Con Men

Ugh.

One of the downsides of running a business which is advertised online is that periodically someone will try to take advantage of you. Which sucks, but, you know, it comes with the territory. If you pay attention and have some limits/standards, you can avoid getting burned.

But it's still disappointing.

Who wakes up and decides to impersonate a deaf person (they also claimed to be in the ICU elsewhere) just to try to rip someone off? 

Anyway, two things to take from this:

• If you find or sell work online, be careful. If something seems off or weird, trust your gut and ask lots of questions. In this case, the person didn't seem to really be reading my texts, and of course the actual scam, wanting me to funnel money for them. (For anyone who hasn't seen this before: they want to send a check or credit card payment which takes a few days to clear, but you have to send someone a money order immediately. By the time their payment comes back as fraudulent, your cash is gone.)
• If you are one of my clients who found me online, without the benefit of a friend's referral, thank you so much for your trust. I'm very aware that hiring a photographer is always a huge act of trust (that they will carry through with their promises, that their product will be of the promised quality). Giving that trust online is an even bigger leap of faith. It means the world to me, and nothing is more important to me than delivering on that trust.

I won't say something like "this ruins my faith in people", because it doesn't. Almost everyone who reaches out to me is not only who they claim to be, but wonderful people that are a pleasure to work with.

Y'all are great.

FODSLR Macro Extension Tubes

This is a bit of a product review (unpaid and unsolicited), which is not something I typically do here, but some photo friends of mine have found informal versions of this on Facebook useful. So if you're just here for beautiful wedding photos, feel free to skip it. No hard feelings.

...

Still here? Cool. Let me tell you about FODSLR Macro Extension Tubes.

Macro extension tubes turn a regular lens into a macro lens. They are a lot cheaper than a dedicated lens, but also have some small technical trade-offs that I won't go into here. They come in "smart" and "dumb" versions, depending on whether they let your camera talk to the lens (to change your aperture and auto-focus) or not. These FODSLR (a brand name, apparently?) tubes are smart. (Dumb ones are a waste of time and better avoided.)

These are also remarkably cheap. I picked them up on sale for $25 - since the price has gone up and down, but I've never seen it above $40 (half the "list price" of $79.99). $80-$120 is a more common price for this sort of thing.

That said, there are some quality-consistency issues. My first set, two of the tubes would not come apart. A friend who bought these on my recommendation has also found his a bit "sticky". I returned mine (yay free shipping and free returns with Prime!), and the second set they sent are perfect. Take from that what you will.

I like them. A lot.

Of course, these tubes don't work in a vacuum - they're just one tool to add to your toolbox. The nice thing about extension tubes is they have no glass in them, so they are as good as the camera and lens you put them between. (The above photo also benefits from a professional speedlite, the DJ's up-lighting, and whoever lit about a hundred candles on the table.)

That said, these are straightforward to use. I'd recommend using lots of light so you can stop-down your aperture a lot.

Then just play around and have fun!