I will be shooting a wedding for the first time in Oct. for a friend. The Ceremony is outside and I feel ok about that. The reception is indoors at night, and I am concerened about the lighting and what approach I need to take. I am trying to get into the place before hand but might not be able to at night. Advice for taking good photos of Dance? Cake? toast? lens? Flash?
You might have to bump up your iso accordingly and perhaps use a tripod or monopod. How high you go might depend on the quality of camera you are using. Some use of slow shutter speed would be nice in my opinion but you might want to get some sharp sharps which means you will need an adequate shutter speed, say 1/60 sec or faster.
A flash with a diffuser should also come in handy.
Slow shutter speed with double flash firing can provide quirky and interesting double exposure-like movement effects. Especially during dancing Adam http://www.springupphotography.co.uk
If you are shooting by hand you are going to be limited to 1/60s or faster shutter speed, otherwise you are going to get blurring from hand movement. Even if you are using a tripod or monopod you are going to be limited to 1/30s or faster, otherwise your subjects will have moved and you'll have blurring again (assuming candid style shots here).
My suggestions are - for the candid style photographs
* set your flash to fire twice, as mentioned above. This means the flash will fire when the shutter opens and then again just before it closes, effectively giving you two flashes for each photograph.
* set your aperture as large as possible, ideally not smaller than F4.0, this is going to mean a fairly fast lens, especially if you are using a zoom / telephoto lens
* shoot in RAW files if you have the capability, these will record more information than JPG / BMP and allow you to push the final photograph that little bit further, assuming you have the proper packages for this. I use a combination of Photoshop and Lightroom.
* push your ISO up as much as it can go / you are prepared to push it knowing you will increase noise. If you are shooting with a 8MP+ camera you can print from the original size files, this will lessen the effect of noise at the higher ISOs somewhat if you are printing at 300dpi or greater at sizes of 10 * 8 or less.
For the outside photographs it will depend very much on what the conditions are like on the day.
For the cake, come in before the reception and set up your camera on your tripod, the cake is stationery so you won't have to worry about it moving and you can set your shutter speed accordingly. Google images and wedding cakes will give you some ideas for alternative shots.
Finally, for the toast, you the have the advantage here of supplying prints in B&W photojournalism style as wedding toasts tend to look will in this approach. B&W means you don't have to worry about the background as much as the foreground and can set your flash accordingly.
Hope this sheds some light for you, any other queries give me a shout.
Steve
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9/22/2009 (2:12 pm) by rjroyse
(1 Posts)
I will be shooting a wedding for the first time in Oct. for a friend. The Ceremony is outside and I feel ok about that. The reception is indoors at night, and I am concerened about the lighting and what approach I need to take. I am trying to get into the place before hand but might not be able to at night. Advice for taking good photos of Dance? Cake? toast? lens? Flash?