Wedding.. opinions on photographer or any takers?

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cmosdos

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Aug 26, 2002
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Alrighty... I'm getting married October 2, 2004 in Asheville, NC at the Biltmore Estate. Beautiful outdoor setting, perfect for photos. One of the photographers that we were recommended is Christine Hatfield. She shoots all digital and then uploads the pictures to a website for you and family to look and and buy what you want. Pretty cool. But, I'm a little bit concerned with her choice of equipment. I will quote from an email that she sent:

To answer your questions, I shoot with Nikon equipment, the camera body is
the new D70 6.1 mega pixel digital, I use all pro Nikon lenses and Nikon pro
flashes. As for how many weddings I have done, enough to not know how many.
I have been shooting professionally for 7 years and I would guess at well
over a hundred weddings (I have over 20 this year alone).
Click to expand...

Now, the D70 isn't a BAD camera.... but I can't justify it being a professional one. I would say on the line from turning amerature to pro. Couple issues I see:

6.1mp... ehhh, sokay but what if we want to blow the picture up to a larger size. With film, at least we have the negatives.

Not an SLR.... kinda worries me about the quailty of the image we will get.

TIFF/JPEG? Big differences here. Although I think nikon uses NEF but same difference.

So what do you guys think about all this? Would you trust this person and their equipment to capture the most memerable moment of your life?

Here is her website: http://hatfieldphotography.com
And her are some pics from a wedding she did: http://www.pictage.com/event.jsp?event_id=61454&branding=yes


Also... anybody with good equipment and experience want to travell down to Asheville, NC? Might be able to set something up ;)
 
First of, that camera IS an slr camera. notice in her quote: "I use all pro Nikon lenses".
also, 6.1 megapixles is plenty, she will be shooting raw (i hope) you can make sure of htis, i mean my uncle got married last year the the pro photographer had a 1D, and his assistant had a 10D, which i have, and that is the comparable camera to the d70. and the 1d is only 4.1 mega pixles and it provided AMPLE rezolution for photos. so your statement in the D70 not being professional is wrong. i mean in news shoots the 10D (and probably the D70 now) are some of hte most popular cameras, aside from 1 series canon cameras and the D1H and D2H nikon cameras. So i wouldnt be worried in her using a D70 for your wedding. that camera has plenty good quality, for right now i would be more worried about the quality of the photographer themselves.
 
You have no worrys my friend. My prom pictures were takein on a 10D. My bosses brother is a wedding photographer and he uses a 10D.

The D70 although compaired to the 300D is actually much closer to the 10D. The 10D is targeted to the semi-pros. IE your average wedding photographer.

The D70 is a fantastic camera, i assure you the only thing that would be lacking is the photographer. Have you asked for samples.
 
the d70 works great for weddings, ask her about her post processing as the d70 deliberately underexposes to avoid blown highlights, etc etc. i have countless links to wonderful d70 pics if you need them ... i've been researching it for months.

-esr
 
ask her about her post processing as the d70 deliberately underexposes to avoid blown highlights, etc etc
Click to expand...

You sure about that?

That doesnt really make all that much sense.
 
Thanks for the comments guys. I am starting to feel better about it now. What if she says she's shooting jpeg and not raw? The samples on her website are what we've seen so far. She is sending us an 8x10 of one of her shots. We do like her style. Instead of those 'posed' shots she captures the moment when your not paying attention.

How large of a picture can the 6.1mp make? What about 4mp?
 
cmosdos said:
Thanks for the comments guys. I am starting to feel better about it now. What if she says she's shooting jpeg and not raw? The samples on her website are what we've seen so far. She is sending us an 8x10 of one of her shots. We do like her style. Instead of those 'posed' shots she captures the moment when your not paying attention.

How large of a picture can the 6.1mp make? What about 4mp?
Click to expand...


You dont need to worry aobut print size...i've seen prints from 10D (6.1mp) in "feet" rather then "inches".

Again, do not worry aobut the equipment, that is their job. Just look at their work and make your best judgement.
 
D70 is what most of these Low end professional use. (By low end i mean shooting weddings, prom, etc, High end is shooting for magazines and such). As for print size, 6.1 can print in poster size, and also megapixel is not everything to determine the quality in pictures. The D70 (6MP) takes better pictures than the Pro1 (8MP). Its more to do with the sensor rather than the actual amount of pixels given on the CCD.
 
cmosdos said:
Thanks for the comments guys. I am starting to feel better about it now. What if she says she's shooting jpeg and not raw? The samples on her website are what we've seen so far. She is sending us an 8x10 of one of her shots. We do like her style. Instead of those 'posed' shots she captures the moment when your not paying attention.

How large of a picture can the 6.1mp make? What about 4mp?
Click to expand...

If she does this for a living she has to be a moron to shoot it in JPEG format rather than RAW. Im sure she is smart enough to save it in RAW. Also do she give you a backup of the RAW images or give you the compressed JPEG version?
 
You sure about that?
Click to expand...

yes, you will find many posts in either nikodians or dpreview, especially (read you :p ) from 300d users who play with the d70 and are wondering what's going on... this is part of the postprocessing comment i made a while ago, a lot more d70 users seem to post process or use custom tone curves to lighten the images.
 
yeah it bugs a lot of people, ill try a custom curve or two and see what it does.
 
Talked to her again and here is what we're gonna get:

Printed proofs of all pictures
CDs with all of the RAW files
All copyrights to the photos
Website for sharing with family and friends
Ability for family and friends to order pics from the site in whatever size they want

Only thing I didn't get a chance to ask her is how much storage she will carry with her. At 15+mb per pic, she better have a lot of cards... i would assume she does since she's done so many weddings. What do you guys think would be an appropriate amount? We're looking at about 4 hours worth of shooting here.
 
my friend shoots 12mp with a few gigs so i'd say at least 2.
 
Most wedding photographers shoot with both a medium format for portraits (usually what gets blown up huge) and a regular film SLR for all those "grab" shots. In the last few years, more and more photogs are making the switch to digital for the grab shots and I can't really blame them it's cheaper, easier, and allows for more post-processing options.

I haven't met a ton of wedding photographers who shoot only with the slr, but I've been out of the loop for a while now so things could have changed.

If you don't think you'll ever need that life-sized wall photo of you and the bride, then I'm sure what she's suggesting will work great.

Instead of relying on what pictures she shows you (one would assume she'll only show you her best ones), I'd ask for a few references from weddings she's shot in the past and talk with those couples to see how they are satisfied with her work. If she's really shot that many weddings, there should be no problem finding 3 or 4 couples in your area willing to share thier experiences with you.

I'm also not a huge fan of the all B&W look for weddings. Make sure that you get color copies as well - it may change her "artistic" representation of the event, but if it were me, I'd rather have color.

And last, good luck with your special day.
 
cmosdos said:
Talked to her again and here is what we're gonna get:

Printed proofs of all pictures
CDs with all of the RAW files
All copyrights to the photos
Website for sharing with family and friends
Ability for family and friends to order pics from the site in whatever size they want

Only thing I didn't get a chance to ask her is how much storage she will carry with her. At 15+mb per pic, she better have a lot of cards... i would assume she does since she's done so many weddings. What do you guys think would be an appropriate amount? We're looking at about 4 hours worth of shooting here.
Click to expand...

As others have mentioned 6MP is fine. If it's a crisp shot and you do a good job interpolating it you can get great 20x30" prints no problem.

You sure she said all of the RAW files? Or just selected ones? I don't see why she would give you all of the RAW files because what's to stop you from printing them on your own (or giving them to family members to print their own) rather than paying her price of $25 per 8x10? I guess she must charge plenty just to shoot the wedding so she still turns a profit if that's the case.

As for storage she probably has at least two 1 or 2GB (maybe even 4GB) cards and most likely a laptop/storage device to dump to. When one card fills up, pop in the other and keep shooting while dumping the full one to storage. If she does it that way 2x 2GB should be plenty to avoid filling up the second card while the first card is still transfering.
 
She's using the wrong camera for the job IMHO. If she wants to use a low end DSLR then she should be using Fuji S2 Pro's, far better in this situation.

I wouldn't worry too much though, I still prefer medium format cameras for this type of thing though.
 
CANiSLAYu... we are paying an extra $250 to obtain all the rights to all the pictures. So we will be able to do whatever we want with them.

I met with another photographer yesterday and he was using a simlar camera. I believe its the model the D70 replaced. Well, he showed me a 40" x 60" portrait he shot with the camera at 400 iso and in jpeg format. Not raw... jpeg. And it was amazing. No noise, no pixelating... So i'm getting more and more excited. Only 69 more days left till the big day :)

Oh, and I played around with the D70 today at a store... man, I want one of those soooo bad. Heh, I think my future wife would kill me though seeing as how we are building a house right now. lol. My a80 will have to do for now.
 
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