If they were willing to pay, I'd do it and consider it a point of pride of making good photos that are outside my norm. But that's just me, I enjoy challenging myself and trying different things with different people.
Are you really so busy every day that an hour or two long shoot is going to ruin other shoots opportunities? Must be nice but also sounds exhausting if you are that busy.
I'm generally nice. But sometimes I see post on my other hobby subs where the question would easily be answered with a few seconds of searching the Internet. For some reason this bugs me.
135mm prime.
That's fine. Find a different hobby/medium.
I'm an artist, I dabbled with pencil, pen, acrylic paint, clay, 3D modeling, 2D animation, 3D animation, stop motion animation, making a video game, painting in watercolors, pastels, and photography. Of them I got really good or average or poor. Clay sculpting is my weak point, I'm very bad at it. What is important and fun for me is trying out all these mediums and learning how to use them. I get a thrill from getting good results and a bigger thrill when somethings looks perfect (to me).
If you aren't having fun, move on. Find something else. It's okay.
I use MF most of the time. Only when the subject is moving do use AF. Like at the rodeo or a race.
I have a Sony so when I adjust focus the screen zooms in to assist get what the user wants in focus. I all enable the red outlines that help see what is in focus.
I find those features help me get precisely what I want in focus where as AF can be off.
I helped a friend in the same situation. I had a scanner.
I'd scan the images and use a graphics program to invert the negatives. Did a little editing after but nothing substantial.
Ha ha. So this makes me wonder why even mention their look? Unless of course they did have a look you prefer so you'd feel like a 6 hour (4 to drive 2 to shoot) would be worth it. I don't think I'd drive for 4 hours to do a photoshoot unless the money was really good. And if it was, I wouldn't care about looks I'd be enjoying the good pay.
I think this should have been mentioned in the original post because a 4 hour drive for a model you aren't that enthusiastic about is very different from a 30 minute drive to the same person.