john_hazelton

<p>Every few years, the grass grows differently. Right now, the grass looks greener on the Nikon side. Try a Nikon D3s with a 24-70 lens. You won't be disappointed.<br>

John</p>

<p>I agree with David, with the caveat that this restriction would not apply when you are using a lens and/or camera with image stabilization or vibration reduction.<br>

John</p>

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<p>Good move to come on here for some advice. I’m trying to envision the lighting situation in a small church with few windows and candles in use. I’m pretty convinced it’s going to be fairly dark to quite dark. If so, and they don’t allow flash during the service, you have a couple of choices: faster lenses or slower shutter speeds. You’ll probably want to use both approaches.<br>

Your current lenses, opening only to f4.0, won’t let in the kind of light you’re going to need here. So, get (borrow, rent, purchase) one or more faster lenses. The best “bang for the buck” is the 50mm f1.4, but in a small church, this may not be wide enough for what you want. Another choice would be a 24-70mm f2.8 zoom, although this is a lens which does not always perform perfectly. Some wide prime, while more expensive, would probably be the best choice (sorry, I’m a Nikon guy, so I’m not that familiar with Canon lenses).<br>

Once you settle on this lens, a good deal of practice is in order. The key thing is to get a feel for real-world depth of field. Do some practicing at home, with different f stops, to see what depth of field you’re going to have. As you know, the farther away from your subject you are, the deeper your depth of field, and the wider your aperture, the more shallow your depth of field. You’re going to want to shoot wider, to get more light, and in a small church, you may not be able to get as far back from the subject(s) as you would like, so it’s important to have a feel beforehand for how shallow your depth of field is going to be.<br>

Then, prepare to use slower shutter speeds by bringing a tripod (preferable) or monopod (less preferable) to the church.<br>

With faster lens(es), a tripod, and a flash on hand, you will be better prepared to deal with whatever the situation demands.<br>

Best of luck,<br>

John</p>

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<p>The B&W tip is correct.<br>

John</p>

<p>Hi Ellery,<br /> You state in your post: “…assume with the question that my lens is the only option as it is” and that flash will not be allowed. That leaves just the shutter speed and ISO. I feel that most of the advice so far has concentrated on pushing the shutter speed too low, and not pushing the ISO high enough. Let me quote from a DP Review article titled: “Nikon D90 plus hands-on preview, Wednesday, 27 August 2008”: “The extremely wide sensitivity range of ISO 200 to 3200 delivers incredibly low-noise throughout” (see http://www.dpreview.com/news/0808/08082702nikond90previewed.asp ). Couple this with the facts that: a) noise is not nearly as apparent on paper prints as it is on screen, b) noise reduction software is quite effective at reducing noise, albeit with some slight loss of fine detail, and c) most customers are not bothered by noise nearly as much as photographers. On the other hand, motion blur is going to bother everyone, and can be improved in post-production only very slightly. My advice is to try a practice session with your camera in a low-light room, similar to the kind of lighting you expect at the venue, and use 3200 and 6400 ISO settings. It is important, at this level, that you not underexpose. Raising the exposure in post-production really increases the noise a lot, and should be avoided. Then, run your photos through some noise reduction software, such as Noise Ninja. Then, print out a few shots. I think you’ll be favorably surprised. If you are, you can consider using much faster shutter speeds, and decreasing your chance of motion blur.<br /> A final suggestion: in many cases where “flash is not allowed”, the rule applies only to the ceremony itself, and flash may well be allowed for the procession and recession. Since that’s when motion (and shutter speed) is the greatest problem, it’s worth double checking about this restriction.<br /> Best of luck,<br /> John</p>

<p>I guess I'm the only one bothered by the light reflection on the tip of her nose, but if it were me, I'd remove it.</p>

<p>The small web version looks sharp on my monitor, but if you're having focus problems with the setup you described, I would put it down to the shutter speed being too slow. Increase the ISO, and get your shutter speed up to about 1/100 or 1/125, and hand-shaking focus blur will disappear.</p>

<p>There are two more concerns that you may want to consider. First, the guests may assume that this photographer works for you, and/or that the photos being shown on the slide show are from you and represent the quality of your work. If the DJ photographer is a jerk, or the slide show photos are bad, it may damage your reputation. Second, guests may get tired of having the picture taken repeatedly. What do you do when you arrive and the guests say: "No more pictures! We've already had our pictures taken by the other guy!"<br>

John</p>

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<p>Lots of things can go wrong as you photograph a wedding, and one responsibility of a paid professional is to have the redundancy of equipment that will enable you to survive the failure of one or more critical items. With your limited budget, however, I feel you’re going to have to make a choice between having secondary (backup) equipment, and having good enough primary equipment to get the job done.<br>

In my opinion, if you're not being paid, just starting out, on a tight budget, and the bride and groom know all this, the risk of failure of equipment without backups is a risk the bride and groom should assume.<br>

A ceremony that is “outdoors at sunset” will have lighting problems, even if they start on time, and so often things start later than planned, and the light is really dim. In addition, you anticipate “Dancing with Dim lights”. Both these difficult lighting situations mean you should have a camera with as high ISO capability as fits your budget (that would be a 20D), a good quality flash (that would be the 580ex I), a mid-range zoom to be the workhorse for the wedding (such as a 24-70mm f2.8), and a lens that will help with really low-light situations (such as a 50mm f1.4). If you decide to continue in wedding photography, all of these will be useful. I haven’t done the math, but my guess is that this combination would be within your budget limitations. Start requiring back-up camera, back-up flash and back-up lenses, and the limited budget will mean that the quality of each and every item will be inadequate to do the job.<br>

John</p>

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A year or two ago, there were a lot of posts about Lexar cards failing in Canon cameras (I use Nikons), and Lexar eventually published card number series that were the culprit, and could be returned for replacement. Since then, I haven't heard anything, so I assume the problem has been solved. The other instances of failure that I've heard have (mostly) been successfully resolved by using various disk rescue software. I personally have never had a card fail, either Lexar or Sandisk.

John