how were things done back in the day?

[iridium7777]

two weeks ago one of my girlfriend's best friends got married; i guess she liked some of my general pictures that i take as a hobby and asked if i'd take pictures from the reception on.

i agreed and brought my dslr. as much as i wanted to shoot with leica i didn't trust myself especially since she agreed to pay a small fee.

so i did it, the pictures came out well, everyone liked them and everyone's happy. but, two realizations. one-- things are so much easier now, with auto focus, auto metering, fill flash, turn the knob and crack up your iso, crop, adjust, brighten, rotate... all with a couple clicks or menus.... to be really good back in the day, you really really had to be good.

i figured this would be a good pool of people to ask here -- is there a "pro" that back in the day, or even still today, done any wedding work with a film leica? i would love to see these pictures. what assortment of film did you use? what lens? external flash or no? hell, even if you did stuff with a manual slr i would love to see some pictures and read about it.

if this is posted in the wrong section, please move it but i think, or at least hope, we'll see some good pictures and get some discussion out of this.

 

[swoop]

I shoot with film for 98% of the stuff I do. I know what the image looks like when I click the shutter. It comes with knowledge, skill, and experience. I guess "back in the day" (which was a Wednesday, btw) you either knew what you were doing. Or you didn't do it.

 

[RFOBD]

I wasn't around back in the day, but I imagine that people's expectations of great pictures weren't nearly as high as they are today. Wedding photography was also probably not nearly as popular. I feel that there has been a recent boom in wedding photography in recent years.

 

[photogdave]

I just shot a wedding with a 35mm rangefinder and a 645 rangefinder, all on film. It was a friend and I was a guest, so I wasn't doing the full-blown paid wedding gig. I intend to do a post on the experience once I've scanned some of the images.
I have done paid weddings with film and digital SLRs and I find SLRS to be the better choice for the paid gig. But for a guest also doing photos, RFs are great.

 

[iridium7777]

I shoot with film for 98% of the stuff I do. I know what the image looks like when I click the shutter. It comes with knowledge, skill, and experience. I guess "back in the day" (which was a Wednesday, btw) you either knew what you were doing. Or you didn't do it.

do you mind posting some of your wedding pictures? what film were you using?

 

[BillBingham2]

I shot about 20 weddings back in the mid '80s all with Leicas. I used a Vivitar 283 with an external battery pack for power, off camera flash, remote sensor on the hotshoe and a 35/2 'Cron. Some times I used a 90/2, but 90% was with the 35. It went very well over all, everyone loved the shots. I found that in dark rooms when I used flash I could see the expression on faces when the flash went off. Kind of like an LCD would give you on a DSLR today. While I got paid for them, it was not keeping food on the table money. I gave the people the film and 4X6 prints of everything and told them where to go to get good prints made. I made about $250 to $300 each time and it kept me in GAS money (which might not be a bad idea for that today to help pay for gas!).

Sorry I do not have any of the old stuff any more, it all went back to the customer.

B2 (;->

 

[iridium7777]

Wedding photography was popular, but an album might have had only 12 or 24 prints in it. Couples didn't have unlimited budgets for photos ($10,000 for photos is not that unusual these days). Film and processing and printing cost real money, so pros didn't shoot as much because they couldn't charge outrageous prices for a day of shooting.

Modern times.

i can see what you're saying, albums being smaller. these days "pictures" don't cost anything but hd space. since i wasn't doing prints and was just handing over digital images i didn't really worry about that aspect of cost. but even these days, 35 cents for a regular picture about 2.99$ for 8x10 considering budgets of 1500$ for weddings there must be a huge markup.

i guess another thing that i noticed was the iso. you know, just turn it and you've just changed your "film" these days. i suppose back then to make things easier on yourself you probably carried around two bodies loaded with two different films? or did people only use say 12 exposure films so they could switch them out quicker?

 

[RichardB]

'Back in the day', late 60's and early 70's, many weddings were shot with SLR's and 35mm negative film for economy reasons. There were companies such as 'Monkey Color' that would process your film, print everything in 5x7 or whatever size you wanted and even supply you with albums, all for one reasonable price. I moslt used this ervice because of the pricing. I also did a couple of weddings in K25 and they were the best of all for picture quality.
I used two Nikon F's with Honeywell 800 strobes that were supplied from 510V battery packs so you didn't have to worry about flash batteries. Mostly I used a 24mm 2.8 and a 135mm 2.8 lens. Quality was good and price was attractive to the buyer. At one time I even purchased the Nikkor 45mm GN lens.
Last year I did two weddings for a friends children with Leica M7, M6, 35 Summilux ASPH, 75mm and 90mm ASPH lense and SF24D flash using Kodachrome 64 and K200.
TTL flash is certainly easier to use than the old non-auto flash and the M7 with SF24D is a dream, but one still needs to focus and shots up and down the aisle require either zone focusing or rapid manipulation of focus.
All in all, the current weddings were as good as anyting I did 30+ years ago and the Kodachrome far out classed anything in 35 mm to this day other than the K25.
One of the weddings had a commercial digital photogrpher present, who philosphy was to shoot often. He had to be restrained by the server at one point during the Communion. The pictures were to a fault shot from every which angle and had no backgrounds with right angles. Exposure were good and focus was generally good but one got queasy looking at the pictures. The contrast was so evident between his pictures and mine, that I was asked to be the sole photographer at the next wedding.

35mm Summilux ASPH f1.4 K200 M7(AUTO)

The use of digital, autofocusing and TTL Auto-Exposure along with zooms has made the actual buttom pressing so easy that it appears that a generation of photographers and brides/grooms have not experienced looking at wedding photogrphs that are well composed and with some artistry.-Dick

 

[f/stopblues]

I'm fairly certain he has switched to digital now, but this wedding photog used to shoot with a Mamiya 7II (or one of those models) until fairly recently. His name is Josef Isayo and his stuff is spectacular! Here's his site, though I'm sorry I have no idea which ones are digi and which are RF film: josefisayo.com It's the first wedding photog site that I have gone back for repeated viewings.

 

[payasam]

Back when there were only manual cameras and flashes, with practice the settings most often used came almost without thought. I still do well enough with an M2 and a manual flash.

 

[iridium7777]

I only use leicas and rolleis when shooting weddings -- just a few samples

where there's plenty of light yeah, leica's absolutely fine. my question would be when you're doing the reception, or a dance floor around 9pm where the only light comes off some strobe lights off the dance floor to capture images.

with manual focus, especially on the tiny patch in the dim light one either has to be lucky or really good to compose and fire away and still get the shot.

i guess if there's a flash then that's different because of larger f-stop you can use and then you can guess the distance and get lucky?

 

[waileong]

?

?

i figured this would be a good pool of people to ask here -- is there a "pro" that back in the day, or even still today, done any wedding work with a film leica? i would love to see these pictures. what assortment of film did you use? what lens? external flash or no? hell, even if you did stuff with a manual slr i would love to see some pictures and read about it.

if this is posted in the wrong section, please move it but i think, or at least hope, we'll see some good pictures and get some discussion out of this.

It's a misconception that DSLR's give you better pictures because you get feedback and adjust in real-time.

The reality is things happen so fast in a wedding, you don't have time to look at your LCD.

"Back in the day"... If you mean the 80's, autofocus, auto-metering, TTL flash, auto-rewind-- all were already available then. While they may not be as sophisticated as the film cameras of the 90's, they were good enough that you could trust them to deliver good pictures in P mode.

Auto metering and flash technology was already quite advanced even in the 70's, the only thing most cameras lacked then was autofocus, so pros had to learn to anticipate the action, pre-focus, do zone focusing, etc. What was lacking in the 70's was quality zoom lenses, so a lot of pros still relied on primes for better quality, which meant hanging two or three cameras with different focal lengths around the neck/shoulder was not unusual.

So the bottom line is, a pro must know his equipment and trust his equipment. There's no need and no time to constantly check your histograms. You shoot and shoot and shoot when you see the moment, and you must believe that your camera will get the exposure and focus right.

As for Leicas, there are still some wedding photographers around who do work with M6 and M7's, mainly in photojournalistic style. Google around for their interviews.

 

[maddoc]

I have seen some nice example photos from Chris Weeks a while ago. As I remember he used exclusively film Leica(s) and mostly BW film.

 

[furcafe]

Also, famed wedding photographer Jeff Ascough (http://jeffascough.net/) used to use film Leicas:

http://jeffascough.typepad.com/wpj_resource/equipment/index.html

He now uses Canon dSLRs as his primary cameras.

 

[telenous]

I only use leicas and rolleis when shooting weddings -- just a few samples

Same here - two Leica M bodies and a Rolleiflex with a couple of Vivitar auto flashes. But I am doing it as the sidekick of a pro who shoots with an EOS 5d. The Rollei always gives stunning photos.

 

[Riccis]

While 90% of my work is digital with M8s, the rest of my weddings are all shot with MPs and M7s. This past weekend's wedding I actually shot 100% with film with the 35 lux and 50 lux.

I know Josef Isayo and he is indeed a very talented wedding photographer.

BTW, you will find a good mix of film and digital M work on my site (below).

Cheers,

 

[bsdunek]

I did a lot of weddings in the 70's and 80's. My equipment was a Mamiya Press Super, 90mm f3.5 and 50mm f6.3 lenses, two backs and a Honeywell-Heiland model 65 flash. The Mamiya Press is a totally manual camera - even the film advance is seperate from the manually cocked shutter, and that old flash was not automatic in any way.
My favorite films were Tri-X in Acufine and Vericolor. Most couples wanted color.
This was a case of being very familiar with your equipment. You had 12 exposures (until 220 became available), and had to remember what aperature you were at so you could change it in the dark, going by the guide number of the flash. My wife would reload backs when necessary. You thought about capturing the 'moment', not about your camera. You learned to time your photos, not just use the 'spray' method.
As some have said, we didn't take 2000 photos - more like 200, including the reception. Albums were 10-20 photos. Two backs (24 exposure) sufficed for the ceremony, with a few available light during the actual service. I usuelly used one roll for each of the couple for pre-ceremony photos, and another two rolls for the formal post-ceremony photos. The rest were for the reception.
It was a lot of fun, I met lots of great people, and it helped pay for my habit. I still kept my day job!

 

[dandp]

where there's plenty of light yeah, leica's absolutely fine. my question would be when you're doing the reception, or a dance floor around 9pm where the only light comes off some strobe lights off the dance floor to capture images.

I've shot a number of weddings on film using M bodies and Nikon F5's. I've found that the M bodies are easier for me to work with in the dim conditions of the reception and dance floor when the lights are really low. I sometimes get a fair amount of AF searching, even with the Nikon Speedlights. I use the most dreaded of all leica lenses - Noctilux, and a 35 Summilux for the candids, etc.

Back in the day...at least for me that was the early '90's - I was using a Hassy, Vivitar 283 for the big stuff, and then various Nikon bodies for the candids. An F3 with motor was a nice combo. I've been doing a fair amount of second shooter work lately, documentary style with a Nikon D3. THAT camera....changes the game,.

 

[iridium7777]

"Back in the day"... If you mean the 80's, autofocus, auto-metering, TTL flash, auto-rewind-- all were already available then. While they may not be as sophisticated as the film cameras of the 90's, they were good enough that you could trust them to deliver good pictures in P mode.

Auto metering and flash technology was already quite advanced even in the 70's, the only thing most cameras lacked then was autofocus, so pros had to learn to anticipate the action, pre-focus, do zone focusing, etc. What was lacking in the 70's was quality zoom lenses, so a lot of pros still relied on primes for better quality, which meant hanging two or three cameras with different focal lengths around the neck/shoulder was not unusual.

So the bottom line is, a pro must know his equipment and trust his equipment. There's no need and no time to constantly check your histograms. You shoot and shoot and shoot when you see the moment, and you must believe that your camera will get the exposure and focus right.

As for Leicas, there are still some wedding photographers around who do work with M6 and M7's, mainly in photojournalistic style. Google around for their interviews.

i didn't know things were that advanced in the 80's. but thank you for your answer, it provided a lot of points that i was looking for. right, even in today's day i doubt if the guy was to check the screen after each shot nothing would come of it. the couple times that i've had a "paid" photoshoot, after the first couple shots looked decent in exposure i'd turn off the preview screen completely.

i guess what really made me think about all of it was the effortless auto focus of my dslr in very very dim light for a quick composition of an action shot. i'd compare that to driving an f1 car with a paddle shifter gearbox around a track and then getting into one where where you have to double clutch and trying to get the same action out of it...

with regards to post processing, i should probably take a dark room course somewhere because i have so many questions and am puzzled but how things were done before digital it's not even funny. 🙁

 

[iridium7777]

While 90% of my work is digital with M8s, the rest of my weddings are all shot with MPs and M7s. This past weekend's wedding I actually shot 100% with film with the 35 lux and 50 lux.

I know Josef Isayo and he is indeed a very talented wedding photographer.

BTW, you will find a good mix of film and digital M work on my site (below).

Cheers,

i've seen your work from another leica site, beautiful pictures.

as to josef isayo, i've looked through the 5 pages of weddings, and very very few pictures of his are "action shots". most are artsy, precomposed, steady shots where it looks like time is not an issue because the subject isn't going anywhere fast.