My first wedding shoot
As many of you know, I am not into taking pictures of people other than my kids. I have never taken a fashion shot and likely never will. A lot of it is that I find these pictures very fake. I am just not a “look at me” kind of person and do not like others who are.
Still, events I find quite different. The pictures serve a higher purpose than just “look at me” and are a way for those in the picture to remember events for years later. Therefore, when asked I often bring my camera to these events. Still, I had never been asked to bring my camera to a wedding.
Recently, some friends of ours who were not able to hire a professional wedding photographer asked if I could take pictures. I obliged and tried to do the best job possible. In the process, I think some things worked well and some things not so well. Here are several of the shots (note: I did not do any post processing).
Of course, the biggest mistake in these shots is the white balance. In a number of shots the dress is a tinge of yellow – which most professional wedding photographers would cringe at. There are two things I should have done to improve this – use gels and shoot in RAW.
I almost always shoot in RAW, but for this occasion did not relish the time it would take to fix the white balance and convert them to jpeg. Given that I was doing this for free and do not intend to get into the wedding photography business, I decided to shoot in jpeg. The bride and groom did not notice the mistake and loved the pictures, so things worked out.
I did not do any posed shots before the wedding. I only took shots of the wedding process. Had I needed to shoot some poses things would have gotten dicier as I am not familiar with the standard poses.
In terms of lenses, I took almost everything I had – including a 24-70 2.8L that I borrowed from a friend. As I had only a single body (a Canon 5D Mark II), I figured out just before the wedding that realistically I could use only one lens. Therefore I chose to use my 70-200 4L IS – which turned out to be a good choice. The focal length was perfect as I had to remain behind a row of video cameras and I generally prefer the close in shots. As I am already very familiar with this lens, I worried about using a lens that I was not as familiar with.
To be honest, I put the 24-70 on the camera a few times and just did not find that focal length very useful. Perhaps in larger weddings where I need to get many people in the shot it would be more helpful, but unless I have a second body I do not see myself using it much. Before this wedding it was not on my list of lenses to buy, and it remained so after the wedding.
I kept the 5D Mark II in ISO 3200 during a good portion of the wedding. I also used a 580EX II on the camera with a small softbox diffuser on it. In general I am happy with the lighting. Several of the pictures are a bit on the darker side but it would not be hard to increase it. Because of this, I’m not sure I would use a 70-200/2.8 IS instead of the F4. The thing I love about the F4 is its portability and how light it is. The 2.8 is a much heavier lens and the image stabilization is not as good as in the F4. Also, I found F4 to be a good aperture for a good number of the shots – 2.8 would have been too thin in many situations.
Of course, if I had needed to shoot portraits before the wedding, my equipment would not have matched up very well. I do have remote triggers and two flashes, but I own only one umbrella. I also lack a good portraits lens such as the 85/1.2 or the 135/2. However, I have no plans to get into that business anyway.
Overall I think it was nice to get out of my comfort zone. The bride and groom were happy with the shots and I learned a bit for next time. Perhaps once I have Lightroom I will be more willing to use RAW in these occasions and I now have some filters for my flashes.
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Tags: experience, lens, lighting, photography, wedding