A few weekends ago I shot my first wedding. I had always said that I wasn't going to shoot weddings (at least until I had some experience assisting someone else), but that didn't stop my friend Jill. She insisted that it would be fine and that it was going to be a very laid-back wedding, so no extreme photography was needed. Finally, I agreed to shoot it. Although I walked away with some great experience and wonderful images, I also walked away with a lot more respect for wedding photographers.
I know that since it was my first wedding I was a little overwhelmed, but I was amazed at how quickly things happened! When you're sitting with the rest of the guests watching a wedding it all seems to go pretty smoothly (even a little slow at times). Let me tell you, when you're trying to capture the moments as they happen, things seem to move a lot faster! I almost missed certain moments when I was like, "Oh, flower girls! I'd better get a lot of pictures because they're so cute... click, click, click... hey, you're not a flower girl. You're a bridesmaid! Uh oh." I'm sure after a few weddings you get the flow down, but it probably doesn't get a lot easier, simply because every wedding is just a little different.
So what's this have to do with technology? Like I said at the beginning of this post, I've never wanted gear just because. Sometimes I see the gear that wedding photographers use and think to myself, "That seems like overkill. Do you really need $10,000 worth of gear to shoot a wedding?" After shooting my first wedding, I could confidently say that you might not need it, but it sure would help!
Let me start with the lenses. I use primes with the exception of my 12-24mm wide-angle. They're fast and they're sharp, but there were many times when I really could have used a different focal length but didn't have time to swap lenses. Additionally, they have to be fast zooms. You can't get a zoom as fast as my 135mm/f2, but I think I'd take a 70-200 f/2.8 at a wedding just for the ability to zoom. Same with my 50mm f/1.4... it's probably my favorite lens, and I'd still use it a lot at a wedding, but it would be nice to have a 24-70mm f/2.8 as well. Even my wide 12-24mm f/4 is nice, but the f/2.8 would sure be nicer so I don't get motion blur when people are dancing!
Now let's talk camera bodies. I shoot with a D90 and love it. I rarely get envious of other people's cameras because I know I can get amazing images with my D90 as long as I've got good glass on it. If I started shooting weddings on a regular basis, though, I'd definitely upgrade to a better body. The two big limitations I ran into were low-light autofocusing and ISO performance. With ISO, the D90 is pretty awesome, but I would have loved to have been able to crank it up and get another few stops of light during the reception (which, by the way, was outdoors in Estes Park and was only lit by strings of Christmas lights... probably the most challenging light I could have asked for). It would have also been nice to have a body that autofocuses better in low light. The D90 does a good job, but I found it hunting a little too often once it got completely dark and we were partying in the glow of Christmas lights. Of course, I could have switched to manual focus, but then a bigger viewfinder would have helped quite a bit.
As for all the other gear, I felt pretty good. My flash was great, spare batteries were helpful, lots of fast memory cards kept me shooting and my camera bag... well, there will be a post on that bad boy soon! As long as I keep shooting portraits, I think I'm doing pretty good on gear, but if I get into weddings the credit card will get quite a workout!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment