Linda K

the minister will be on ABC melb after 5pm (774 on the AM band) - might be worth a listen if they will also take calls too

further update in the news - the amnesty on registering pit bulls will be rescinded as soon as it can be arranged, which means any unregistered ones are therefore deemed illegal and will be able to be seized and destroyed without any recourse available

Cosmolo, you are eerily right on the target - our minister here in Vic has just held a press conference, saying the breed will be banned, and councils will be given more funding to help them do searchs, checking fr unregistered dogs, and be able to round up these dogs, and that there will be a dangerous dogs hotline that will enable people to ring up and dob in a dangerous dog.

they have just said that the minister has said there are up to 10000 dangerous dogs unregistered in Vic, and he will be increasing funding to councils to do squads to detect (and who knows what then, presumably confiscate and kill)), any dangerous dogs, as well as start up a dangerous dogs hotline, for people to ring up and presumably to dob in a dog, hope that innocent dogs do not get caught up in this from vexacious people with a grudge

just listening to the minister on the radio, I think you may find they will now become a banned breed - he said that in view of previous attacks and what happened last night, he will be moving swiftly to get the breed banned, and increase penalties, including making owners criminally responsible - ie potentially jail time and murder / manslaughter charges for people whose dogs cause death like this. I just see a lot more dogs now being dumped on pounds as a result to be PTS as so many more people will now dodge responsibility on properly caring for their dogs.

they were talking to one of the journos who is in the street, and said that the little girls house was the only one in the street with no front fence, the dog, which is normally contained in a very high fenced back yard (and none of the other neighbours had seen, but sounded aggressive from its bark - the fact it has never been seen certainly suggests it doesn't get exercised very often to me)somehow got out (whether a gate was opened accidentally, not sure), anyway the dog crossed the street, went into the front yard where the girl and her cousin were playing, they went to go inside to try to get away, an the dog came i the house with them. So sad what happened to the family, I feel for them and what happened to the girl is just horrible , but sounds like it truly was a tinderbox waiting to explode if this dog was being kept confined in the yard, no exercise, probably no training, intact and just waiting to explode like this, the owners should face the full penalties for creating this mess

an MP saying something sensible, what a refreshing change, and he is 100% right

hard to tell from the thumbnail, but looks way too blown out to save to my eyes. A nice snapshot otherwise. Agree with taking it off M until you have a better grasp of what to do, put it on TV, chose a shutter speed f say at least 1/250 or 1/500, if you are in bright light ISO 100, less bright try ISO 200 or 400, and let the camera chose the aperture. If the camera can't get an aperture to suit, look for it to be blinking at you and adjust the ISO accordingly until it does not - it will use the blinking to tell you that it can't achieve exposure at the settings you have given it. With that model camera, I would not be pushing it to ISO 3200, images will be very noisy unless they are perfectly exposed.

load of pish posh

only upgrade if the camera and lens are not giving you what you want, and you are sure it is not user error creating the problem - took me 2 years to upgrade, and I only did so as the camera I had could not be pushed beyond ISO 400 without incredible amounts of noise. I have not upgraded since then, other than to add a backup body, as being in the business I cannot afford to have gear failure, but would be more likely now to add new lenses rather than change the body over, my camera bodies do all that I need them to do. There can be a tendency though to assume that a better camera will always give better results, when sometimes it is not using the body to the best of its ability, and understanding how all the different functions of the camera work in manual to extract the best from the body and lens combination, and not using the available light properly that is creating a problem - just changing up bodies will not solve this

501.4 and 135 f2

Unless you are set up as a business, and constantly delivering exactly the standard of work you want each and every time, no matter the conditions, then IMO you are not ready to be charging. If you are in the practice shooting stage, then usually what is fair is a time for disc exchange - eg they pay nothing towards a shoot, and they get a limited no of images free on diskette. At the portfolio building stage, where you have already got the skills down, but are merely going to be padding out certain areas of the portfolio you might be lacking enough subjects in,it is generally a % discount on what your regular fees would be. Each photographers costs though are likely to differ, as it depends on what type of business model you are following - if you are a high volume, low editing type model, or a sports event photographer where you are shooting large nos of subjects then your costs per image and per session would be vastly different to a custom model where you might be planning on spending hours per session, and may only do 1 or 2 sessions a week. You also need to factor into the cost of goods expenses like software, website, insurance, upgrading gear, etc etc, and other various overheads, as well as tax, salary for yourself, and money to go back into the business. As a guide, when I am shooting images at a cat show, my price per image (which I offer as either a websized file, or full sized file, or print), are nothing like the custom images I do in a session in someones home or on location, where I would be sending vastly longer working one on one with the clients - these are 2 vastly different session types, and are different business models of my business. For what you have described, if it was practice only, I would be maybe charging her $10 to cover the cost of disc and postage, with images for free, but only give her images that meet your standards (ie nothing out of focus, or bad limb chops etc), and I would also size them down before you do them, to say 4x6, and a websized file as well. If you are past that stage, then you really need to sit down and work out costs as to what you are wanting to charge, and then say a 50% discount on that price. JMHO

a friend I have who is a wedding photographer only ever told me 2 things - when the groom is wearing black and the bride is wearing white, the worst thing you can do is blow out the brides dress - she won't care so much about what details you are seeing on the grooms outfit anyway, but blow out her dress and forget a decent sale, and pray for a nice photographer day, as opposed to a bright sunny mid summer day (the sort that is every brides dream). I know he always erred on the side of ensuring the dress was slightly underexposed and recovering details in PS. But must admit, although I do photograph humans as well as animals, I would not touch a wedding with a 10 foot barge pole, I like doing sessions that at worst I can redo if something goes tragically wrong, with a wedding there is no chance on that

depending when it is, would love to come along with the camera

Chris did thought point out about a dog they showed on the show this week (a woman who was looking after her sons bitch while he was OS< and had the girl get in with her obviously undesexed male dog), that the tie to say oops was well past, the female should have been desexed already, and that after the girl had the pups, and the owner sighed with relief that all the hard work was now done, he said no it isn't she now has to find good homes for all the puppies. Was a bit shocked that the mum had the bitch whelping outside on the porch, while the make dog was inside where it was warm would have thought you would have wanted her inside? And he did say he now wanted to see the girl at his surgery to be desexed quick smart so no more puppies

not really good at explaining, so have done the next best thing - here is a link that details how to set it up - but basically what you are doing is setting up the focus on one button, and then using shutter control on the other, My link

really old, I bought second hand but I love it, and yes the sigma one was many moons again too (2004)

our lab had a weight problem, and I think at her worst was up to about 50kg, but my MIL, who had been in charge of her diet at the tme, also had a massive weight problem (she was a size 20), so she had no self control to exercise at all. We got the weight off the lab by telling her that the vet had said if she did not lose the weight she would be dead in 6 months, so the thought of losing her was enough to help my MIL overcome the pleading eyes, and she slimmed down to a much better 35 kg, my MIL in the meantime was able t slim to a size 14, as she decided if Princess could do it, she could too. Just so sad to see any animal in this state, the owners should be ashamed

the 50 1.8 is a cheapo lens that is a plastic mount and has a very wide tolerance of acceptability on the glass - ie you could buy 4 lenses and all of them could be slightly different quality. It can therefore be very frustrating to work with if you do not have a great copy. Any lens is also going to have its own sweet spot, which is generally at least 1 or 2 stops below the widest setting, so a 1.8 will generally give its best results at about 3.5. As KJA has said, depending on how close you are to what you are shooting, you are not going to have a very wide DOF to play with, so focus recompose is not your best technique in this case - toggling focus points, using (shudder) manual focus or back button focus might work better for you. FWIW I changed from the 1.8 to the 1.4, which has a metal mount, and a less wide tolerance for bad glass at the factory, and the immediate improvement in nailing shots in focus was dramatic. I would not bother going to the L on that lens, as from what I have seen and read, there is little to be gained by spending the extra. The 50 1.4 is one of my main working lens, it rarely if ever lets me down in focus, even at wide apertures (I can shoot at 1.8 or 2 easily and get sharp images), and I would not trade it for anything. I am also going to go against the trend and not support the 3rd party lenses, I had a Sigma 16-35 and it was horrible, I could never get a decent shot out of it, got the Canon 17-35 and it was so much better, I just love it, esp for landscape shots. I would think a nice prime lens if you want to avoid distortion would be the Canon 35 F2 - I would always stick with name lens, as you will also hold the resale value later on too. As a guide, if anyone is interested, here is a link to a depth of field calculator, that you can specify the camera model, the focal length, aperture and distance to subject, and it will then let you know what DOF you will have to play with My link

like the daylight myself

I would also add Jamie at cowbelly My linkcowbelly.com, pam biasotti My link and Melisaa My link

Hi Beautiful Illusions good for you to take a break from what you were doing, and follow your heart, but as a business I hope you have dotted the is and crossed the ts with insurance etc - animal photography is partly about getting the animals to work with you for sure and keeping them calm and settled, but it also about having the business and photographic skills too for backing that up. Nothing wrong with easing into it by gaining practice and honing your skills in both those areas before you start charging money - there is a reason that 4/5 businesses fail in the first 5 years, and one of those is failing to be prepared and jumping in way too quick

on the black dog one, using an eye dropper in photoshop, there is not a lot of tonal variation - ie very similar readings in a lot of the areas, but there are no areas reading 0, I can find redings in all the darker areas, so you did actually get detail there. I would suggest if the dog is now printing as totally black, sounds like they might have done a curve bump, which pulls the blacks down and bumps up the whites, which in the case of the dog, will have pulled all those blacks right down to nearly zero, since they are all so close, just what you don't want. On the one of your son, on the left of his face there are areas where the channels read 255, so will print as pure white - the detail has been blown (ie blown highlights), so this would not print well. I try to keep areas below about 245, as otherwise they can be a bit dodgy to print. For a quick print job, I have used Harvey Norman successfully, no problems with the colour, and I told them not to colour correct, just to print as is, but I do use a professional lab for my client jobs that I am calibrated to, so I know I don't need to worry. Did they do any further color correction - most consumer places will assume generally, unless you instruct them otherwise, to do color correction, and it sounds like they might have done that if the catchlights have also gone - no idea why they would want to remove those, as the whole point of trying to get catchlights is to avoid the awful dead pool of eyes. Hope you can get it sorted.

Mine are listed with public liability and gear cover with AON, as photographers insurance, I can't have them under the home insurance as I use them for business, and they would be worth well more than the tiny amount I would be allowed under that anyway even if I was not in the business

we have a pet friendly bait - it's called a cat!!!