Case Study
200 Guests at a University Annual Ball
Manchester
Location
Palace Hotel
Equipment Used
Canon 40D
Wft-e3 wireless transmitter
Wrist Grip
Infrared light trigger
Lighting
Lastolite 6”x7” Hilte with train
2x 400W Elinchrom (one in Hilite, one as main light with softbox)
4x 150W Interfit (one as fill light with 1m brolly, one in Hilte, to burn out floor either side)
PC Equipment
Main PC
1 x Acer Dual Core 1.66 GHz 3GB ram (acting as server)
Viewing Stations
3 x Dell 1.2GHZ 512k ram
Network hardware
1 x Belkin 4 port wired router with cat 5 cables
1 x Belkin Wireless access point
Printer
Copal 6”x9” dye sub
Software on Acer (server)
Windows XP
Filezilla (for wireless images transfer)
Filezillas setting:
Create your folder structure
In (with 8 sub folders 1-8 or however many you need)
Out (where the output is saved by Jalbum)
Orders (where your orders are saved)
Set up a user account in Filezilla and then go to shared folders, add the folder 1-8 (browse) and mark folder 1 as home directory. (Images will be saved here) in Jalbum point your input folder at the IN folder and exclude all folders except 1. Image are then transferred by Filezilla and saved to folder 1 and the automatically process by Jalbum when in server mode. When folder 1 gets to about 200 images, in Filezilla set home dir as folder 2 and include in Jalbum.
Jalbum (image processing)
Photoshop
Ultimate View (server control, displaying images on viewing station and order control)
Software on Viewing Stations
Windows XP
Firefox in F11 mode (Full Screen)
The Job
An extremely busy night, all where very eager to have pictures taken and to buy them, £1435 taken on night on 167 actual prints bought (we done a few deals for big orders) Our typical price is £10 for a 6”x9” print with buy two get one free (no mounts). We done a lot of groups as well and we done a few deal 8 for £50 all of the same image.
On-Site Problems
All went extremely well, had a bit of an issue when I went over img_9999.jpg and the camera then reverted to img_0001.jpg and the order of the images was then wrong in the folder, quickly fixed in Jalbum by ordering images by camera date rather than name. The recent Jalbum upgrade also works very well and quickly amended the structure. Also I think there is an issue with the 40D recent firmware update that it resets the file name when auto power off. (Not sure on this one will need to investigate further)
Loading the images on-line
Already had a few orders in, will update in a month with figures. Every order gets a business card. I have also started making a copy of all images and converting them to Black & White, so the client can see a colour and black & white image on line. On my last four jobs offering both B&W and colour orders have increased by 17%. Use Irfanview to copy image, convert to B&W and append file name with BW so you know that a B&W has been ordered.
The workflow to get images on line
Transfer all images to external drive
Resize (750pxlsx750pxls) and save to new location. Use Irfanview, advanced function, save images by keeping file structure.
Delete shockers, and quickly PS the low res images if needed, especially the floor. As they are now just low res, you can open a 100 at a time in PS, set up Function keys with actions for quick tweak. If you spend more than 5 seconds per image for a full length shot then you need to look at your lighting settings.
Use Irfanview, advanced function, convert to greyscale, append file name with BW and save images by keeping file structure to a new location.
Rename folder 1_Black_&_White etc…
Copy folder to input folder
The online gallery can be seen here.
http://www.gotyou.co.uk/gallery/palace/index.html
Mark