D810 setting for wedding

[opa_diallo1]

<p>Hi all,<br>

I will be taking picture of my brother next weekend , small wedding . I will be using D810 with 24-70,85F1.8g and sigma 35 f1.4 and SB910 .<br>

That's all I need I think <br>

What kind of setting do you use in your D810 ?<br>

Also , any suggestion on memory cards ? <br>

Thanks for your suggestions </p>

[ilkka_nissila]

You should have a second camera as backup and probably a backup flash as well if your shooting style requires it.

 

Use whatever settings you would use when you normally photograph people and events.

 

How much photography experience do you have and of what kind?

[opa_diallo1]

<p>Hi ILkka,<br>

I did couple of weddings for friend with a D700 and SB800 , but I am not a professional . Way in the past I did family and friends wedding with a Mamiya 645 film . But for all the wedding I did for family and friends, it was success .<br>

I still have my SB800, I guess I can use it for backup . For second camera , I consider my fuji X-T1 (ya different lol)<br>

I have the D810 but did not have the chance to use it a lot , I am very familiar with D700 I sold for D810 . <br>

As for photography experience , I do mostly family pictures, holidays pictures . </p>

<p> </p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>The D810 is quite similar to the D700, but a few things have changed. E.g. the positions for the +- image magnify/reduce buttons have switched, and the C/S/M switch has become an AF/M switch with a button you hold down and then use the main and sub command dials to change AF modes. The quiet mode on the D810 is excellent and can be useful at a wedding.</p>

<p>Unlike the D700, the D810 has dual memory card slots. IMO using one CF card and one SD card in the "back up" mode such that each image file is stored on both cards is a must for weddings. Those 36MP D810 RAW files are huge. Those CF cards from the D700 may have become too small for the huge files. And I assume you have additional EN-EL15 batteries as backups.</p>

<p>Hopefully "next weekend" means you still have a week to get quite familiar with the D810 (instead of having the wedding tomorrow [saturday] or this Sunday).</p>

<p>As Ilkka pointed out, a backup camera is a must. (It is best to have another Nikon FX body, but I am sure a Fuji X is sufficient.) A backup flash is good to have but not as critical.</p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

[opa_diallo1]

<p>Thanks Shun,<br>

Wedding is next weekend , August 15th .<br>

What kind of SD and CF cards do you suggest ?<br>

Yes, I have extra battery</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>First of all, while I know Nikon's DSLR product line quite well, I am not a regular wedding photographer. Plenty of people on the Wedding forum can give you must better advices about wedding photography than I can.</p>

<p>I am glad that the wedding is a week away. If you can pay the venue a visit this weekend, preferably around the same time of the day as the wedding and take some practice shots with the D810, it could be helpful. If there is a rehearsal, it can be helpful to be there and test things out also. (Since this is your brother's wedding, you probably need to be at the rehearsal anyway.)</p>

<p>Concerning memory cards, I prefer either SanDisk or Lexar. For SD, the SanDisk Extreme Pro 64G should be a good choice: http://www.sandisk.com/products/memory-cards/sd/extremepro-sdxc-sdhc-uhs-3/?capacity=64GB<br /> One or two of those should be able to hold images from the entire wedding. In the US, it is about $53 (and dropping rapidly) from the major mail-order stores. (I paid close to $100 for one about 8 months ago.)</p>

<p>As I mentioned earlier, please do not depend on just one high-capacity memory card. Make sure that you have a matching CF card in the other slot and set the D810 to the "backup" mode to write each image onto both cards.</p>

<p>If you are buying new cards, test them out thoroughly to avoid any "infant death" problem. One of the last things you want is to find out during the wedding that your brand new memory card is defective.</p>

[ilkka_nissila]

<p>Which parts of the wedding are indoors and which are outdoors?</p>

<p>If you have a church ceremony, it is common that flash use is not allowed. So you'd probably want to photograph this with available light. 24-70 should work well; if you don't have a lot of experience I would recommend sticking to this lens. If the venue is really dark then you may need to use the primes. I would recommend you to test the autofocus of your fast primes carefully and apply autofocus fine tune if it seems that the results are systematically off in one direction (either behind or in front of the subject). Some minor focus fine tuning is common to be needed with fast primes but at near distances you may get away without applying any. If you have access to the venues in advance, I would go there and get some shots to get a feel for the exposures needed and the geometry of the location so that you will have the right lens ready. If it is an outdoor ceremony then I would again go with available light; the D810 can handle even high contrast light at low ISO settings. 24-70 should work well.</p>

<p>For portraits, open shade offers quite good lighting especially if you don't have experience using flash outdoors (large modifiers). Indoors you may or may not need to use flash depending on direction and quantity of light available. You may want to experiment with both. Indoors, a powerful technique is to bounce the light from white walls or ceilings. This requires some practice to do correctly so that the direction of the light gives a pleasing effect. You may want to study Neil van Niekerk's tangents blog where he gives a lot of advice on portrait lighting with a single flash light, bounced or with a modifier. (Highly recommended!) For group shots if you have to do them, open shade is again your friend. I would concentrate on making everyone look happy or at least not too unhappy, so you may need to entertain them a bit. The technical aspects are less important but of course it is best if everyone can be recognized. This can become challenging in large groups so if possible I would avoid those and focus on small groups involving immediate family and friends (especially groomsmen/bestman/bridesmaids/maid of honour/parents). If you're lucky you don't have to do many. ;-) Shoot a lot of frames to make sure you get enough with eyes open. Stop down quite a bit, minimum of f/5.6 for groups, best would be f/8 or f/11 but you may not have enough light for that so I would make a compromise on the depth of field as long as you can get everyone recognizable and looking like they are enjoying the day then it should be fine. Check the focus using playback. With 36MP you will invariably see some differences in sharpness between individuals in a group shot. Don't worry too much about that and focus on the content of the image.</p>

<p>The reception is typically indoors. With white surfaces you can take advantage of bounced flash. With coloured surfaces things are more difficult from a lighting point of view. I typically use fast primes during reception because then I don't have to use flash, but focusing in low light with fast primes can require a lot of practice to get good results consistently. Quite a lot of wedding photographers use a lot of flash to get depth of field and to get better quality of colour in the shots. However flash technique is a complex subject and can take a lifetime to learn well. I would choose the method which you're most familiar with in terms of flash vs. available light. Personally I tend to use bounced flash when I need to shoot into the light (if windows are behind the subjects) but generally prefer to use available light for the documentary shots. For portraits I do use flash more than for documentary shots. Available light can lead to poor quality of colour depending on the quality of the lighting and time of day, so in many cases I provide the majority of indoor shots in black and white to avoid poor colour and also to focus on the emotion and interaction between people. However, during the early part of the reception there can be enough window light which combined with bounced flash can lead to pleasing colour and lighting with relative ease.</p>

<p>I have some idiosyncracies when I shoot events. I tend to shoot wide open almost all the time (except for formals where I do make sure that there is enough depth of field). Some people don't like that style, but I've never had a problem with the response; those whose events I photograph know what to expect from me. I would advise you to use those apertures which you're most comfortable using. Shutter speed ... well, the 36MP images show movement blur very easily. I would not use slower speeds than about 1/200s on even relatively static subjects if you can avoid it from the lighting point of view. For shots involving movement or action I shoot much faster speeds 1/500s or faster. Despite these precautions you may still see some movement blur, but remember again that pixel level perfection is not necessary in most cases as the viewing sizes will not show those finest details anyway, unless you make a wall sized print. And even then the viewing distance is usually such that the details are not the most critical part of the shots.</p>

<p>You may also want to shoot some of the decorations at the reception venue; sometimes you can get there beforehand as they are preparing for the event so you can try to get some shots of that. During dinner is a good time to shoot details as people usually don't like the way they look when they are eating so avoid making a lot of images of eating people! Do something else, and of course have dinner yourself as well. ;-) Ring shots. Yes, during the portrait session you may want to get close-ups of the rings or some symbolic shots.</p>

[opa_diallo1]

<p>Very useful information , thanks a lot .<br>

FOr indoor flash , I always use 1/60s indoor . But you are suggesting 1/200s and f 5.6 or 11 . his means I will need high ISO , correct ? Wouldn't this give me grain in my images ?</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>On the D810, you should be able to get pretty good results up to ISO 3200, maybe ISO 6400 if necessary.</p>

<p>For flash sync, I actually prefer a shutter speed around 1/30 sec to give ambient light a larger contribution into the overall exposure, in additional to the flash. Your main subjects will be mainly lit by the flash, of course, but 1/30 sec will give you a brighter, more pleasing background rather than just pitch black. You definitely need to pay attention to subject motion at such a slow shutter speed, though. If you are shooting the first dance, etc., you'll definitely need a much faster shutter speed.</p>

<p>Again, hopefully you'll have some opportunities to try these out beforehand. Meanwhile, try to keep it simple. A crash dump course on everything about wedding photography the week before isn't going to work. These things will take some time to sink in.</p>

[ilkka_nissila]

<p><em>But you are suggesting 1/200s and f 5.6 or 11</em></p>

<p>1/200s is my recommendation for the slowest shutter speed for photographing people in available light (i.e. when you are not using flash). But it is just a guideline; you may get reasonably good results at e.g. 1/100s also, at shorter focal lengths, but movement blur starts to affect results at those speeds if you are using available light only, so there is some risk of blur. On the other hand, if you use flash to light the main subject, then a slower shutter speed can often be used and the subject will still mostly be sharp because the light in the camera-facing side of the subject will mostly be flash light (which freezes movement as the flash duration is typically very short, of the order of 1ms or shorter). So with flash you can use a slower shutter speed indoors in low light to record more ambient light and you should still get a reasonably sharp image. If you go to slow shutter speeds such as 1/50s or 1/20s then I would recommend using rear sync to make the combination of flash light and ambient light look more pleasing (the flash freezes the subject at the end of the exposure if you user rear sync). But even with flash I typically do not go slower than about 1/100s myself, but 1/50s should still be "ok" most of the time. I would experiment with different speeds before the actual event to get a feel for what kind of speeds give you the results that you like in similar lighting conditions which you are going to encounter during the wedding. For outdoor flash during the day I tend to use 1/200s sync speed as this gives optimal suppression of ambient light (with my Elinchrom flash) so that it's easier to balance daylight and the flash, but whether you will be using this kind of a technique (one speedlight might not give enough light, depending on lighting conditions) is another matter. For Nikon speedlights you can sync at 1/250s in daylight; the 1/200s is just because I use third party flashes which may have slightly delayed triggering depending on settings, to be on the safe side.</p>

<p>The f/5.6 to f/11 aperture suggestion I made in my post above was for formal images of groups of people outdoors in daylight (i.e. when you have 10-40 people in the image usually in multiple rows), not for indoor use. Indoors, for documentary images I mostly use the lens at its maximum aperture (i.e. f/2.8 for 24-70, f/1.4 for 35/1.4 etc.) with high ISO but you may stop down a bit if you prefer to get more depth of field (and focus safety margin!) if you have enough light. For informal indoor group photos during reception perhaps a compromise aperture such as f/4 may be appropriate depending on existing lighting conditions and how much flash you want to use.</p>

<p>Some wedding photographers don't like to use high ISO during reception (because the ambient light can produce varying colours on the image and mixed colour effects don't necessarily look good), instead they provide enough flash light to work with and use a medium aperture such as f/5.6 and moderate ISO (400) and a fast enough shutter speed that the ambient light doesn't register too much. However, I feel this technique kills the ambient feel of the location. I prefer to let in ambient light (using a combination of wide aperture and high ISO) register clearly in the image and then, if necessary, to light the main subject, I provide bounced flash light by reflecting it from surfaces typically behind me or to the side. The ISOs that I use during church ceremony are typically ISO 800 to 6400, during outdoor portrait shooting typically from ISO 64 to 200 (400 if you have overcast or towards the evening), during outdoor part of the reception I may be around ISO 100 to 800 depending on lighting conditions, and in the early part of the indoor reception when there is still some daylight, I may be at ISO 200 to 800, during late parts of the reception the ISO can go as high as 2000 or 6400. I never use higher than ISO 6400 on any of my cameras. ISO and the quality of the image which you find acceptable is a personal thing; for formal images I rarely if ever go higher than ISO 400, but for documentary indoor photography I don't have any qualms against using even 6400. If I use prime lenses I can usually avoid going to ISO 6400 and stay at 1000-2000 for most of the indoor photography except the very late night.</p>

<p>But there are as many different sets of technique as there are wedding photographers and this complex subject takes a long time to master. I would recommend practice during the time you still have and read Neil's blog for portrait and wedding lighting technique. Also you may ask the wedding photography forum here at photo.net for further advice. Photo.net has actually an extensive archive of wedding photography related articles that are good but targeted towards the business of wedding photography and more advanced wedding photographers. You may find these here:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/learn/wedding-photography/</p>

<p>I think the images in those articles may give you some ideas and inspiration at least, even if the content is targeted more towards someone having a business. </p>

[opa_diallo1]

<p>All good , thanks . I will try to use the same setting in my D700 for skin tones and WB (if I remember it ) :)<br>

I have this weekend to practice the D810 setting . <br>

Will post some pics after wedding ..<br>

Thanks you all .<br>

One last question . RAW or JPEG or SRAW ?<br>

On the D700, I use to shoot Raw+Jpeg .</p>

[ilkka_nissila]

<p>I would shoot all images in RAW (lossless compressed). If you want JPGs you can of course shoot NEF+JPG it should not take too much additional space and you can get images out more quickly. I do not personally use sRAW as the file size is not much smaller and yet the resolution loss is significant.</p>

[m_tt_donuts]

<p>Practice up on your flash photography, to me how good you're at with flash photography can make or break a wedding shoot. Even if outdoors in sunlight, enable high speed flash synch (so you can get faster apertures in sunlight) and go with it. The images will be a world of difference even outdoors with it having catchlights in the eyes and shadows filled in a touch. So go through the settings and enable high speed flash and use the flash outdoors. </p>

<p>I use a D800 and leave it mostly on auto iso unless using a tripod. As for memory cards, I get the best/fastest I can afford you want to avoid filling the buffer and possibly missing a shot waiting for it to flush. For a wedding your CF and SD cards should be set to duplicate, and shoot RAW. </p>

<p>I think it goes without saying getting a sharp picture trumps any settings... if the church doesn't allow flash, and I'm not a fan of 6400 ISO on my camera (yours is better at least) I'll shoot it at 6400 anyway and possibly more if I must and then do post process fixing. Shooting at 3200 (which I find is a big improvement over 6400) doesn't do any good if the images are slightly blurry there's not much one can do in post. </p>

<p>You're lacking a 70-200 F2.8 which is usually deemed the "money maker" to wedding photographers (I prefer the VR version not VR II). </p>

<p>Be sure to avoid different lighting and you have a filter on your flash to match or your flash is overpowering all other light. There's been times I used my flash with incandescent light and the person is white from my flash and yellow on another side from incandescent. When I forget, those are the ones I make B&W or I go through a big process of brush coloring to try to even out the lighting in post.</p>

<p>Lastly, spend some time watching some Tony Northrup youtube videos. He does a good job, but don't get caught up in the Nikon vs. Canon thing he sometimes throws out there he doesn't know how to use Nikons I find him to be someone with such sway and power doing these comparisons when he doesn't even know how to set the WB on Nikon (hold the WB button down and take a picture of something white) which has been Nikons way for how long? He states Canons 17 step process and multiple menu actions to set it is far superior and easier and he's so popular... He should just avoid comparing the two since he doesn't know anything about Nikons or to learn them. Be like someone throwing a Pentax at me with no manual and having me compare it to my Nikon which I've been using for 12 years. Good luck!</p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>I am attaching an image from a recent wedding as an example. I was merely a guest, and the host had a team of 4, 5 official photographers. Therefore I decided to be low key, but I did bring a D800E and a D750.</p>

<p>I captured this image @ f2.2 with the Sigma 35mm/f1.4, 1/60 sec, and ISO 800 on the D750. The SB-900 bouncing off the ceiling provided the main lighting on the subjects, while the indoor lighting there is very pink. A mid ISO 800 with a somewhat slow 1/60 sec shutter speed brightens up the background with ambient light.</p>

<p>If you are interested, search for the term "drag the shutter" for more information.</p><div></div>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Here is another image from that wedding. The hosts had a sign with table assignments, placed outside of the banquet hall. I am keeping the images small with Gaussian blur so that the names are not readable. :-)</p>

<p>I first tried to captured the sign without flash and then with the SB-900. Initially my shutter speed was 1/125 sec and you can see the flash dominated the image. I then switched to 1/30 sec. Since the duration of the flash should be a fraction of 1/1000 sec, the shutter speed change had no effect on the flash, but 1/30 sec let in a lot more ambient light such that the lamp on the left side looks better.</p>

<p>It is all still subjects such that subject motion is a non-issue in this case.</p><div></div>

[opa_diallo1]

<p>Hi all,<br>

Thanks for all your help . At the end , I decided not to be the main photographer because it became bigger and bigger and I had many responsibilities for the organization . I did get a chance to make few shots , here are 2 . All taken with D810 , sigma 35 f1.4 and SB910 .<br>

Not many, but any comment is welcome .<br>

Thanks again .</p>

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<IMG SRC="http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00d/00dSGk-558169084.jpg">

</P><div></div>

[opa_diallo1]

<p>Another pics ... sorry for thesize</p>

<P>

<IMG SRC="http://static.photo.net/attachments/bboard/00d/00dSGo-558169184.jpg">

</P>

[ShunCheung]

<p>Opa, glad you got some fine images from the wedding. What was your experience using the D810 there?</p>