I'm interested in doing wedding photography. Does anyone use the M6TTL as their primary wedding camera; or is it better to go the SLR route? If you do use the M6 as your primary camera; do you buy another M as backup, or get an SLR for backup? thanks.......

-- Michael Estrella (mm071799@attcanada.ca), May 04, 2001

Answers

The one disadvantage is the slow loading, you need to be very aware of where you are on the film, to avoid needing a change at a crucial time. A Hexar RF woud make a good back up for this. The M6 for quiet, the Hexar for speed.

I have only done a few weddings, but they are one event where I really believe in a fast normal zoom, high sync speed and modern TTL (Canon or Nikon)

-- Mark Wrathall (wrathall@laudaair.com), May 04, 2001.

Though I haven't done a wedding myself for years, a friend of mine is one of the top wedding photographers in our area. She uses M6 as well as the Mamiya 7. Her style is unlike most wedding photography today in that even the formals have a very captivating, casual quality, and this has become her trademark. I see a niche developing in wedding photography, people who want a less formal, more documentary look to the event (yet with high quality). For this style shooting the rangefinder would be great.

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), May 04, 2001.

I dunno, if I were going to get seriious about wedding work, a 645 motor driven AF set-up seems like it would be tough to beat.

-- Dan Brown (brpatent@swbell.net), May 04, 2001.

Does anyone use the M6TTL as their primary wedding camera

First, let me get my bias out of the way: in my experience, a great percentage of wedding photographers are more into the business of it than the photography. You can be very successful with marginal work if you have excellent sales and interpersonal skills, and you can be very unsuccessful with superlative work if you don't ken the business aspects.

In my experience, many wedding photographers shoot weddings, and that's all. They're "photographers" because that's how they make their livelihood, but documenting their vacations can be done adequately with a point and shoot. "Good enough" is the standard, with regard to equipment and the imagery they capture, so you see a lot of wedding people out there shooting the wedding on a consumer- grade body, camera set on auto, 28-200 slow zoom lens, and flash mounted directly on the camera. Great work technically? No. Inspired images? Hell no. Good enough for a good salesman to please his clients? Undoubtably.

So, you see wedding photographers with ok consumer-grade camera equipment who don't see much reason for upgrading to an outrageously expensive manual camera. Then you've got those who use what everyone else uses. Twenty years ago every wedding guru seemed to be shooting with Hasselblad, so that was the norm. Now, the gurus are doing a lot of their work with 35mm Canon SLR's (see Reggie and Fong), and more are moving to all-digital for the cost savings, and wedding photographers everywhere are following suit. Where do the Leica M's fit in to this cycle? They don't.

That's not to say they shouldn't, though. I love the Leica's ability in low-light, and I've got a Hexar RF I'm dying to use for my next few weddings. I'll stick to the Hasselblad for flash photography, but the Hexar may very well replace my F5 for available-light work.

But I only think this will work if you can develop a client base that respects good work and will allow you to work however you want to (read: charge a lot for your work -- be an M6 + Tri-x + hand-printed work = $7,500+ per wedding kind of photographer). Your "average" wedding client is going to be upset when Uncle Harry has a fancy- looking SLR and you've got two puny little silent cameras that look like point and shoots. Will your images kick butt if you know what you're doing? Of course. Will the client care? Probably not, as your "average" wedding client doesn't know enough about photography to discern the difference. No flames please, I'm trying to be honest here.

There are clients who want excellent photography and are willing to pay for it, but they're a small part of the market. There are photographers who shoot to please themselves and demand the highest quality from their own results, but they are also a small part of the market (probably because they run themselves out of business, as do many artists who are short on business skills). If you're one of the latter and you can cater to the former, you'll do great.

If you can't, then you'll find yourself in a position where you're doing the best work in a 100-mile radius but your clients will spend 20 minutes looking over each photo to try and find something wrong with it to bargain for a "discount."

I think you can be successful shooting with Leica M's if you're a good photographer who can really understand your clients' needs, who caters to clients who care more about results than how you get them, and you've got a head for business.

I know that sounds kind of callous, but that's what I've seen. It's why so many excellent photographers are down on photographing weddings -- the majority of the market consists of cost-conscious consumers who want exactly what their best friend got when she got married, who won't tell you what they want and who will complain about excellent work if it doesn't meet their expectations. There's not much room for expression there, and the clients haven't seen enough photography to know what they like or don't like so it's treated like a commodity. You can do very well and find very rewarding work by catering to the corner of the market that appreciates good work and the vision that you can bring to the event -- if you can find them then you can do good work with your M's and really find a chance to grow as a photographer. If not...

- Derek Zeanah (who's shot a few weddings himself, and will go back to full-time as soon as his wife graduates)

-- Derek Zeanah (derek@zeanah.com), May 04, 2001.

I've done very, very little wedding work, all but one with Hasselblad, and the exception was with Nikon SLR, a disappointment. I think I could probably do the "wedding candids" with a Leica because I've got 30+ years experience using it. I wouldn't want to do the "formal shots" with it, I wouldn't want to do the table shots with 35mm (not enough face detail in big enlargements of little heads), and I wouldn't suggest anyone use a Leica for a paying job (or, for that matter, a once-in-a-lifetime holiday) without doing a lot of shooting and note-taking first, to get accustomed to its operation, particularly estimating how much more will appear on film than you saw in the framelines. 35mm for weddings, you don't want to be cropping a lot or the enlargments will not stand up to scrutiny against m-f.

-- Jay (infinitydt@aol.com), May 04, 2001.

I shot a lot of weddings in the 70's and 80's. I agree with every single thing Derek said above. I was one of the artistically good ones who didn't understand the business issues. My clients loved my work, but the bailiff eventually came and changed the locks on my studio :-(

I shot mostly with MF - first Mamiya TLRs then Hasselblads, but I was a PJ at heart and as the proportion of candid pictures I included grew, I tried some 35mm. It works fine for indoor candids, but IMO it has no role in shooting the formal poses or anything that may need enlarging to 16x20 like portraits or that great shot inside the church.

Back then film was a big limiter of enlargement size (imagine 35mm VPS enarged to 16x10). Today things are better, but you still sweat a lot less getting a good 16x20 out of a 6x6 or 6x7 neg than out of 35mm.

The other limitation I faced back then, and which would still apply to Leicas today, is sync speed. I shot most outdoor pictures of any sort with fill flash, and it really helps to be able to crank the shutter to 1/500 to stop motion when you're shooting people walking, and still get some flash on their faces.

I'm not a believer in shooting multi-format weddings, either. I like travelling light. When I was doing it, my kit consisted of two 'blad bodies, three 220 backs, an 80 and a 50 for lenses, a flash on a high bracket and a spare flash in the car. That is enough gear for one person to keep track of. Add a 35 to the mix and you spend time dithering over gear rather than planning the next shot. It's perfectly possible to shoot candids with an 80/2.8 - it just takes some practice.

That said, 35 has its place at specific times. During the ceremony, perhaps (wouldn't an R8 with a 180/2.0 APO-Summicron do some nice stuff?) and shooting pure candids during the reception. for that stuff I'd prefer an M6 or Hexar RF over any sort of SLR. For most of the wedding, a MF SLR or TLR with a leaf shutter is a better choice, IMNSHO.

-- Paul Chefurka (paul_chefurka@pmc-sierra.com), May 04, 2001.

I used to shoot weddings entirely in medium format. Then I would take the M6 along for black and whites. Then I started using the M6 for color candids and unobtrusive ceremony shots. When my reprint sales were greater on the stuff shot with the M6 than those shot on MF the M6 became my primary wedding camera. Now I use the M6 and an R8 for weddings. I would use M's exclusivley if they had a faster flash sync speed. Its hard to blur out a background on a sunny day and try to fill at 1\50th sec. I love using Leica's they are a joy to photograph with, and if I did not get pleasure out of my work, I'd do something else. I guess I am trying to say I would not approach wedding photography strictley as a money making business. There are far less stressful and profitable ways to make a living.

-- Steve Belden (otterpond@tds.net), May 04, 2001.

One thing that is on the side of 35mm for weddings is that, of late, people are not buying the big enlargements they used to. I deal daily with wedding photographers in business, and most of them say (and Kodaks recent paper sales confirm this), that they are selling fewer and few prints bigger than 11X14, and that album prints are the big seller (of course bearing in mind that sometimes this is regional). Face it, it's not often you walk into someones home and see a 20X24 of their wedding over the mantle - people now tend to hang 'real' ;-) art. In an earlier post I mentioned a friend of mine who shot almost exclusively with M and some on a Mamiya 7. In Edmonton (a city of close to 1,000,000) she is considered one of the top two or three wedding photographers, so their must be some merit in doing weddings in 35. As an aside she photographed our wedding, in 35, and I've never had anyone mention a lack of 'quality'. All to often, as also mentioned earlier the larger format is strictly marketing. Face it, the only person who will usually take you to task over a little grain is another photographer. The average wedding couple just want pleasing photographs to show their friends and family.

-- Bob Todrick (bobtodrick@yahoo.com), May 04, 2001.

Derek Zeneah's contribution say's all that I've ever thought about wedding photography, IMO his post is a credo for all commercial photography.. I too did weddings working for a studio, with the very formal, posed stiffness that people seemed to expect. Very quickly realised that that this was not the place for me, especially having gone to some 26 weddings one summer, and hardly knew the names of the bride & groom. If you're serious about wedding photography as an earner, I would suggest not even contemplating an M6 unless you have real a mastery of it, and still use at least an slr or better still medium format for any 'formal' shots. An M Leica will look plain silly on a tripod, compared to a big 'official' looking box like a mamiya or a 35slr, it's all part of the act' ;-) I'm pleased that the'documentary approach is catching on well here in the UK as well; Ideal territory for the Leica, or indeed a plain flashless SLR.

-- Alastair Cowe (a.cowe@ucl.ac.uk), May 04, 2001.

i shot a wedding with a Nikon F100 and 80-200 zoom and also 35-70 zoom. I think I would be scared to try to cover everything with just my M6ttl. Being able to zoom way in from afar and do it quickly, enabled me to get shots I wouldn't have been able to get otherwise such as this one:

http://www.tristantom.com/photo/recent/pages/zcoupleweb_jpg.h tm

All in all, the M6 would be ideal for candids at the reception, etc..

-- tristan tom (tristan@tristantom.com), May 17, 2001.

The short answer to your question is that the Leica M6 as a primary camera for weddings is simply inappropriate and not a good choice, for all the reasons mentioned earlier. However, it is the ideal complement when used in conjunction with a SLR or medium format as the primary camera. An M6 with 35mm or 50mm lens and loaded with high speed B & W film (I often use Kodak TMAX 3200 rated @ 1600) is the prefect choice, when used to capture candids during the wedding, especially when you want to be unobtrusive and go unnoticed as much as possible. I would not recommend it as your only camera or primary camera for wedding photography, for the reasons mentioned above, by some of the other contributors, but used as a secondary camera, as I said, it is a good choice. I also suggest you develop some level of experience using the M6 before taking on a wedding. Good luck.

-- Alan curson (acurson@bellsouth.net), July 04, 2001.

Hello, Michael my name is Carolina and i believe even do a haven't seen a picture of you on this message i think i know who you are. I am from NY. I saw you in the anual Marathon here in NY. This must have been some time ago. You took a picture of me. If you can't remember me I am Spanish. I have dark hair, light eyes, and light skin. If your number use to be 310-282-1580 you are the person i am thinking you are. Plus it will be too much of a coincidence that your name is Michael Estrella and that you are also a photographer. E-mail me as soon as you get this message. I am going to flip i by coincidence i stumbled upon you on the internet.

-- Carolina Dali (CarolinaDali@hotmail.com), July 19, 2001.

Hello, Michael my name is Carolina and i believe even do a haven't seen a picture of you on this message i think i know who you are. I am from NY. I saw you in the anual Marathon here in NY. This must have been some time ago. You took a picture of me. If you can't remember me I am Spanish. I have dark hair, light eyes, and light skin. If your number use to be 310-282-1580 you are the person i am thinking you are. Plus it will be too much of a coincidence that your name is Michael Estrella and that you are also a photographer. E-mail me as soon as you get this message. I am going to flip i by coincidence i stumbled upon you on the internet.My e-mail address is CarolinaDali@hotmail.com.

-- Carolina Dali (CarolinaDali@hotmail.com), July 19, 2001.

I have been shooting several weddings each summer for many years. The key to great wedding shots is flash fill. Everyone wants the various family members lined up with the Bride and Groom in a lush garden. You need that 1/250 flash sync to fill in the shadows. Fuji Reala will give you a great 11X14, and most people don't even want more than 4X6. As a result, tight head shots are welcomed. I'm shooting with an F100, a 28-105 zoom, a 70-300 zoom, and an SB-28 on a bracket. I might do a couple of shots with the 20, just to set the scene. The quick framing with the zoom and the flash fill are a wonderful combo. I take my Leicas to weddings, and sometimes shoot a backup roll with them, but the SLRs just deliver what people want. The big rig of SLR, flash and bracket, also conveys a bit of authority, and seems to assist in crowd control ("okay, let's have the groomsmen by the fountain!) In contrast, I took some pictures at a memorial service for an aunt last Spring. I moved very discreetly with my Leicas, capturing some poignant images, and felt I was hardly noticed. Bottom line: I don't think the M's are good "official photographer" wedding cameras. But when I'm just a guest, I love to slink around with an M and get some great candids.

-- Phil Stiles (stiles@metrocast.net), August 17, 2001.