Archiver
Veteran
That's lovely.
I hear the Distagon 35 with M9 is a killer combination. 😄 And the speed of the M9 means that you'll only have about 1100 photos to sort through afterwards.
Shooting another wedding this weekend
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DownUnder
Vamoosed (for a while)
You sure are one big s****r for punishment...
Joking, I am, of course. I am the first to agree that weddings if approached with the right mindset (and of course the proper gear) can be enjoyable AND productive. A happy bride is, well, a happy bride. Much good karma then flows your way. And repeat invitations from guests who have seen your images, and liked them.
Obviously you are not charging for this event. Nor would I. That way if disaster strikes (as it can and sometimes does), you can always fall back on, "but I offered to do it for free!" and keep your head on your neck.
Remember my good advice about champagne. I speak from much past experience in this.
Joking, I am, of course. I am the first to agree that weddings if approached with the right mindset (and of course the proper gear) can be enjoyable AND productive. A happy bride is, well, a happy bride. Much good karma then flows your way. And repeat invitations from guests who have seen your images, and liked them.
Obviously you are not charging for this event. Nor would I. That way if disaster strikes (as it can and sometimes does), you can always fall back on, "but I offered to do it for free!" and keep your head on your neck.
Remember my good advice about champagne. I speak from much past experience in this.
Archiver
Veteran
The worst thing was that I committed to this wedding at the beginning of the year, but only three weeks before the wedding, I was invited to shoot an event in Adelaide for $1700. And they would have flown me there and put me in a decent hotel, on top of my payment. It strongly crossed my mind to ditch the wedding and go to Adelaide, but this was a family wedding, probably the last in my generation, and therefore the last wedding of my generation that I would get to capture. Sooo yeah. Still a little salty, but the bride loves her photos, and I got a surprise monetary gift, so all was not lost.
Freakscene
Obscure member
Adelaide!?
01:07
“Never live in Adelaide, it’s a hole” 🤣
I live in Adelaide.
How long was the event in Adelaide - i.e. how many hours would you have needed to be there? How much post processing would you have needed to do? $1700 could be a good deal or a bad one, depending.
Archiver
Veteran
😆
As an aside, if you're in Adelaide and like Italian food, I recommend La Trattoria on King William St, and Prezzo on Hutt Street. Only been to those a couple of times, but they were excellent. La Trattoria is a very traditional old school Italian place, Prezzo has modern mood lighting and looks awesome at night.
Single day event, approximately five to six hours. Postprocessing another few hours after returning to Melbourne. Such things result in 1200-2500 images to cull to 250-300 with digital delivery, my usual keeper rate for sporting events. I would have been in the air the day before and after the event, so block out three days, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. $1700 isn't bad for what is essentially a weekend away and shooting something I enjoy.
By comparison, a local wedding photographer who shoots for the whole day usually charges $3800-4200 over here, but that's a wedding, they're expected to be expensive, and they come with a bunch of stringent requirements like 'make sure you get Aunty Mable' and other such nonsense that I never want to deal with.
Freakscene
Obscure member
John Safran is funny. For anyone who looks at this, Australian humour relies heavily on sarcastic parody, so don’t take any of it too seriously.
I am familiar with both. The food here is generally just excellent. One of the best Italian places, Enzo’s Ristorante, closed this year after operating for decades.
That’s not bad. Weddings are very hard to do well without a second photographer, and generally require a lot of processing work, so the higher cost is justified.
DownUnder
Vamoosed (for a while)
Eight THOUSAND images?? Gosh. You win the loving cup, for sure.
Did you PP them all, and if so, how long did it take? And did you post them all online?
We are all madly curious to find out...
DownUnder
Vamoosed (for a while)
What, Enzo's is gone?!? What is the world coming to?!?
I know a few dedicated Italophiles who have told me said they would travel to Adelaide to eat at Enzo's. Seriously.
On my (admittedly very few) visits to your faire burghe, I always made time to dine there. Magnificent is a small compliment for their truly outstanding food.
As for weddings, in multicultural Australia the wedding reception menu is always of the utmost importance. As I have already said I am most definitely not a wedding photographer, but I've enjoyed taking candids of the guests as they gustatorially* indulged themselves. My very best images were usually made after everyone had a few glasses of champagne - but I have written enough about this drink, so enough said.
* Finally I have used this term for the first time ever in my long career as a writer...
Freakscene
Obscure member
Yes, Enzo’s is gone. Whenever I have been away I really crave going there as soon as we got back. We chose where to buy property in part to be near Enzo’s. A friend did work in the kitchen and has shown us quite a few tricks now that they are gone. It’s feasible to do it all yourself, but the time is elusive.
Yes, we’re looking for a new favourite.
Nice word. I always avoid drinking when I’m photographing. It messes with my ability to focus in more ways than one.
Archiver
Veteran
I'm not @Benjamin Marks but I have shot 11,000 images over the course of a four day event. The editing was monstrous. It takes about a work day to wade through 2000 images, so that job took the better part of a week. My hit rate for sports events is 10-15% if I'm using a DSLR/mirrorless, and close 65-70% if shooting with digital rangefinder. I take different kinds of images with the M9. But all the images add up over the course of an event. I've learned to curb my trigger finder and shoot more parsimoniously, so a day event where I may have shot 2200 images in the past becomes 800-1000 if I'm being careful, and my keeper rate goes way up. Shutter discipline, I suppose.
I import all raws into Lightroom, then apply a custom preset that makes colours that please me. I flick through images after images with the arrow keys until I find something that I think either works, or can be cropped and manipulated into something that works. Then I make individual adjustmets and export that image. Rinse and repeat for the whole lot.
Benjamin Marks
Veteran
I whittled the 8K down to about 600 as a first pass. At 5 fps you get a lot of near duplicates! I too import into LR and then make general tweaks there. If you want to have a look,the 600 are here:
Nora & Steven - June 8, 2024 - Marks Imaging LLC
It took me about three days to do that initial cut. I will whittle them down to 125 or so for a book for the bride and groom, and they will get nearly all the raw files (minus those with blinking, chewing, and sneezing) and a full set of jpgs (ordinary folks don't really know what to do with those honking huge files). The images were shot over a period of two days, and by the end, the light and I were nearly out of gas.
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DownUnder
Vamoosed (for a while)
I am still amazed. Thousand of images of one event only? A presidential assassination attempt, yes, maybe. A wedding. Oi!!
Editing more than 100 images in one session sends me racing for a corkscrew, a stemmed glass and a good South Australia Limestone Coast cabernet sauvignon.
Editing more than 100 images in one session sends me racing for a corkscrew, a stemmed glass and a good South Australia Limestone Coast cabernet sauvignon.
Benjamin Marks
Veteran
Well, this is a kid I have known since she was little. And her parents are dear friends. My approach was to over-shoot and then edit like mad. Cameras these days capture so many images in a burst that it actually doesn't take long to get to 1,000. Electrons are cheap. I bought a really big card for the camera and just figured I'd be able to find some gems. Like you, when I use a Leica it is fewer images and a higher percentage of good ones. But it was a once-in-a lifetime event, and I don't have enough confidence to go to a wedding and be sure that each shot (or every other shot) was a keeper. Paranoia? Maybe. But the kids are delighted with the result so far.
I have left the pictures to sit for a month now, and I feel like I have enough perspective to approach them with a little objectivity. They are definitely not all book-worthy. But I will get there.
Cascadilla
Well-known
You should be in good shape for equipment, but I would make sure to bring extra batteries for both camera and flash, and extra memory cards as well. When I shot weddings professionally I always showed up with duplicates for everything that was essential, so you might consider renting copies of what you already own so that you are familiar with how everything works. My only other suggestion would be a longer lens for shots during the ceremony. I used to use a fast 200 a lot for that so I didn't have to be up front and blocking the views of other people at the ceremony.
Benjamin Marks
Veteran
Just to update my post above: I did this for a friend's daughter last summer. My advice: give some thought to the format in which you will be turning over the pics.
In my case, I gave the married couple a hard drive with a) all the RAW files (edited for nose-picking and blinking), b) JPGs of my first-pass pick of 600 pics out of the 6,000 shot, and c) JPGs the 125 final images. I also posted the first pass pix to my Smugmug page for downloading by any guests who wanted copies, and printed a Blurb book for the families. I am certainly not saying that this shower of free stuff is the way to go. This was my wedding gift to the couple. I have known the bride since she was five years old, and am a sentimental old coot. My own sense is that a paper-bound book will have a longer life in practical terms than the digital files, and that's how I wanted my best work of the day remembered. Obviously, folks will disagree about that. But I was happy with the outcome.
In my case, I gave the married couple a hard drive with a) all the RAW files (edited for nose-picking and blinking), b) JPGs of my first-pass pick of 600 pics out of the 6,000 shot, and c) JPGs the 125 final images. I also posted the first pass pix to my Smugmug page for downloading by any guests who wanted copies, and printed a Blurb book for the families. I am certainly not saying that this shower of free stuff is the way to go. This was my wedding gift to the couple. I have known the bride since she was five years old, and am a sentimental old coot. My own sense is that a paper-bound book will have a longer life in practical terms than the digital files, and that's how I wanted my best work of the day remembered. Obviously, folks will disagree about that. But I was happy with the outcome.
raid
Dad Photographer
WOW! This sounds like a complicated process with lots of equipment being used.
I did a few weddings many years ago and before I got any digital cameras. I used a Rolleiflex 2.8D and a Mamiya 645E with one lens (obviously) with film. I used a flash with a battery pack and a back-up flash with AA batteries. That's it.
I did a few weddings many years ago and before I got any digital cameras. I used a Rolleiflex 2.8D and a Mamiya 645E with one lens (obviously) with film. I used a flash with a battery pack and a back-up flash with AA batteries. That's it.
Ask for someone that knows most of the guests to point them out, ask if they want pictures with the bride and groom. Try to get pictures of the family elders that may not be as likely to draw attention to themselves.
Archiver
Veteran
My first full frame DSLR was a 5D Mark II, and I do have a 430EX, but I hardly use it because I favour natural light photography and the use of an off-camera LED light if necessary. So here's my two cents:
Set the camera to Shutter priority (Tv) and make the shutter at least 1/800 in daylight and 1/320 indoors
Set the ISO to Auto with a maximum of 3200
Set the camera to shoot in Raw (I assume you use Lightroom or Canon DPP for processing)
If you shoot jpeg, set to Fine L, and set the profile to Natural so you can Photoshop later without a hard baked-in look
Set exposure mode to Matrix metering
Set to Centre point focus, aim the centre point at the subject, acquire focus, and then recompose while holding the focus, and shoot. 5D Mark II focus points outside of the centre are quite unreliable.
Practice at home before the event. Take photos in daylight, shaded daylight, and indoors using the shutter speeds I recommended, and see how they turn out in terms of exposure. The point of using 1/800 in daylight and 1/320 indoors is to freeze action. 1/320 isn't the most freezy for indoors, but unless they are whipping around the dance floor, you'll get mostly in focus images. Practice dialing shutter speed up and down so you get the exposure right.
If you're shooting in areas with very little light, you'll find the 5D Mark II's autofocus will fail regularly. The 430EX will come in handy here, but as I hardly use it, I can't tell you much more than aim it upwards so the light bounces off the ceiling. There are any number of Speedlite tutorials on YouTube that will help if you go down that path.
Bring at least one spare battery and memory card if you have them.
Don't be afraid to shoot everything and anything so you get a sense for shooting an event. Many pictures will increase your chance of getting keepers. Spray and pray is your friend in this situation.
Use the neck strap, because the last thing you want is some kid running into your arm, and the camera hitting the cake or concrete.
Shoot wide angle images of the venues and groups, close ups of the dinner place cards and details like the rings, 70mm candid portraits of everyone, and get comfortable with asking people if they want a photo. If they say yes, smile and shoot. You've got the big camera, they will fall in line because they expect you to take photos. At the same time, shoot without asking. Just take photos when people are talking or dancing. Don't shoot people when they are eating, no one likes to have a photo of them with a fork sticking out of their mouth.
One issue that I mentioned earlier is the 'but what about Uncle Harold' nonsense. I don't even know who Uncle Harold is, let alone whether I shot him or not. Ask the bride and groom who the relatives and close friends are outside of the bridal party. Parents of the bride, parents of the groom, that kind of thing. The bridal party will be self evident, but there are usually relatives and close friends who aren't in it. Make sure you get them.
For inspiration, look at work by Jeff Ascough:
Jeff Ascough | World’s Best Wedding Photography
and Dennis Berti:
They are some of the best wedding photographers I have seen.
Hope this helps for the technical stuff. Shoot and keep shooting, relax and have fun. Let us know how you go.
Shab
Veteran
Reading this thread I have remenbered the days when a friend came to ask to make a wedding reportage to a very special couple for her... those days I was making weddings and I used a DSLR system with its zooms + flash... but before the wedding I liked to know the couple before so I used to be with them one afternoon, with my cameras+lenses etc... and in this case, when I knew the couple and I was with them I knew that I couldn't make my job as usual... they were different in many aspects, so I decided to take the X100 with me in the wedding day, only the X100 (with some batteries and cards). Nothing more.
It was an incredible experience... at first they looked at me and asked where did I have my BIG cameras... I explained them my feelings and intuition about them... and all began to flow with a sweet smile in their eyes.
In the beggining of the day, familiars and friends asked about the official photographer... because they looking for a guy with big cameras and lenses... 🙂
When some weeks later I gave them the fruit of my work... it also was incredible.
I know, it isn't for every wedding, but is one of my greatest photographic experience... hope you will find your way with this wedding. And enjoy it...
It was an incredible experience... at first they looked at me and asked where did I have my BIG cameras... I explained them my feelings and intuition about them... and all began to flow with a sweet smile in their eyes.
In the beggining of the day, familiars and friends asked about the official photographer... because they looking for a guy with big cameras and lenses... 🙂
When some weeks later I gave them the fruit of my work... it also was incredible.
I know, it isn't for every wedding, but is one of my greatest photographic experience... hope you will find your way with this wedding. And enjoy it...
Archiver
Veteran
Back in the original X100 days, Brian Kraft shot his Hawaii holiday with his X100, and was a second shooter at a wedding with it, too. Zack Arias was an avid X100 user, and said that he would do weddings with it on the condition that he got to shoot it his way. Allowing for style and expectations, a X100 or other fast 35mm equivalent camera could shoot weddings perfectly.
