Lightroom and Photoshop were simply too expensive for me. I reported about it in this article.
What I particularly like about “Luminar” is the easy and fast application of image settings to other images. This simply saves time, because I don’t have to edit each image individually, but can “copy” the settings of one image to other images with similar motif placement and similar lighting conditions. This still needs to be fine-tuned, but this is the smallest part of the work.

What works really well is the integrated Accent AI technology, which automatically adjusts images using an AI. In my opinion, the results are not perfect, sometimes even artificial if you exaggerate the intensity of these functions, but they also save a lot of time. A feature I miss in Lightroom.

For later retouching and image manipulation I use the Photoshop alternative “Affinity Photo” by Serif.

Where can I buy Luminar and Affinity Photo?

If you want to support us, you can buy “Luminar 3” and their HDR software “Aurora 2019” via the following links, we get a small commission and you get a 15% discount:

Buy “Luminar 3” with 15% discount (Affiliate-Link)
Buy “Aurora 2019” with 15% discount (Affiliate-Link)
Buy Affinity Photo

Can I test Luminar and Affinity Photo for free as a demo?

If you want to try the software first, you can download a fully functional, but limited test version of the software from the following links:

“Luminar 3” as demo version (Affiliate-Link)
“Aurora 2019” as demo version (Affiliate-Link)
Affinity Photo as demo version

All the links in this text are Amazon Affiliate Links, and by clicking on an affiliate link I will earn a percentage of your subsequent Amazon purchases. However, this circumstance does not influence the background of my product recommendation. This product recommendation is independent, honest and sincere.

Bei allen genannten Links handelt es sich um Amazon-Affiliate-Links. Durch einen Klick auf einen Affiliate-Link werde ich prozentual an Euren darauf folgenden Amazon-Einkäufen beteiligt. Dieser Umstand beeinflusst aber nicht die Hintergründe meiner Produktempfehlung. Diese Produktempfehlung erfolgt unabhängig, ehrlich und aufrichtig.

Der Beitrag My equipment and basic settings for wedding photography in churches erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.

Creating SQL Statements with Excel (Quick and Dirty)

megaadmin — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 18:24:14 +0000

Sometimes, you have to import predefined data supplied as a list, such as personnel numbers, into a database and at the same time provide it with additional (default) values. Creating each statement manually would be very time-consuming, especially for large amounts of data. The function “concatenate” in Excel helps a lot.

First, we pack all the values delivered as a list, in this simplified case personnel numbers, into the column one below the other.

In an adjacent column we add the function “concatenate” to create a character string:

=CONCATENATE(“INSERT INTO personal VALUES(“;A3;“,Value1,Value2,’01.01.2015′,Porta Westfalica, NULL)“)

The text written in red is taken over statically and the blue block automatically references the preceding column with the personnel number.

The result then looks like this and can be imported directly into the SQL management studio as a text copy:

Der Beitrag Creating SQL Statements with Excel (Quick and Dirty) erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.

Import contents of a CSV file into an existing table via SQL (Bulk Operation)

megaadmin — Wed, 20 Mar 2019 18:23:14 +0000

Script to import data from a CSV file into an existing MS-SQL table via bulk operation. Creation of a temporary table, import, transfer to productive table. The assignment of the data to the correct keys takes place via an inner join.

The only important thing to note here is that the database user performing the operation has the right for “bulk operations”.

Special offer

SQL All-in-One For Dummies 2e*

Taylor, Allen G. (Author)

CREATE TABLE TEMP (

[personalnr] varchar(15),

[Emailadresse] varchar(200),

[Ort] varchar(40)

— Here we create a temporary table to accept and store the data of the CSV file for the first time.

— The order of the column names must also be kept in the CSV file.

)

BULK INSERT TEMP– Fill temporary table with CSV data

FROM ‘J:\WORK\import\mail.csv’– This is the path to the file being imported. IMPORTANT: The path refers to the path in the server, not to the machine running the management studio.

WITH

(

FIELDTERMINATOR=‘,’, — Make sure that the CSV file really separates the columns with a comma and not with a semicolon.

rowterminator=‘\n’ — In most cases –\n is correct, at least if the file was created from a German Excel version as CSV and if necessary was edited again with the editor.

)

UPDATE mitarbeiter– The contents of the temporary table are copied to the productive table. The personnel number, which we “join” in the temporary table, functions as the assignment characteristic.

SET Emailadresse=temp.Emailadresse,Ort=temp.Ort

FROM mitarbeiter

INNERJOIN temp

ON mitarbeiter.personalnr=temp.personalnr

DROP TABLE TEMP — After all previous operations have been completed, we can delete the temporary table.

Der Beitrag Import contents of a CSV file into an existing table via SQL (Bulk Operation) erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.

Synology Hyper Backup: Finish large backups despite connection loss

megaadmin — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 18:13:17 +0000

With release 6.0 of Synology DSM there is a new backup-tool, called “Hyper Backup”. It can be used to schedule backup-tasks to different cloud-targets. Especially when the first, initial-backup of one source is uploaded, this might take several days, depending on file size and upload rate. Too bad, if your connection resets during the upload due to ISP behavior or technical problems: The backup gets stuck. But there is a workaround for that case.

If you try uploading a large source of files to a cloud backupstorage via “Hyper Backup” you might encounter a problem where your backup gets stuck immediately after a connection loss. Especially when creating the initial backup-set, which uploads all files that are available at the source, the job might need a few days to complete. It is very likely, that during this long time there will be a connection-loss or a connection-reset by your ISP which will freeze the procedure. So you might think: “I’ll never get my data into the cloud”.

Don’t give up, there is a workaround.

To understand the workaround you first have to understand how “Hyper Backup” works. After the initial backup-set (the first time you upload the source-files to the backup-destination), in future backup-tasks “Hyper Backup” only updates or adds altered or new data, which means, that the following backups are far smaller as they only contain everything that is not already at the destination. Depending on how your backup-task is configured and scheduled, we might speek of incremental and differential backups.

This behaviour is the key to our workaround. Most people suffering from this problem, will not have this problem with the everyday-backup-tasks, but with the first initial backup, as it is much larger as I explained above. So we need to only workaround the initial backup-task.

In my case, my destination for the backups is the cloudstorage-provider “hubiC” but this should be similar when using other providers.

My backup-source is for example 250GB large, which is not uploadable within one day because of compression-time and encryption-time. My ISP resets the Internetconnection at 1pm and the backup gets stuck.

Let’s say that my backup-source, my share to backup, consists of 25 folders. If I try to upload every 25 folders at once it will fail, so we go to configure our backup-task to initially only backup folders 1 to 3.

We start the backup-task and folders 1 to 3 are successfully uploaded in less than a day.

Now we reconfigure the backup-task, adding folders 4 to 6 and start the backup again (meaning we have now activated folders 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 to be uploaded).

As I mentioned above, only new or altered files, in this case folders 4 to 6 will be uploaded. This procedure will also finish within one day.

Repeating this until folder 25, this workaround allows us to partially upload our whole source. When every folder was uploaded, we go to our backup-settings once again and activate the whole share at the higher root level.

Der Beitrag Synology Hyper Backup: Finish large backups despite connection loss erschien zuerst auf Pixelfriedhof.