mark liddell

I've been surprised at how fast a shutter speed I've needed to avoid any blur, shooting with my 105mm at 1/125 I have had a reasonable number of frames blurred due to subject movement. I know from street photography 1/250 will freeze most people movement pretty well even walking fast in the opposite direction across you so I use somewhere between 1/125 and 1/250 depending on expected movement. A one stop difference can be huge in terms of freezing motion since the shutter speed is doubled.

50mm lenses on DX are fine for portraits that are not headshots or head & shoulders where the 80mm equiv. will be a bit too short. I'd go for the 60mm - macro lenses usually make great portrait lenses.

Take your camera off automatic focus point selection, you need to be able to control what/where you camera is focusing on. Make sure your camera is set to continuous AF so it will refocus/track as the subject moves. It's not uncommon when things are moving towards you for the first frame to be off, shoot more frames or just track for a second or two before hitting the shutter for the first frame.

You can keep as many as you want on your phone and browse them quickly. A little more difficult to explain mid-shoot with a wedding couple that you are not just more interested in a txt message or something! You could put your phone in your camera bag though.

A lot of people seem to be able to make a reasonable living from it and a number are husband/wife teams so wedding photography must be their sole income. A lot of photogs these days are running workshops, selling DVDs, ebooks etc. after establishing themselves which can be very lucrative.

 

The ever greater numbers of people getting into shooting weddings would make me nervous about having it as my sole income stream - the size of the cake will stay about the same but will get cut into ever smaller pieces. Eventually albums and prints will die and I don't think people will pay the same for a slideshow on an ipad/facebook or jpgs for a TV screen on a wall or whatever the future be. I'm very new to the game but for me I think the best way to go is do 'normal' contract work supplimented by wedding photography and while there will always be full time pros for teh high end I can see this becoming more common.

 

In many respects the wedding market is looking better than news and especially stock.

The metering system should deal with the ND since it is metering through the lens. Variable ND filters may be more susceptible to metering issues though but I have no had any yet. I guess you'll need to try it out and see.

 

I have always found ND filters a much better alternative than FP sync as the power loss is massive.

I didn't notice it right away I have to admit. I would just PS this out rather than reshooting if you like the look of the light. If you do reshoot you could shoot two flashes though a bedsheet of translucent material for a huge lightsource.

 

I'm not a product photog but I'd also have to go at a setup that defines the outline edges of the glass.

I second Nadine's suggestion. A Nano stand and 42" umbrella won't cost you too much and has a lot of mileage.

I love mine (afd version) on my D700. It's a great macro lens and excellent portrait lens too, no complaints other than the focusing ring is a little course when manual focusing due to huge focus range of a macro lens. Bokeh is good so I don't see the reason to pony up the extra for the DC and have possible front focus issues for portraits.

I avoid using cloths of any sort on my lenses, all they do is grind whatever dirt there is into the coating. If I'm going to shoot near the sea I use a filter.

 

The best stuff to clean lenses is opticlean which solidifies as a film that can be lifted off.

You should as at the very least it will outline the scope of yoru coverage and what you will provide them with. If a 'contract' feels too formal for this situation then cut any legalese and make it an agreement detailing who, when what, where at a minimum.

Signal to noise ratio gets worse in darker areas and with underexposure hence the noise. The colours will appear more saturated because they are darker.

 

The HDR processing will use the underexposed shots for the highlight detail and the overexposed ones for the shadow detail you should be fine when you actually process them. The highlight areas probably won't have much noise if you look at your 1/250th shot.

It sounds like the fill was too bright - fill flash is just as it sounds, it's filling the shadows not lighting the subject as such (the ambient is you main light in his case) and if done properly looks natural and is almost undetectable bar the catchlights in the people's eyes.

 

Did you set you flash power manually or use TTL? Set it manually if you can changing amount of flash/ambient until the flash/ambient mix is as you like it and the result is not unnatural and obviously flashed. The unnatural and incongruence between the background and the subjects is sometimes a side effect of using flash, sometimes it is desirable (most fashion) sometimes it isn't and needs to be used sparingly.

 

I have had good success with the flash 4ft off to one side of me and as high as possible (for evenness front to back). Shade or some backlight is best to keep the worst effects of the sun off people's faces.

I'm pretty new to the game and know no other photographers so I was trying to establish, given the time pressures and feasibility at weddings, in which situations people typically employed off camera lighting as a reference.

 

Any info on particular favourite and 'go to' setups would be helpful appreciting the fact that all weddings have different venues/weather/challenges. For similicity, we can exclude any larger groups since there are enough discussions on this.

I'm interested in when people use off camera flash and what setups they usually use and when, especially shots

that aren't large groups. Everyone has different preferences and ways of working so it would be interesting to

hear the different methods and approaches.

 

Right now I'm using one light in a softbox for the formals I'm finding it's very easy to make shots look very

'lit' and unnatural outdoors which may be great for fashion but probably not what most couples want.

Underexposing the ambient by one stop seems to be a good mix. For very small groups I'm using one flash though an

umbrella with ambient one stop under.

 

For slightly larger groups I go for a flash 3ft from the side of me as high as possible around the same level as

ambient for fill and a bit of zing and some spark in eyes

 

For the first dance I have a bare flash setup and and wait/move until the couple are backlit by the flash

 

Not had the confidence to use flash off camera during speeches and cake cutting yet, I'm worried about blocking

guests view, getting it knocked over or having to very quickly move it/dial it in again for different speakers.

I times I wish I'd gone Sony, 22MP for £600 less than a D700 and zeiss lenses available. Nikon is a more complete system though and has more affordable lenses if you buy afd series. No idea what Sony's af and flash system performance is like either.

I think the amount the light is scattered contributes to the wraparound.

Your best bet might be Michael Bass (http://michaelbass.blogspot.com) who makes just about every conceivable bracket, sync connection etc. for flashes and loves a chance at trying something new. Drop him and line and see if he can help you, he's a helpful guy.

 

I guess the issue is that speedlights were designed to be small and portable so mains power has never really been considered. The short flash duration is a coincidence as a result of their design more than a goal.

If you could get the Vivitar SB-4 mains adapter from somewhere in the UK it might solve the problem but they probably won't be easy to find

Have a look at Paul Buff Einsteins. In action mode, "t.1" is 1/13500th of a sec at low power which may still be significantly more than a speedlight meaning you don't need 6 of them.

Fast flash duration, mains powerable and for studio use all says studio lights not speedlights to me - why speedlights? Why do you need 6?

This certainly gave me a laugh on a Monday. Oh man if you hadn’t have had you hands full with the wedding you could have had so much fun with that guy! I once worked for a holiday company which dealt with rather affluent guests and people like this were all too common unfortunately.

 

Grats on landing what sounds like a huge budget affair, a lot of photogs would kill to break into that kind of market.

Not to derail the thread but are the issues people are having with the RPs and CLS normal TTL issues or are the RPs making it worse/introducing problems?

What is the advantage of using flash drives to warrant even looking at the costs?

I find the skin tones from both LR and ACR way too magenta and the Adobe profiles for the D700 in general to be poor. If I open my NEFs in NX2 the skin tones and look of the file are close to bang on every time.