Wedding questions

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I have posted here before and you all have been extremely helpful. I am hoping that you can help me again. I was just asked by a close friend if I could photograph his wedding. It is in one week and I don't have much time to prepare. I have an Elan 7e and a 28-90 lens. I am also hoping to get a Canon 420EX Speedlight before than. Any suggestions or links on this subject would be most appreciated. P.S. Is Portra a good choice for indoor weddings?

-- shadowman (mshadow818@msn.com), February 03, 2002

Answers

The usual advice is, "Don't do it." Or, "If you value your friendship, don't do it." Or if you secretly hate him, "Go ahead & have fun with it." There's a lot of things you need to know and some equipment that you will want to purchase first. You could go to photo.net and do a search of their archives for lots of good advice & some not so good advice mixed in with it, just to keep you on your toes.

First thing is the 420EX is marginal in power at best. I'd get a 550EX, or if money is an issue at all, get the Sigma EF-500 Super. It's a 550EX clone with nearly as much power & faster recycles. You will want those faster recycles. I did a small wedding last night with one & it does alright.

Speaking of fast recycles, get a set of NiMH AA batteries with a charger. They will do full power recycles of the Sigma in less than four seconds. The Canon 550EX is nearly 2 seconds slower. This can be important. One set will probably last the entire wedding and reception, but either get a second set or four lithium AA's as backup. The poor man's option would be to just use the lithiums, but they won't be nearly as fast. Do not use AA Alkalines. After 10-20 pops you will be dying a slow death waiting for the red light to come on.

You will also need a flash bracket that can keep the flash over the top of the lens even when you use the camera in the portrait position. (Make sure you use the portrtait position a lot in weddings.) A Stroboframe Quick Flip is probably your cheapest option. Then you will need a Canon Off Camera Shoe Cord 2 to make it work.

After this you will want a fast prime lens or two. A 35 f/2 and an 85 f/1.8 is a good combo for weddings but for the cheap route a 50 f/1.8 will do in a pinch.

The Elan 7e is a nice camera but it doesn't focus very good in low light so pray they keep the lights up bright.

Borrow someone else's camera, lens & flash for a backup.

Portra 400 is okay, but I prefer Fuji NPH down rated to 320 ISO. Don't use slower film since you don't have the lenses or flash for it. In fact, get some Fuji NPZ (or the older NHG II) and down rate it to 650I ISO for some non-flash stuff during the ceremony.

There is lots of other advice to heed as well, but that's most of the basic stuff.

-- Jim Strutz (j.strutz@gci.net), February 03, 2002.


The usual advice is, "Don't do it." Or, "If you value your friendship, don't do it." Or if you secretly hate him, "Go ahead & have fun with it." What's this supposed to mean?

-- Jeff Nakayama (moonduck22@hotmail.com), February 04, 2002.

Hi Jim

Why are you discouraging him? You know why beginners like me come here in this forum? Just to hear from pros and have a good confidence in doing things in the right way. If he has to stop doing it now, then how long he has to wait? I think we can learn better only by doing mistakes. I understand taking risk and doing a mistake to learn from it at the cost of someone's life changing moment is dangerous. Instead it is a better idea to ask his friend to arrange for a pro for covering his wedding and he can do his work parallely to learn himself.

John

-- John Peter (eosquestions@yahoo.com), February 04, 2002.


I don't think it's unreasonable for Jim to suggest that shooting a friend's wedding is risky business. People have all kinds of weird and bizarre expectations and emotional demands about weddings. So many people have these intense fairybook delusions and want everything to fit some fantasy dream of what a wedding should be.

Professional photographers know how to cater to this and good wedding photographers are able to convey some of that fantasy. If you as an amateur go into a friend's wedding as photographer of record and end up with less than fantasy photos - either because of mistakes, because of poor equipment or most likely because of less experience - your friend may become extremely upset. Families have broken up over this sort of nonsense. And weddings are one-offs. You can't go back and reshoot.

For this reason the standard advice here and on photo.net regarding doing a friend's wedding if you're a beginner is simply don't do it.

Now, it's a great place to practice if you're doing your own thing and there's a pro photographer there as well. (assuming you don't get into the pro's way of course!) But you could seriously risk your friendship if the wedding photos turn out to be disappointing and you're the photographer of record.

People get hugely emotional over weddings. Don't discount this.

-- NK Guy (tela@tela.bc.ca), February 04, 2002.


Hi! I would welcome the challenge to photograph a friend's wedding even if I am coming out from the cold. (Incidentally, I am not coming from the cold as I partly make a living out of shooting weddings.) I guess a good and safe middle ground for people like you would be to suggest to your friend that a pro be present to act as primary photog while you act as a secondary. Just get the permission from the pro (who is being paid anyway to shoot the wedding) regarding where you can help him out. Geez, even the best pro cannot be at two places in the wedding venue at the same time.

A good advantage to this is your knowing your friend and presumably his family. Armed with such knowledge, you can get good candid shots which will more completely tell the story of the wedding.

If you would rather have even more practice before your friend's wedding, why not find a pro (preferably the one who will be shooting the wedding of your friend) willing to take you on one or more weddings to familiarize yourself with the ins and outs of the trade. I may not know your friend but his asking you to shoot his wedding for him is very big praise indeed and deserving of complete preparation as you can give. He most likely also asked you because he's seen your stuff and likes it.

Hey, I was best man in my best friend's wedding and I still shot photos even if there was another pro being paid to shoot. My friend and his wife eventually chose more photos that I took than the other pro's to put in their album. Take note, however, that I took some years to get to a certain level of competency.

On the side of equipment, it is necessary to know your stuff even with your eyes closed. I used to work with a Canon new F1 and I could handle that literally with my eyes closed. It really helps.

I think it's fiddle-faddle to say the 420EX is underpowered. Hogwash. How far are you gonna be anyway? Only amateurs stay too far away. Pros know when to come close. The 28-90 is not a bad lens but you may want to use a better one like the 28-105, 24-85 (better, I think) or even the 28-135 IS. Since it may be your first few weddings we're talking about here, you may have the shakes and the IS will come in handy.

Most importantly, have a plan ready. Meet with your friend/client for a pre-production meeting. Know what will happen in general at least so that you don't get there guessing. It's an important event and the only way to mess it up is for you to be brash, inconsiderate and totally clueless. If you're smart, you may end up liking it and start shooting more weddings and making the life of those getting married truly memorable.

-- Erick Lirios (ericklirios@operamail.com), February 04, 2002.



Hey, let me jump in to my own defense. :~))

First of all, I really do consider the 420EX to be weak for weddings. It has a real ISO 100, GN of about 100 feet or less in a large room. Since shooting at f/8 is fairly standard for weddings to get adequate DOF, the 420EX will get you only to about 20 feet with ISO 320 film. Most of the time, that's fine, but there are certainly times in most weddings where that simply isn't far enough.

Also, I didn't discourage anyone from doing weddings. I was just quoting the standard advice. Which I think is pretty good advice, by the way. Too many friendships have been messed up by agreeing to photograph a wedding when you don't have adequate experience or equipment. Pros with all the right stuff and years of doing it still make errors at times and reshooting a wedding isn't usually an option. But if Shadowman want's to go ahead with it and thinks he's up to it, I think I gave him some good, basic, minimalist instructions.

I started the same way with people that didn't expect much, and who were not able to pay for anything. I did a lot of reading, practicing, and buying to make it work. The first several times wern't worth what they didn't pay me either.

-- Jim Strutz (j.strutz@gci.net), February 04, 2002.


Thanks for all the advice, I really appreciate all the tips. You'll probably hear a lot more of me in the coming weeks.

-- shadowman (mshadow818@msn.com), February 04, 2002.

The 550 EX has infra-red focus assist, which supercedes the white flashing light on your Elan--so the camera will focus fine in low light with that flash. I don't know the specs on the 420. Infra-red assist is a great feature and well worth having.

-- Preston Merchant (merchant@speakeasy.org), February 06, 2002.

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