Wedding Photography

[moosenuts]

I have a family member getting married in about 6 months - and I have been asked to take pictures. I will not be the main photographer but would like to get lots of great shots. I have a 20d with a few lenses. What kind of hardware should I plan on buying to make sure that I am ready? Anyone with experience have pointers? Any info will help.

 

[SidewinderX]

Canon 70-200 f2.8 [with or without IS], 17-40 f4L, Tamron 28-75 f2.8.

With that setup, you should have the major focal lengths covered that you'll use, and you have a fairly fast set.

 

[Absentee]

and a monopod/tripod (monopod if your gonna be moving alot)

just so if your camera hands kinda jittery and you have to use a slow shutter speed they wont come out blurry

 

[fugu]

Is the wedding indoors or outdoors? If it's inside, can you use a flash? How close can you get, or how far away will you be?

 

[nullvector]

The Tamron 28-75 Di XR that was suggested above is a great lens. Works well for low light and is extremely sharp.

One suggestion, is to not focus on changing lenses so much during the shoot. A lot of times with weddings you want to get those spur of the moment shots that you cant get while you are bent over a bag switching lenses. Maybe for the ceremony, stick with a good indoor lens like the 28-75 or the 50 1.8.

If you are taking shots during the ceremony, make sure your flash shots arent interfering with the paid guy's shots. The most frustrating thing for wedding pros is when good old relatives stand up and flash their cardboard Kodaks right when the guy is taking a shot. Screws up their lighting and stuff, and the other guy might not appreciate the interference.

A monopod might be handy too if you plan on walking around alot, especially in lower light situations.

Since you arent the main photographer, try to get some shots of the ceremony that the main guy won't get. You'll have tons of groom/bride pics from the pro guy, but often they miss out of the guests, little kids, and other family, except when in group posed shots.

The fact that you arent the chief photo person is freedom enough to have some fun and try to get some fun shots that the paid pros dont typically go for. You can then make some fun slideshows and put them on DVD or something, as a contrast to the romantic/elegant/stiff layouts that people usually pay for.

Oh yeah...and take pictures of the food. People usually pay an arm and a leg for the receptions, so get shots of the dishes and desserts (cake), with some good macros or something. One of the nicest wedding photoshoots I saw was by a guy who did pay attention to the little things, even the plates, tablesettings, placards, etc, rather than just the bride/groom only. Most couples want to remember the event that day, rather than just looking at the two of their faces in 1000 shots, so try to get all aspects of the 'event' and I think theyll be extremely happy.

 

[Absentee]

and dont forget to grab a 1-4 gig memory card..and a few 256/512MB ones for spares....and extra batterys

it sucks if you run out of batterys or memory right in the middle of the event

 

[moosenuts]

The wedding will be indoors - and I can use flash if I have one - (don't yet). I will basically have free roam during the everything except the ceremony, which has'nt been nailed down yet. Good advice about the lens changing - I was worried about trying to use 3 different lenses. I have 2 batteries and 9gb worth of flash.
( I may also be able to borrow a second 20d body for the wedding)
Thanks again to everyone who has replied so far.

 

[Absentee]

getting a second body would be great...keep different lenses on each and just switch cameras when you really need a different lense

oh and for the ceremony...i would get a spot in the back near the middle and get a good zoom lense..that way if you want to...you can take a picture of the whole croud...

or 2 and stich em for a panoramic shot

 

[moosenuts]

Anyone have extensive indoor flash experience? - preferred flash or other info?

 

[SidewinderX]

Get one that has manuel control... so either a Canon 550EX or 580EX, or a Sigma EF 500 DG Super.

Don't get a 420EX or a Sigma EF 500 DG.

The Super is availed for about $190 from Sigma4less.com, and that's what I have.

 

[moosenuts]

What situation would the manual control come in handy?

 

[HorsePunchKid]

What situation would the manual control come in handy?

I use a Metz 54MZ-3, and I would highly recommend it if it will fit in your budget. Manual control is mainly useful when you're shooting some subject that it can't meter very accurate: reflective objects, situations with significant backlighting, subjects relatively far away, and so on. I honestly don't think that will be too important to you in a wedding scenario, but I think any decent flash ($200+) will have manual overrides anyway.

If you get a flash, I also would recommend this LumiQuest kit. The main trick to using a flash is getting the light to not be too harsh. Some flashes have a fill-in flash, so you can bounce the main flash and still have some light coming from the front. This diffuser will help if you don't have a fill flash, and it still works very well even if you do have one. This is the sort of amazingly soft lighting I've gotten with it; you'd never get it with a straight flash, and the shadows would be bad if it were just bounced off the ceiling:

 

[Tim_axe]

What situation would the manual control come in handy?

Wedding photographers need manual control because of how the camera calculates the flash output.

When you combine a black suit (camera thinks the flash isn't lighting the scene up enough because the suit is a mini-blackhole), and a white dress (camera thinks it is outdoors with how much light it reflects) the flash output is all over the place. Unless you know how to trick the ETTL flash metering system to work around this (which is a PITA since you must do it for every shot) getting a manual flash would help you avoid this headache.

With manual flash control, you just take a few test shots at different flash output levels to see if it works for the area you need it in, and then when you find the right balance you use it for that area for anyone until you start to take pictures of another section of the room.



Another thing to learn is how to "bounce" the flash.

This is where you hold the camera upside down and drop it to the floor so you can dislodge some of the trapped electrons in the capacitors. It should bounce, but if your camera just shatters you're out of luck. j/k

Actually, bouncing is where you point the flash upwards at an angle to the subject so it can reflect off of the (hopefully) white ceilings making it a large diffuser. The lighting from this process is much softer and pretty much eliminates red-eye. You also don't have those hard shadows behind the subject, but rather a nice even lighting. You should practice this before the wedding, and then use it if the ceilings are reasonably low and white in color.

Or you can make/buy a diffuser head or a softbox for your flash. But be warned -- anything that you buy and says "photography" or "digital" is marked up 200-500% from whatever product it was made from. IE, there are some photography products that are not quite unlike tupperware selling for around $100+...

 

[Absentee]

if your like me and have a flash that the end pulls out (kinda like a built in diffuser) and has a bracket for filters on the end of it...its easy..cut out a piece of paper or to at the right size and slip em in the bracket

or

tape it on the frontof the flash

i can't reccomend any flashes tho..as im still very much a n00b

 

[HorsePunchKid]

cut out a piece of paper or to at the right size and slip em in the bracket

That will probably help a fair amount, though I don't know that it would help much more than just setting the flash compensation lower. Is the bracket actually larger in cross sectional area than the front of the flash? One of the main things about the LumiQuest setup is that on top of being able to split a single flash into bounce and fill, the fill is also coming from a much, much larger area, and so the light is softer.

 

[Absentee]

no its about the same size as the flash (about 1mm bigger to not block any light)

of course anything store bought would be better than my solution....but i dont have the cash to throw around on a $100+ flash

i think this one only cost less than $50 (not shure..my mom got it awhile ago)

as soon as i pull it out of my drawer in shop at school on monday ill take pics to show you how its set up

 

[HorsePunchKid]

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that your suggestion didn't have any merit. I've gotten some great shots that I could not have gotten otherwise by holding a piece of paper in front of the flash. I guess the difference is that when I do that, I'm usually using a full sheet of paper, which I think helps diffuse the light better. (A large area of the paper will transmit light, so the light is coming from a wider area.) One of my favorites is below; there's no way I could have gotten that lighting with a direct flash!

 

[Absentee]

didnt know that about the full sheet vs small piece....ty

 

[Mr_Bucket]

and a monopod/tripod (monopod if your gonna be moving alot)

just so if your camera hands kinda jittery and you have to use a slow shutter speed they wont come out blurry

Ive shot weddings before and I would definately not use a monopod or tripod in normal cicumstances. I did use a tripod at one bat mitzvah when there was a power outage and there were no lights on in the building other than a few that were being powered by a generator.