Which mode to use in wedding?

[sharath_kumar]

Hi

 

I am going to take some pictures for my friends wedding soon. There

are professional photographers and mine is not a critical work. I

have a Canon EOS3 and 420EX.

 

1. Which mode should I use in church and other indoor situations

where there is only little light? P or M or Av? I heard that Av is

good to get subject and background properly. But it is going to make

the shutter speed lower so that I have to use a tripod. I dont want

to take my tripod there because there is already another pro team

there.

 

2. I have the automatic fill flash reduction of EOS3 in off mode and

I reduce -1 whenever I need fill flash in out doors. Should I turn it

on and make the camera do flash work for me or should I do any kind

of adjustments to get proper flash exposure?

 

3. Till now I have used only P mode for flash photos. In some cases I

got subjects face as washed out. I am afraid of the same here too

because it is completely not predictable in P mode.

 

Please reply!

 

Sharath

[bob stewart jacksonville]

Depends on what your trying to get the image to look like and what the ambient light is like. you are correct that aperture priority may give you some long shutter speeds (the camera is trying to get the background correctly exposed based upon the ambient light) AV, P and M all have their place in flash photography depending on what your trying to accomplish.

[jim_strutz]

Bob's right, there are several ways to do this. I usually do several things with weddings. Sometimes, when it's quite dark, I just put it in P & shoot, but that's not very often. More often I put the camera in M, set the aperture to f/5.6 or f/8 and a shutter speed that will provide an exposure that is 1 to 2 stops underexposed. Then I let the flash provide a proper exposure to the subject. A third method I use is to put the camera in Av mode and set the Auto Exposure Compensation (AEC) to -1 to -2, but leave the Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC) alone. (If you were using a Nikon you would have to set FEC +1 or +2 to compensate, but not on Canons.)

 

Using either the M or the Av mode, as described above, will produce about the same results, a semi-darkened background with a properly exposed foreground subject. It will also usually allow for a shutter speed that can be hand held with caution. The P mode method will produce mostly very dark backgrounds, but you won't get blurry pictures.

 

I use 400 ISO professional print film, since it is quite forgiving & sharp enough for who it for. :~)) Also get the flash at least a foot or more directly above the lens, and on a bracket that allows you to take vertical format pictures with the flash still directly above the lens. This will also require a Canon Off Camera Shoe Cord 2.

 

You can disable auto fill flash reduction if you want, but often these things happen fast, so I personally would leave it on & add perhaps add another -1/2 stop occasionally.

 

Washed out faces are often caused by the photo finisher who has an automatic machine that sees so much darkness surrounding the subject, it automatically brightens everything to a medium shade, which causes the subject to be over bright. Take them back & ask them nicely to do it over. If they won't, find another finisher.

 

The camera can (and often does) do the same thing as the printer's machine, but the finisher can still compensate for it somewhat. In any case, using M or Av modes as described above, will brighten the background sufficiently to compensate considerably for this.

 

With the EOS 3 make sure your auto-focusing point is right on top of the subject when you fire, since it will strongly bias the flash exposure for this area. If you must focus and re-compose, use the FEL feature to lock in the flash exposure, before re-composing.

[daniel flather]

For indoors set camera to M 1/60 @ f5.6 and set the flash to TTL +1. Outdoors in the

sun use AV mode @f16 with flash set to TTL -1. Use NPH @ 250.<P> Then, after

spending $900'ish on a body read the manual and the older threads here at photo.net.<P>

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Your answer will be here...<BR>

Take my hand

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