Need advice for making container soy candles

I'd like to make soy candles in baby food jars & mason jars of diff sizes for my daughter's wedding. I'd love to get advice from experienced crafters on what type of soy wax to purchase (EcoSoya Container Blend Advanced Soy Wax??), which wicks work best (HTP, cotton core, make your own??), & where is the best (cheapest) place to purchase the supplies. My daughter (the bride to be) is coming in 2 days for a weekend visit. I'd love to get working on this. OR if you know of good websites/videos to help me, that would be AWESOME!! I'd be willing to split a 50lb bag of wax...not sure how much I'll need. I was going to make extras for gifts. I wasn't planning on adding color or fragrance at this point

Small Wedding Venue

I've been working on planning a friend's wedding for a few weeks now but I'm running into a lot of problems with finding a venue. Her fiancee and her would really like an outdoor wedding ceremony and an indoor reception so we're trying to plan for the wedding to be this summer or early fall but it is difficult to find places that are still available on a Saturday on such short notice.

Our wedding will only have about 30-40 guests, and ideally, it would be nice to have a garden wedding, or a wedding in a venue that had some view of Tagaytay, even if it was far in the distance. However, in weeks of looking, I have found that all garden spots in Tagaytay do not fit into thebudget that we're working with or are extremely popular with large and small events and are therefore already booked through this year and it seems that there are few places that have views of downtown that are not rooftop venues downtown.

I have branched out into looking at bed and breakfasts around Tagaytay and then private estates that may have gardens that we could rent for 1 or two days but am still not having any luck finding anything. With only 30 guests, I feel like there has to be some great, small venue with either a garden or downtown view that doesn't cost more than P50,000 to rent for a day and that isn't already booked for every Saturday this year. Does anyone know of any or have any suggestions as to what other kinds of businesses I might try to look at?

Any motion-graphics experts in Manila?

I'm eager to know how the animated backgrounds of a certain Youtube video were created. A commercially sold plug-in, with customizable timing? Or a native feature of a certain software program? If either of these, what's the product's name? Or else, is it likely an original animation, composited into a motion gfx project (such as FCP? iMovie? Or ___?) on its own layer(s)? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKaOlZ4wNag 

I messaged to the uploader nearly 7 weeks ago, with similar questions. But no answer. 

So, I'd be very grateful if anyone here could please offer suggestions how the animated background was achieved. Thanks in advance!

Question on organizing photos in an album

This may be perceived as a silly question but whats the best way to arrange photos in an album or on a website? I usually shoot B&W but depending on the photo I may enhance it, use color, sepia, etc. Is it best to keep B&W separate or is it better to arrange based on the location the image was taken? For example have one album for my new york photos and one for photos from my european trips. Also is it best to keep iphone photos in their own album?

Recommendations for photo, neg+ slide scanners?

I'm scanning everything I can get my hands on. Documents, pamphlets, yearly appointment books, and now slides, negs, and photos.

What's fast, and good? I'd like to get a SlideScan Pro, but they're about $8,000. Nikon CoolScans are great, but they don't even work with Win7 systems; they stopped making them with Win98 systems.

There is a Kodak photo scanner that doesn't look too bad. You load photos in the tray, hit the button, and off it goes. I have a document scanner that is similar to that, and can also do photos at 600 ppi and turn them into jpegs, but it's not that great with photos; the output images probably aren't as good as what Kodak would do with them. Crummier scanners don't have a tray, and you have to load them in 1 at a time. Forget that. I want to knock this project out; I probably have 1,000 photos. No way I'm going to hand feed each one. Same with slides and negs.

Any recommendations?

Pentax K-5: Why you should buy it

Ok, I've owned my K-5 for two months now and must give my 2 cents about it.
First off, you will NOT find a better buy under $1400, PERIOD.
The reasons are plentiful:
1. It's weather sealed- I took it out into an intense thunderstorm to snap photos of lightning. It was SOAKED, but now two weeks later, not a single issue has arisen. (This was with the weathersealed KIT LENS) Nothing by Canon, Nikon or Sony comes close to this level of protection.

2. It has by far the best image quality in the APS-C sized sensor market. It blows away the T3i, T4i, D7000, A77 and anything else with a "cropped" sensor. Mainly this is due to its amazing color bit depth, dynamic range and the fact that it has image stabilization IN CAMERA.. Meaning no matter what lens you attach to it, whether it be a day old or 30 years, it will be stabilized. Heck, with good glass, it smokes my 5D Mark II(not in video though).

3. It's light, small, compact and feels very solid, as it has a steel frame and magnesium body.

4. Pentax lenses are quite a bit sharper than their Nikon/Sony/Canon counterparts. They're almost as good as Olympus lenses. My 18-55mm WR kit lens stops down to an AMAZING f/40!!! At f/8 and 35mm(sweet spot), it's every bit as sharp as my 17-40L Canon lens, add weathersealing and you've got the best Kit lens on the market.

5. Backwards compatible with every Pentax lens ever made.

6. In-Camera: HDR, Interval(time lapse) shooting mode, multiple exposure(layering), 1/8000 top shutter speed, Image stabilization, dual axis level(on viewfinder, info screen on top and back screen), weathersealed pop-up flash and live view shooting.

Ok, I'm a 6'5" tall guy with very large hands and I have found it to be a pleasure to hold. It's nowhere near as bulky or as frightening(to candid victims) as my 5D MII. However, in time I will be getting the battery grip for better portrait shots.

I shopped for over a year before buying the K-5 and compared it to every camera under $1,500, including some full frame models. What I found was that the K-5 is perhaps the best deal in photography. Before you buy a Nikon D3200/D7000/D5200, Canon T2i,T3i,T4i,60D,7D, or any Sony camera, you owe it to yourself to compare them to the mighty K-5! You will not be disappointed!

Any recommendations for a compact street photography rig?

I'm going to be travelling soon and I want to be able to do a lot of street photography of everyday people and environments. I don't want to have to always be lugging my DSLR(s) and sticking big honking lenses into people's faces. I have an S90 which I love, but it's way too slow for street photography.

I've been reading a little ... the Olympus something or other, the Fuji Pro-X, the Canon G15 at the less expensive end. But I'm leaning more towards X100 than the X-pro for street shooting unless you really need to change lenses. The 23mm/F2 fixed lens is incredibly sharp. With the most recent firmware they are much faster than originally shipped, although it's still not perfect. It has a built in flash that always seems to give the perfect fill flash, and it seems faster than the X-pro. If you can wait a bit the new version X100s is coming out (pre-orders going on now) and that one is supposed to have DSLR speed AF and the same sensor as the X-pro.


I also liked using the Olympus pen cameras, not sure what the latest model is. The IQ on the one I had (I think Pen E-PL1) is noticeably better than the S90, pretty fast and if you get the Panasonic 20mm/1.7 lens you have a nice pocketable rig.

I have a friend (commercial photographer that shoots medium format digital) that carries one of these around on the street and absolutely loves it. I played with it for a few minutes, but didn't do any real shooting with it so I can't say it's better or worse than the other suggestions, but I can tell you he raves about his and the pictues I've seen were amazing.

Any real-world advice? Looking for good image quality, very responsive and fast, viewfinder (optical or digital), maybe keep the project in the (very) low four figures.