First wedding shoot, pretty pleased

Rob — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:59:37 +0000

On the weekend just passed I had the pleasure/ challenge of shooting my first wedding for some friends of mine, although it was only the reception and some family portraits beforehand.
Given the constraints I had from time for shooting, the large amount of people and combinations that they wanted, and dealing with weather conditions (quite windy and late afternoon sun) I’m relatively happy with the raw results from the camera.
I would have liked extra time to get a lot more creative with the arrangements, but a late start, lengthening shadows and a schedule to stick to stiffled that a little.
However I am with the performance of the gear that I had at the time, and it has been a great learning experience for me in many ways. From the technical aspects of dealing with exposure metering, flash compensation and controlling depth of field to efficient arrangement of subjects and keeping things looking natural and not too posed.
Given the fact I have a close relationship with many of those I needed to shoot, made the job of ordering them around to do what I wanted a lot easier than it would have been with a bunch of strangers. And also being able to keep the whole experience pretty casual for us all made for some very natural shots.

The only real issue I had with my gear on the day is the gap in focal lengths I have between my 10-20mm and my 28-135mm. Due to the space I was working in and the group sizes I had, I found that I really need a lens covering the 17-40mm range if i’m going to continue doing this style of work. Also something with a wider aperture (F2.8 ) would have also given some nicer results in keeping the background out of focus a little more and making the subjects ‘pop’.
I found that I shot the majority at 28-40mm, but needed to change lenses to get a little extra width at 20mm on a couple of occasions.
**(also remember that I’m shooting with a 1.6x cropped sensor DSLR, so all focal lengths mentioned are multiplied by 1.6)**
The only other small issue I encountered was using “partial (centre 7% of frame) metering” in conjunction with “aperture priority” mode initially, which are my usual/ everyday-type settings. This gave me some over-exposed backgrounds as I had quite a lot of shadows on the subjects to deal with, which were within the metering zone of the camera.
A quick switch to fully manual control and evaluative metering soon brought things back into shape. This was also due to me having limited previous experience in using the speedlite in real world situations, and understanding fully the differences needed to gain correct exposures when using a speedlite.

Anyway, enough of a novel from me, as I have over 500 photo’s from the event to sort and edit, but all in all it was an enjoyable learning experience for me and I believe the happy couple will be pleased with the final results.

A few preview shots will be posted in due course…

Quick Edit and update:
Slowly getting there with the editing and should have some results by the end of today..
I NEEEEED a faster machine

UPDATE 2:

Editing is now completely complete, and i’m impressed with how the majority have come up, upon further inspection it appears that one person in the wedding party (the damn groom) is quite sensitive to the speedlite’s pre-flash.
but that was only on the occasions that i did not use the FEL function (Flash Exposure Lock)
some of the indoor shots lost a little detail in noise as I had to shoot at ISO 800 and a couple of times at 1600, but nothing that will stand out when printing at normal sizes.
Faster glass and better body will solve those issues in the future
A couple of sample images will be uploaded soon, once the couple have viewed them.

Has been a great learning experience for me, and I now know what I need to focus on and improve on next time around.

Throw some light on the subject..

Rob — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 14:23:06 +0000

I’ve been gearing up to purchase myself a Speedlite for quite some time by reading a few reviews and getting some advice from others in the industy, so this week I shelled out for Canon’s 43EXII.

Preview at www.Dpreview.com CLICK HERE

Luckily I got in before the coming price rise and also managed to bargan a substantial discount from the salesman at the time too.

The “External” type flashes (as opposed to those that are built into the camera body) are far superior units, as they have a number of great features such as.
-The flash is physically further away from the lens, which eliminates the “Red-Eye” problems as seen with compact cameras and even the built-in flash on SLR’s
-The Speedlite has much greater lighting output power to cover a much larger area and distance, as well as giving you the ability to “bounce” the flash off a ceiling, wall or other reflector for a much more diffused and natural light.
-The speedlite is also able to be swiveled and tilted away from the subject to give much more “dynamic” looking images, as opposed to the flat and washed out images that are ususlly assosciated with flash photography.

Anyway, for further techincal info and techniques, I found this link the other day, which i found very interesting and helpful in understanding the basics of flash photography.

Flash Photography

She will heave her first serious outing this weekend, when i’m shooting a wedding for some friends of mine so i will be very intertested in the results that i achieve.
Watch this space for some sample shots from the wedding.

Rob Brooks Photography » Speedlite

First wedding shoot, pretty pleased

Throw some light on the subject..