bruce_stenman1

Recommend Shared Ink's linen books. Design a album layout and leave 50% to 75% of each page blank for guests to write notes. Upload the pages to the Shared Ink website and within two weeks you will have a very nice guest book. How many pages and the size of the pages depends upon the number of guests expected. Don't get a gloss finish as the ink from a pen will be more likely to smear.

Be aware that most PJ wedding photographers really don't have a clue about how to pose or direct or do group pictures or provide you with anything more than pics burned to disc. There are notable exceptions but people with little experience or photographic or people skills hide behind the PJ moniker.

 

You will do better if you have a clear idea of what you want in terms of pre-wedding services, like an engagement session and a guest book, on the day of the wedding - coverage of you or just your bride getting ready, formals?, full coverage of a church ceremony or a simple outdoor wedding, and 50 guests or 500 at the reception, for 4 hours or all day. Do you want them to color correct and edit the images and provide you with 4x6 proofs and a custom album or just a DVD with the RAW files. It all makes a difference in what you will have to pay regardless of who shoots the wedding.

 

Most photographers will shoot with a newbie as their second photographer and so you get less than 100% of the first photographer who has to supervise the 2nd, and an inexperienced second photographer whose results are not going to be reliable.

 

If you want to keep cost down the best place is in the location for you and your bride's preparation, a small outdoor venue that can be covered by a single photographer, and a short reception with under 120 guests at the same location. The more you deviate from that the more it will cost you in both the quality and quantity of images for your budget.

Pocket Wizards make sense in a studio environment where one can use a Sekonic flash meter to trigger Norman or other strobes with built in PW receivers. In the field the Quantum FireXwire units are a better choice. The Quantum reach further, provide TTL at distances of 100 yards with Quantum units, can be used to turn Quantum flash units into full CLS slave strobes.

 

Quantum strobes are a nice step up from the SB800 and the FireXwire strobes integrate well (receivers make use of the Quantum flash battery power and attach without sync cords eliminating two points of potential failure in the field), and they can be used to fire any strobe or even to focus and trip the shutter release of a remote camera. By comparison the PW's are a one-trick pony.

I would be using the 16-35mm and the 70-200mm on the 5D and a 17-55mm f2.8 on the Rebel. Minimum 70mm focal length or 110mm FOV equivalent on a 1.6 crop camera is quite long for reception use. You will have a far better FOV range with this setup and be changing lenses a lot less during the day.

You can use flash during the processional and recessional and reception. It is just during the ceremony that you want to rely on ambient light - and this is when there is very little movement so a slow shutter speed will work.

 

Depending upon the church you may be able to get by with ISO 1600 and with the 70-200mm f2.8 VR you can get reasonably sharp images at 1/30th of a second.

 

The other lens to get or rent is the 17-55mm f2.8 lens. With the SB800 it will work even in the dim lighting of the dance floor.

 

An excellent place to rent is www.lensprotogo.com which has very reasonable rates that include shipping in both directions and cover a 1 week rental period. This gives you time to practice with the gear well in advance of the wedding day.

I use 2 different bags during a wedding and change out what is in them during the day moving gear in and out of a Tamrac rolling case that I keep in the trunk of my car. I have 5 bags for different needs as I like to have a bag that is as small as possible to make it easier for me to maneuver while holding the kit I need. There is no one size fits all for me.

I believe that if you take their money you have an obligation to complete the job no matter what. I had a wedding where my D2h stopped working just as the processional started. I only had one camera to use for the entire rest of the day and lost images while making lens changes. After that I added a 3rd body so even if one packs it in I still have two cameras so I can give the couples and their families 100%.

 

Why would you settle for less with anything so important and not correctable if you screw up? And to my mind going to a wedding with only one camera or one flash is screwing up before the day has even begun, though this seems to be increasingly commonplace.

You need a 70-200mm f2.8 VR/IS lens. No getting around it if you want to do the job properly (which is what I consider being "professional"). I shot my last wedding in Carmel in a church that required the use of the 70-200mm at f2.8 and 1/10 at a 200mm zoom setting for most of the ceremony. A tripod would have been in the way and ridiculous to use anywhere but in the choir loft. My assistant (3rd photographer) was in the loft trying to use a 70-200mm non-IS lens and none of her shots were usable.

 

I used a Mark III so I could go to ISO 3200 and have usable images with a little post processing for noise reduction. I have since replaced the Mark III with a D3 to provide an extra 2 stops to work with by virtue of the ultra high ISO capabilities of that camera.

 

Personally the slowest lenses I ever use are f2.8 zooms. When I had the Nikon 14-24mm f4 and the Canon 24-105 f4 IS lenses I seldom used them at receptions or ceremonies as they were just too slow which meant slower shutter speeds and more images with subject motion blur.

 

Regardless of the system being used, digital cameras have changed greatly each year over the past 6 years but they all work great with many of the same lenses that were used for film cameras. Make the investment in good glass as unlike your cameras the lenses have a long useful life.

You will have no time to photograph your friend's wedding and do guest portraits on the cheap as well. Doing this would require a dedicated person just to do the portraits and in reality people arriving at the reception are looking for a restroom, a drink, and food, in that order and are not going to wait in a queue to have their picture taken. At 3 minutes per guest/couple how long would it take to shoot 125 guests?

 

And while you are taking their picture for them to have for whatever purpose, who is taking pictures of the bridal party arriving, the entrance of the bride and groom, the parents of the B&G, and the guests having a good time?

 

What can work is to take pictures of the guests with the B&G at the exit for the reception at the end of the evening. That way it is a reverse receiving line with the B&G thanking people for coming and posing for quick shot that they can have printed and slip in with their thank you card later.

Short answer is that the NiMh at 1.2v will work fine but recycle times will be double what they would be with NiCads. Most flash units with 4 batteries are designed for alkaline 1.5 batteries providing 6 volts to the strobe's electronics.

 

Often with 1.2v NiMh batteries (which start out providing 4.8 volts when there is no load present) when one battery is not fully charged in the series, it is enough to pull down the voltage to the strobe below design tolerances and result in erratic performance.

 

With NiMh as with NiCad batteies it is worth spending the extra dollars to get a quality charger.

The LowePro AW 75 already mentioned will provide ready access to the D200 with the 70-200 attached. It will even take a D3 with the 70-200mm lens attached. Your only other option is a backpack and no ready access to your gear.

 

I dislike a bag that is accessible to strangers operating behind my back or to a bag I have to take off or set down to get to a lens or camera inside.

 

You will probably find it easier to get the AW75 for the camera and 70-200mm lens and then decide on a second waist bag for just the D3 and your other gear.

The AW75 is designed to be used with a shoulder strap but I converted mine for use with a waist strap to which I have a small Tamrac camera bag attached. The Tamrac bag is 9wx6dx10h which is large enough to hold a second D3 with a 24-70mm lens attached and has room for a SB800 and a 14-24mm lens.

 

The only shoulder bag that comes close to holding the D200 with the 70-200mm lens attached and has room for other gear is the LowePro Stealth Reporter 650 bag which is quite large and even has a inner pocket for a 17" laptop.

I would recommend for sports the Sigma 50-150mm f2.8 constant lens that will enable you to use 4x as fast a shutter speed as the 18-200mm lens at the tele end which with sports or leaping fish really is critical. The Sigma sells for around $700 and provides a very usable range, excellent performance and image quality, and is relatively lightweight and compact - about the size of the 70-300mm but 3x as fast at the 150mm setting.

 

VR helps only when the subject you are photographing is not moving which makes it relatively worthless for sports photography. There is a reason the pro sports shooters lug around their heavy f2.8 telephoto lenses.

Dust mites feed on human skin debris so are not likely to be a problem with camera gear (unless you sleep with them). Molds can develop where there is moisture and something to feed on like leather lens cases.

 

Be sure the air seal is closed on the case ( used to equalize pressure after a change in altitude.

 

If your gear is stored where there is good air circulation you should not have a problem with mold. If concerned a metal heating element that draws under 100 watts can be used to great a warm air current in an area. They are sold by boat supply houses as closed boat cabins are great for growing mold, mildew, etc.

 

There are commercial desiccants that are sold primarily to product paper from moisture and will protect and entire room from moisture. Check out www.drypak.com.

 

More of a concern where there is moisture are and CD or DVD discs used to archive data as their dyes can be damaged very quickly rendering the discs unreadable.

Get the book Photo Secrets San Francisco and Northern California. The $16.95 cost is best investment in your photography you will ever make.

 

Tip: some of the best shots of SF are from Sausalito, Treasure Island, Angel Island, Alcatraz, etc. - you get the picture.

 

And bring a good warm jacket.

I take a cheap (and therefore lightweight) power strip with a 2 foot cord. It plugs in anywhere and then provides me with 4 outlets for chargers and I only need the one electrical socket adapter for the power strip.

 

Several brands, like Lacie, that have rugged hard disk enclosures. The hard drives with USB power are more compact but also slower so copying over 20GB of data could take hours to accomplish. A FireWire800/USB2 drive like the Lacie All-Terrain would be my first choice and a FireWire PCMCIA adapter for a laptop without a FireWire port. FireWire move data at 250% the rate of USB2. If you want to shoot all day, edit, and then backup to a a hard drive and not have it run all night, a faster solution will be important.

In dim light the D300 (and D3) with their tightly grouped cross type sensors covering only the center 25% of the viewfinder - or 1/3 the area covered with a D2x or Mark III, one needs to focus, lock, and reframe (as with the old D100 and Fuji S2 cameras). The IR assist from the SB800 or a SC29 cord really helps with low light AF within the limits of the zoom range per the Nikon manual.

 

With the Quantum you have this in theory with the DW unit but I would not expect it to work as well as the SB800. In dim light the Qflash is really overkill even when bounced off a ceiling. Shooting at high ISO and relatively wide open in exposing for the ambient light level the Quantum output will be much higher than is needed or desirable to provide fill by using it on a bracket.

 

One thing to be sure of is that the camera is set to 1/250 and not 1/250fp as the Quantum will not sync and will not fire, thought the SB800 will do so every time.

For my taste they work well when the people are in the center of the frame where the distortion is the least apparent. It is a small and lightweight lens so I have no problem with having it in the bag and using for an occasional shot, almost always at the reception.

 

For general wide angle images a 14-24 or even a 17-55mm lens is much more versatile as the subject can be at the edge for a strong "near and far" image that really emphasizes the importance of the foreground subject.

If you are photographing group formals outdoors in bright sunlight the best flash I have found is the Quantum Qflash. Can be used in auto, TTL, iTTL, and CLS modes (Qnexus to make it a slave for SB800). Also excellent for outdoor portraits with either small soft box or bare bulb. When you are limited to 1/250 and competing with the sun and having to use a small aperture you need more power than the SB800 or similar strobe can provide to shoot a group of people 10-12 wide at normal distances.

 

For indoor use 2 SB800's will suffice bounced of an umbrella for group shots or individually with a bracket for other pictures when you cannot foof.

It is really a manufacturing defect that Nikon should be fixing regardless of warranty considerations. I now leave the batteries out of the repaired D200 battery pack when the camera is not in use. Nikon charged me $150 for the "repair".

 

Usually Nikon is good about dealing with product defects but they have really done a poor job with the D200 battery pack.

 

A third party battery pack would be my first choice as Nikon has never fixed the design defects of their battery pack. At least the D300 battery pack has a completely revised design so at least this aspect is improved.

You have what you need if you make use of sunlight, either coming through a window or shooting outdoors. All the studio lights are designed for production work where you need to control every aspect of the light and not need to be concerned about the sun.

 

Studio portraits are fine but they look like studio portraits. Fine if that is what you want to create. Check out the work by Joe McNally. He does a lot of "studio" work using only Nikon strobes and a variety of scrims and reflectors.

 

Starting with light from a window and using reflectors makes it a lot easier to learn to see the light and to work with your subject.

At a minimum you should consider renting (www.lensprotogo.com) a 17-55mm f2.8 lens. It will provide what you need for 90% of your shots. It is wide enough for indoor group formals or bridal prep or packed dance floors and fast enough with the D300 and its ISO 3200 capability to shoot in quite dim churches or reception halls.

 

A second lens you will want to have is the 70-200mm f2.8 VR lens. In many low light situations you really cannot shoot at 1/200th and this is where the VR is a big help with the 3 f-stop gain possible. This means you can get usable images shooting hand held at 200mm using shutter speeds as low as 1/10th.

 

Any lens slower than f2.8 will be of limited use when shooting indoors with or without flash.

There is an excellent book "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson that I give to people who need this grounding as you clearly do. Film has 3 times the latitude for error as with digital image files so the exposure accuracy demands are far greater and can involve a big adjustment for people used to shooting negative film in particular. With digital there is neither the exposure latitude nor the lab to cover your mistakes as you are seeing in the images you took at the christening.

 

In terms of your picture - in this situation I would be shooting in manual mode and adjusting the EV setting on the flash to adjust the fill light for the image. Get a flash and practice bouncing the light off ceilings and walls and practice shooting in manual mode and adjusting the exposure for the ambient light and then adjusting the EV on your flash. Be forewarned though that auto iTTL flash exposure is a problem for the 20D that was later fixed in the 30D camera with the 580EX flash.

 

I would not shoot a Mark II at an ISO setting greater than 1250 and suspect the same is true for the 20D. Take test shots of people indoors with normal tungsten lighting at ISO 400, 800, 1250, 1600 and then examine the image files for noise and note the increase which is not linear. With flash bounced off a wall or ceiling your ISO 1600 shot could have easily been taken at ISO 400 or lower.

When I used the Fuji S2 that was powered by AA batteries I got the Powerex ones that were the highest mAh I could find. Now with them just going into flash units I do not bother with the brand other than to get a "name" brand from a reputable source.

 

What I do make an effort to confirm is that they are charged properly (and with minimal heat) and that they are actually holding a charge. One defective battery will pull down all the others in the series in your strobe or battery pack.

 

Best source I have found for chargers, batteries, and a true charge state battery tester is www.thomasdistributing.com.

I use the Custom Brackets with the handle and use the DW-12 unit on the hotshoe connected to the FreeXwire tranmitter or the Qflash on the bracket. Most of the time the Qflash head is mounted on either a light stand or a monopod (carried along with the battery pack by an assistant).

 

The Custom Bracket is used primarily for the group photos where it is convenient and much faster to switch between vertical and horizontal compositions. For the ceremony and for general reception coverage the SB800 puts out more than enough fill light and mounted on a Stroboframe with a SD-8a battery pack is a much lighter kit to carry about for hours at a time.

 

When shooting at ISO 800 or higher, very little flash power is needed in most situations and the Quantum is overkill. I use mine for outdoor portrait (mostly bare bulb) and for wedding group photographs both indoors and out.

In low light situations the Mark III will focus twice as fast as the Mark II, and the Mark II will autofocus twice as fast as the 5D. High ISO is also excellent with usable images at 3200 with a little post processing with Dfine 2.0.

 

Where the 5D is useful is with the bridal prep where the full frame provides a wider perspective than is possible with any of the crop cameras and a shallower depth of field.

 

White balance is also reasonably accurate with the Mark III (the 5D is all over the map, sometimes too high and the next shot too low), and the Mark III was designed to provide more consistent flash exposure with the new 580EXII strobes.

 

Where the Mark III has problems is with bright sunny days and 400mm lenses - not something that comes up with wedding photography very often. In low light, the Mark III AF is far superior to that of any other camera available today (and I have shot weddings with all 3 cameras mentioned, and the Nikon D3 and D300).