Fast Wedding Lens?

[anesh]

This lens would take 70-80% of my wedding photos and I'm thinking Tamron 17-80.

What do you think. Of the lenses currently in my bag (50mm f1.7, beercan,

Tamron 11-18mm, Sigma APO Macro 70-300) only the 50mm is good enough. The

beercan is slow to focus in low light.

[scott_lewis3]

look for lens in the 80-200 2.8 range (sigma, tamron sony, minolta or tokina)

[shoebox]

I have the sigma 30mm f1.4. It's fast, sharp and has smooth bokeh. It has become my

favorite lens.

[anesh]

meant to say Tamron 17-50 not 17-80

[matt_neighbour___york__u.k]

Is this on digital? On film, a 28 - 70mm f/2.8 is a good choice. You don't want too long a lens for the recessional. Those 70 - 200 f/2.8 lenses probably come in handy for when you can't get too close, I haven't had this problem and find a 90mm f/2.8 prime to be sufficient.

 

Matt

[anesh]

Sony A100

[keith_illg]

I love the speed on my Minolta 28-75mm f2.8, and Adorama just put them on sale for $329 new!!

[mark_albert]

Take a look for a Tamron 28-105 2.8. Equivelent 42-152.5. A nice range for weddings. Or go with a combo 17-50 2.8 and 70-200 2.8. get a second body so you are not switching lenses constantly. You can pick up a nice 5D or 7D cheap nowadays. They would be good for low light low noise shots, where your A100 would be good for high detail photos.

 

Mark

[nate_macdonald]

I've shot two weddings using just my 50mm f/1.7 and 135mm f/2.8 - mind you, I don't consider myself good enough to charge people, but the newlyweds have been very happy with the results.

[m.l]

28/2 as a prime, if you can restrict yourself. Otherwise I have nice results with the 24-60/2.8 sigma (not with weddings though)

[weatherman]

50mm f1.4-f1.7, 28mm f2, 85mm f1.4...

These are good portrait primes but will you have enough time to change all those primes during the wedding that is the question. I have these but I often find impractical to change lenses in such environments.

If I have one choice I'd stick to 28mm f2. I have used it with no flash in the very dimly lit conditions on 5D with the help of anti shake and tungsten color calibration(Or with calibration for whatever the light source is). Using no flash is very useful for capturing real moments which is now available with anti-shake + a very fast prime lens. People can not believe that I did not use any flash with such clean results!

 

Zooms with constant f2.8 might do the job as well(have no experience though)

Hope this helps