[blicky_1]

Hi all,

I have only just entered into the world of DSLR cameras purchasing a Nikkon D70s Kit a few months ago and about to do my first wedding shoot in two weeks time (my own!!)

I am still learning the camera and in the early stages of knowing what all the functions can do.

The wedding is only on a small scale with 20ish people at a registry office and then onto a nice old pub for a sit down dinner.

A mate is going to do the shots where I need to be in them but I will set up the shot! I have a tripod and looking at taking some nice shots in the grounds of the pub as it has lovely gardens (Not as nice in November as the summer I know!)

Also we are going to Paris for a long weekend afterwards so looking forward to some good shots there especially at night (have been playing with night shots and had some good test results so far on manual settings)

Question is do I just shoot all the wedding in auto (auto seems to be very good and others have made comments on here not to be afraid to shoot in auto) shots will be a mixture of indoor/outdoor but as I am still learning the camera and don't want to mess this shoot up!!

Also should I shoot RAW so that these can be edited if required, some shots will be converted to B&W..I have 2x 1GB CF cards so space should be OK.

Any other advice with this would also be appreciated before I attempt it

Wish me luck!!

[barongreenback]

Good luck!

Right, pleasantries aside, please take this advice from a married man. Do not take your own wedding photographs. Ever. Your wife to be will not forgive you for farting about with a camera that you've barely used before and don't really understand. Weddings are damned difficult no matter what the scale and this is why professionals get paid a grand or more to do a decent job.

If you are determined to go ahead then you will probably need to look at getting a fast lens (f/2.8 or better) and/or a decent flashgun. Pubs are dark despite the human eye making the light seem perfectly acceptable. Other than that, practise as much as you can. Auto mode is ok but creatively it probably won't give you the best results.

I would heartily recommend though that you take the first advice though!!!

[Radiohead]

Originally Posted by barongreenback

Good luck!

Right, pleasantries aside, please take this advice from a married man. Do not take your own wedding photographs. Ever. Your wife to be will not forgive you for farting about with a camera that you've barely used before and don't really understand. Weddings are damned difficult no matter what the scale and this is why professionals get paid a grand or more to do a decent job.

If you are determined to go ahead then you will probably need to look at getting a fast lens (f/2.8 or better) and/or a decent flashgun. Pubs are dark despite the human eye making the light seem perfectly acceptable. Other than that, practise as much as you can. Auto mode is ok but creatively it probably won't give you the best results.

I would heartily recommend though that you take the first advice though!!!

I agree with that. I do weddings and they're a full-time job on the day, no way on earth would I have done my own.

[craigizmo2k2]

Things like this seem like a good idea when planning - I planned to DJ at my own 18th and when you imagine the scene it seems great, but when you have someone offer to do the service for you, you think about the actual event and realise it's so much better when you have a professional doing your own event.

Please - hire a proper professional to shoot your wedding - the day is for you to enjoy, not faff around setting up shots that you are in.

You'll thank us after the actual day - trust me.

[blicky_1]

Thanks for the advice guys I thought the replies would be along those lines.....but please bear with me....

We are only after some photos of the small event and do not expect professional results and are not after the 'traditional' family wedding shots, 2 other people in the party also have DSLR cameras and will also be shooting away so we should be able to pick out some good shots.

I agree with you guys that the 'pro' route would be best but it's not that type/size of wedding as it's our second time around so any further advice would be welcome.......

[Radiohead]

OK - the single biggest difference you could make is to avoid flash where possible (assuming you don't have a Speedlite and therefore can't bounce) would be to get a fast prime like the 50mm f1.8 for £80 or so. Even an f2.8 isn't fast enough IMO for handhelds in low light. Bump up the ISO to 400 or 800 but be wary of 1600 with the D70. Stick on on AP mode and play use a nice shallow DOF to throw the background out.

I'm in Basingstoke - where are you?

[blicky_1]

Originally Posted by Radiohead

OK - the single biggest difference you could make is to avoid flash where possible (assuming you don't have a Speedlite and therefore can't bounce) would be to get a fast prime like the 50mm f1.8 for £80 or so. Even an f2.8 isn't fast enough IMO for handhelds in low light. Bump up the ISO to 400 or 800 but be wary of 1600 with the D70. Stick on on AP mode and play use a nice shallow DOF to throw the background out.

I'm in Basingstoke - where are you?

Thanks Radiohead I appreciate that people will think i'm mad or just being stupid with this even reading my own posts It makes me sound like an idiot!

Yours is just the sort of advice i'm after as I know dark places are always hard to get good results, i will have a play with those settings and have a look around for a lens. Do you have any links of what lens you refer to or any recommendations of shops??

Btw I'm in Andover.....

[lmccauley]

Originally Posted by blicky_1

Do you have any links of what lens you refer to or any recommendations of shops??

£70 here http://www.onestop-digital.com/catal...45d2721d95d726

Out of stock at the moment, unfortunately.

Cheers,
Liam

[blicky_1]

Would it be worth me also picking up a cheap flashgun like one of these http://www.jessops.com/Store/s35588/...s.aspx?&comp=y as if it makes that much difference the £100 would be better than nothing/standard flash???

[Radiohead]

Originally Posted by blicky_1

Thanks Radiohead I appreciate that people will think i'm mad or just being stupid with this even reading my own posts It makes me sound like an idiot!

Yours is just the sort of advice i'm after as I know dark places are always hard to get good results, i will have a play with those settings and have a look around for a lens. Do you have any links of what lens you refer to or any recommendations of shops??

Btw I'm in Andover.....

I'd rent a Speedlight - give Peter at Surrey Photography a ring. His hire list is here:

http://www.surreyphotography.co.uk/N...ist%20Page.htm

Microglobe have the 50/1.8 for £79

http://www.microglobe.co.uk/catalog/...m-f18d-af-lens

Cheapest in the UK according to:

http://www.camerapricebuster.co.uk/prod132.html

I worked in Andover until April this year. If I still had any Nikon kit you could borrow it but I'm all Canon now.

[senu]

Seriously, going over old ground.

I covered my nephews wedding with a Camcorder ( HDV Sony) and DSLR Camera ( Canon 30D) just over a month ago. To my eyes I did a poor job because I was also meant to be an Uncle , father, husband on the Day, not the photographer or video man.

It was incredibly difficult and looking at the results Ive know I could have done much better.

Without prejudice to the good advice to get a cheap fast lens and flash gun ( which are spot on given the venue you describe,)
I honestly think you should concentrate on being the Bridegroom full time , on the day and get a reasonably competent friend to do the shots: if you must set them up let that be all beforehand
The risk of early marital tension and real possibility of poor photography due to roaming attention and rapidly changing focus ( pun intended) ( not to mention frowning bride) are real despite having the right equipment and skill

Good luck and Do have a nice day in 2 weeks.
Youll get all your practice in Paris and wifey will probably be more amenable

[tdodd]

Originally Posted by blicky_1

Hi all,

I have only just entered into the world of DSLR cameras purchasing a Nikkon D70s Kit a few months ago and about to do my first wedding shoot in two weeks time (my own!!)

I am still learning the camera and in the early stages of knowing what all the functions can do.

The wedding is only on a small scale with 20ish people at a registry office and then onto a nice old pub for a sit down dinner.

snip

Have a look at the thread I started on the same topic about a month ago - Amateur wedding photos - how to meter?.

The last post in the thread links to the results of my efforts.

Key lessons/advice (but note I've only done one wedding so accept that my experience is limited) :

- It is a tough job to be a guest and "the" photographer. To be the groom and "the" photographer is pushing things too far.

- Shoot in RAW. My photos were very poor out of the camera but raw let me get away with murder and still end up with results that have delighted the B&G....after many days editing! It was a breeze to correct colour balance errors and to compensate for some quite serious exposure errors, once I'd learned my raw software.

- If possible shoot in manual exposure mode... Fire off some test shots, check your histogram, make sure you don't blow the highlights in the dress or white shirts. That way you will get consistent exposures regardless of whether you are pointing at the dress, a face, a black tux or a backlit scene. My mistake was to shoot in Av priority and the metering went all over the place as I zoomed or pointed at different subjects under the same lighting conditions.

- While you're setting up your manual exposure it would be a good time to set manual white balance as this will save you time in editing later.

- Indoors you need high ISO (I used 800) as well as a good (bounce) flash. Watch your shutter speed (under your control in manual mode) as many of my shots were ruined by motion blur in the subject when I shot in aperture priority and the shutter speed went way too low. Even though I used an IS lens there was too much subject movement. Do not let Tv go slower than 1/60th.

- If you do shoot in manual mode (and I really do recommend it) for God's sake remember to check your metering and adjust as you change scene/venue from indoors/outdoors and back again etc..

- A fast lens will be a big help but think about depth of field control. I shot everything indoors at f5.6 and that was kind of OK for most stuff. A wider aperture would have helped with my dodgy shutter speeds but sometimes I was shooting at angles that could have used a little more DOF. f5.6 was a good compromise though, to keep things simple. Oh yeah,..... I chose f5.6 because I intended to shoot in manual mode and did not want my aperture changing as I zoomed from wide (f4) to full tele (f5.6), which I though was clever. Then in a panic I bottled it and switched to Av priority which caused me so much grief, although f5.6 was a good choice.

- Culling - When you come to review the photos spend a bit of time to weed out the dodgy ones and put them to one side. I spent far too long trying to tidy up photos that quite honestly I just didn't need. Of 622 shots taken by me and 94 by my girlfriend 160 ended up in the bin. But initially I only binned about 20 and so wasted a lot of time tweaking 140 duffers only to decide later that they were beyond help and simply not required anyway.

- Framing - I like to fill the frame with my subject but in the "frenzy" of trying to capture great shots I found that sometimes I was zoomed in just a bit too tight. It's far better to stay a little wider and then crop in software than to throw a picture away because you've cut off something important.

- Shoot straight - With a tripod you shouldn't have much trouble here but I found that a lot of my photos were a little wonky. Not by much but enough to benefit from straightening in software. This was the bit that really slowed down my workflow because I had to swap software packages from my raw editor to something to straighten jpeg files. It also meant a miniscule quality loss, and delays, as I had to convert the raws to jpeg and then edit the jpegs. Straightening also slowed down my whole workflow because I did not have a good process flow in place (I'm new to raw) and I kept repeating steps over and over as I decided to go back and fix something (WB or EV) earlier in the workflow and then had to re-process all over again. I'm just glad that with bounce flash I did not have to worry about red-eye once (except when dealing with my girlfriend's photos from her little P&S camera).

My biggest problem on the day was definitely caused by the slow shutter speeds, due to the way the Canon system operates with flash in Av mode. Basically the camera sets the exposure for the available light and just uses the flash for fill-in. This gave me the very slow shutter speeds indoors that spoiled a number of shots. If I'd set Tv to 1/60 in manual mode the camera would simply have used more flash power to compensate. If I'd used "Program" mode my results would have been much better and an easy cop out but manual is what I should have used. Even though I read all the manuals and knew how Av/flash worked on the day my brain went into a tiz and I cocked it all up. Nikon exposure in Av mode may be different to Canon but I got badly tripped up by my own stupidity/forgetfulness/panic.

My biggest problem after the day was that the photos all needed work to fix them up after my exposure misfortunes and failure to even attempt to set WB manually. That wouldn't have been too bad except I was learning my raw software as I went and missed several tricks there to speed things up. And to cap it all, because I didn't get things right as I went along I had to keep revisiting the same photos and reprocessing them over and over again.

So to sum up, here's what I did or wish I'd done (using Canon's DPP raw software and Picasa for straightening)....

- When taking the photos
===================
- Shoot in raw
- Use manual exposure (pick ISO to suit conditions)
- Use manual white balance on grey/white card
- Use bounced flash
- Check your histogram and look for blown highlights
- Don't crop too tight when composing the photos
- Keep your vertical lines vertical! Use the centre of the frame for alignment, not one or other of the edges

- When editing the photos
====================
- Cull the duffers (blurred, soft, boring, unsalvageable exposure error) before moving on
- Correct WB (if necessary) in your raw software. Do this for each series of photos as a whole rather than individually as I first did.
- Correct exposure (if necessary) in your raw software. Do this for each series of photos as a whole rather than individually as I first did.
- If there is a need to crop but not straighten then do that in your raw editor.
- Produce jpegs from all the raw photos you are keeping.
- For those photos that need straightening (and possibly cropping after straightening or red-eye reduction) do that now.

If you want to ask any more questions please feel free.

[MattTheBeanster]

Originally Posted by tdodd

due to the way the Canon system operates with flash in Av mode.

Don't know if you know this but you can change this in the custom functions unser "03: Flash sync speed in Av mode".

[Radiohead]

That only applies to setting the max sync speed to, say 1/200s, or allowing it higher to use it for fill flash.

It wouldn't have helped in tdodd's case.

[tdodd]

Thanks for the tip. I was aware of the custom function but on the 30D it forces a synch speed of 1/250. Given the conditions the camera wanted between 1/10-1/60 so 1/250 would be asking an awful lot from the flash gun, especially when bounced!

[MattTheBeanster]

knew there'd be a negative to using it. will keep learning

[salubrious_k]

@tdodd

That was a very interesting read. Thank you!

One thing though, when you recommend using Manual mode, are you meaning to recommend this with flash or without flash? I'm worried that your recommendation is to use that mode with flash, when I think blicky_1 doesn't have a flash.

To reinforce that point though, I recently shot a wedding (my first, although not my own!) and for the first hour I used Av and then swapped to Manual. I wish I'd had it on Manual from the beginning. Though of course, this was flash photography.

[tdodd]

I meant you should use manual mode to expose for the whole scene, including ambient and background lighting and to let flash sort out the foreground exposure by using automatic flash settings. With the right flash gun you can dial in flash exposure compensation, if you need to, so you can easily balance background and foreground lighting while retaining the convenience of some automation.

Note that for me this is all theory as I never got the chance to put manual exposure into practice for the wedding that I shot. I picked up a lot of good theory from http://www.planetneil.com/faq/flash-techniques.html and the rest of Neil's website, and by studying my camera and flash manuals hard. I just wish I'd tried manual exposure from the outset rather than not at all.

To shoot a wedding indoors without flash is simply not going to be possible unless you have a fast lens and high ISO. Remember my camera wanted as slow as 1/10th second at f5.6 and ISO 800. To get 1/20th would need f4.0. To get 1/40th would require f2.8 and to get 1/80th would require f2.0 at ISO 800. I don't think you can risk pushing the ISO above 800 on the Nikon due to noise so you're really talking about needing an f2.0 lens and there aren't many (any) consumer zoom lenses that manage that throughout the zoom range!

[tdodd]

@ Blicky.....

Further thoughts, having read your first post again.....

It's good to see that you have some experience with manual exposure, raw and night shooting (flash control/balance) as all these things will benefit you for wedding photography. If you can get to the venues to have a shufty round and maybe practice some test shots that would stand you in good stead for the day. When I shot the wedding I did the venue was 150 miles away and I had no chance to check it out and practice beforehand.

I also note you only have 2*1GB flash cards. Shooting in raw should get you about 160 shots per card. That may well be enough for your needs but I took 622 shots at "my" wedding and used ~4.5GB.

The other thing to check on is batteries. I finished off a set of AAs in my flash gun by the end of the service (having shot at the house in the morning) and needed a second full set to finish the day. The camera battery had plenty of juice but the flash was thirsty for more.

Given all that I and others have said, are you sure you want to try to be the groom and the photographer? I really think you need to outsource one or other of the roles.

[senu]

Originally Posted by tdodd

@ Blicky.....

Further thoughts, having read your first post again.....

It's good to see that you have some experience with manual exposure, raw and night shooting (flash control/balance) as all these things will benefit you for wedding photography....

I also note you only have 2*1GB flash cards. Shooting in raw should get you about 160 shots per card. That may well be enough for your needs but I took 622 shots at "my" wedding and used ~4.5GB.

The other thing to check on is batteries.

Given all that I and others have said, are you sure you want to try to be the groom and the photographer? I really think you need to outsource one or other of the roles.

Theres really only one you can outsource....else your future wife will k**l you
All the Best

[blicky_1]

Many thanks for all the replies guys, I think I pick up a flash today that can do bounce and have a play around with it.....

[blicky_1]

Hi guys, ordered the 50mm f1.8 lens from Jessops yesterday, £119 in shop but once I showed them your link for £79 they price matched!! Should be with me mid-week coming from their Scotland store.

Still looking for a flashgun as the cheap ones did not look all that but the Nikon SB600 can be had for around £150 new looking around on the net so I guess this would be the better one to get??

EDIT: Now also ordered the SB600 for £150!

Does any of your earlier advice change now I have the lens and flash guys or am I still looking at upping the ISO indoors?? also whats the best lens for outside (bearing in mind I only have a stock lens and the 50mm? (and also not to forget to turn down the ISO!!)

I am going to the venue later on this week (when the kit turns up and I have had a play with it) when they are closed to fire off a few test shots to get an idea of what it will look like, I will try and take my daughter along to test it on!! I will also shoot some shots of the garden as this is where we want to take the 'main' pictures.

Hopefully I will be able to add a couple of shots to this thread to see what you guys think.....

Thanks again for all the help so far guys!!

[Radiohead]

To give you an idea of how challenging a wedding can be at this time of year, I shot one yesterday in London and needed ISO1600 on a 5D even using f1.2 and f1.4 lenses. I had the aperture around f2 and even then was struggling to get shutter speeds over 1/50s-1/100s. Not ideal at all and I was using flash bounced where possible to get some more light.

[tdodd]

Just to add to my earlier points, the B&G came to stay with us for a couple of days this week and we talked about the photos I took. Of 622 photos I took and a further 94 by my girlfriend, I dumped 163 of them and the B&G got to see the rest. They love them all and are going to put them all on a DVD to watch. They aren't bothered by minor technical imperfections. What they love is that I captured people being themselves and their expressions of fun and happiness. The photos will provide them with far more happy memories of the day than a traditional posed shoot by a "pro" would have. Their friends are equally impressed too.

So I guess the moral there is not to get hung up on technical perfection (although it's nice to have) but think more about capturing the important memories of the day. It is, after all, a wedding and not a photo shoot.

[salubrious_k]

Good work! Sounds like a real success!

LOL I'm getting a bit nervous now, I have a friend's wedding to shoot tomorrow (although it's my second one now so I know a bit more about what to do).

[tdodd]

More news - I've been having another look at Photoshop CS2 and have discovered that in the CS2 version there is a crop and straighten tool built in to the camera raw processor. It also has a fairly nifty, but not always perfect, automatic enhancement to adjust exposure, temperature, contrast etc and sliders to easily override the automatic settings.

By using Adobe Bridge, which is part of CS2, you can batch edit many photos at a time with camera raw and there is no need to go anywhere near Photoshop. Once your photos are tweaked there is a batch processor to convert all the raw files to jpegs or whatever other format you wish.

Last night I revisited 90 of the photos from the wedding that had previously taken me countless hours to correct and got them all tweaked in about 90 minutes. That includes the cropping and straightening. So there was no break in my workflow and no intermediate file stages. I guess in all there was a tenfold saving in time over my previous efforts, partly through lessons learned and new experience but also because of the head start the automation tool gave me and the integration of all the tools I need in a single product.

I'm going to explore this more and compare the results from the original workflow (wih Canon DPP and Picasa) and the new one with Adobe Bridge and Adobe Camera Raw. At the moment I have high hopes that this new workflow will make things massively quicker in the future.

I've also just got myself a 40" 1080p LCD TV and I'm now using that as my monitor for editing as it will be the device I use for viewing my photos in the future. Boy, what a difference in colour and clarity compared to my little old laptop screen! It now means that when editing it really is a case of WYSIWYG. Previously I found that by trying to create the illusion of vibrance on my laptop I was getting some rather gaudy results on my old CRT TV. Now, with the calibrated TV monitor, I no longer have to battle to create punchy and/or natural looking photos. The clarity was there all the time, but masked by my ageing laptop screen and ageing 32" CRT TV.

There's a brief movie introducing some of the features of ACR with Bridge here - http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/ph...scs2ttL04.html

[blicky_1]

Well guys it all went as planned ish!! many thanks for all of your advice we are happy with the results so far, bit of editing to do but very pleased.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/blicky/sets/

All posted shots are virtually unedited apart from a bit of cropping and most blurred shots taken out.

Wedding Set: -
Nikon D70s - 50mm F1.8 Lens - SB600 Flashgun (indoors) - ISO 200 (outside) ISO 800 (inside) - AP mode - Mixture of Jpeg & Raw shots taken.

Honeymoon: - -
Nikon D70s - Kit Lens 18-70mm ISO(as above) - Auto/Man mode - Mixture of Jpeg & Raw shots taken.


I can now see what you guys were talking about with the light levels in the pub as it has turned too yellow/orange on some shots, also the 'family pictures' are a bit adrift as it was cloudy/dark.

Please bear in mind this is almost all the shots taken on Flickr for the family to view (as some live some distance away) but please let me know what you all think with the all important 'constructive criticism' (I know it's not a pro shootbut that's not what we wanted)

I have lots more shots from Paris but did not load all as there is around 500+

Cheers again all who gave advice..

Steve

[Radiohead]

Not a bad effort considering the location. Some of the framing is a little off so pay more consideration to what you're seeing around the subject in the viewfinder. There are some formals where arms are cut off, for instance.

Were you bouncing flash inside? You're as low as 1/15s in some, and the motion blur shows. I'd have been bouncing here to stop motion. WB is a little off indoors (as I'd expect with that sort of tungsten source) - if you shot those in RAW then that's no issue but could do with sorting. I'd also consider converting some og the indoor ones to mono to hide some of the colour casts and add some atmosphere.

Some of the outdoor shots look like they were a bit flash-hot or over-exposed, so watch the histogram and consider running some -EV flash comp.

I'll have a look at the honeymoon shots later on.

Winter weddings are tough though, so you did well considering.

[tdodd]

Hi Blicky. Welcome back and thanks for sharing

I think by and large I'd go along with Radiohead's comments but I'm a bit more concerned about the colour balance on many of the outdoor shots. There seems to be quite a strong blue tinge to many - you can see it in the men's shirts and the bride's outfit. I can't believe everyone was wearing blue. It looks like the camera was set for tungsten light and left that way by accident for the outdoor shots and yet that can't be right because the first several photos outside the registry office look OK. I see the colour cast from photo DSC_0892 onwards and appears to affect all the photos until you get back indoors. Maybe I'm mistaken and that's how things were but to me that is the impression. As Radiohead said, if you shot these in raw then correcting them should be easy without detriment to the photo quality.

The other thing I would say, having sifted through 714 photos over and over again from my wedding photo efforts six weeks ago, is that I think you should try to reduce the number of photos on display for all to see. There are several photos which are near identical in composition and if you could pick the best one or two from each "set" that would help maintain the attention and interest and enjoyment more. I appreciate they are probably all important to you but I think you will do yourself more credit by picking out the best of each rather than letting everyone trawl through them all. Having said that, my bride and groom wanted all 554 photos that didn't end up in the bin.

Anyway, well done and good luck for the future

[blicky_1]

Originally Posted by Radiohead

Were you bouncing flash inside?

Some of the outdoor shots look like they were a bit flash-hot or over-exposed, so watch the histogram and consider running some -EV flash comp.

Many thanks for the reply, yes we were bouncing flash inside.

No flash outside but they are a bit over exposed, something to play with I guess.