wedding backup on film

[matteiflex]

Hi all,
So I was asked as a friend of a friend to photograph a wedding. Usual thing, Bride has no money- blah blah blah . I would really appreciate your thoughts the equipment I intend to use.
Main body Nikon D700 / 50mm 1.8g /35mm 1.8g / 105mm 2.5 ai /SB700.
Back up body ??????? Am I mad to use film? I have a leica m2 and a rolleiflex and tri-x.
As an old guy I have more years spent with these film cameras than digital. Also I find I can print as easy from each medium...so I could give the bride a few of 8x10 or A4's as well as a disk of scans/digital edits.
Just am I mad to even consider using film and vintage cameras?
Thanks for any help.

 

[Jon Buffington]

A wedding I shot last fall, I used my canon 7ne, canon A1, and leice iiif along with my 5dmkii. Though the 5dmkii was the main body, I found the images from my 7ne (loaded with portra 400) and my iiif (loaded with triX then hp5+) to be much more pleasing. I ended up using a lot of them in the final online album. I would say your not mad. Use what you like and what you are comfortable with.

Example from the wedding on the portra/7ne and one from the leica iiif/hp5+

 

[matteiflex]

Thanks for the advice Jon, Good couple of photo's there.
Nice to know you have successfully done what I was thinking of.
You know my wife always says my film photo's look "better" than my digital prints, no matter how good I think they are.
The Portra shot looks really nice. I think i'll use some for this upcoming wedding.

 

[Jon Buffington]

That was portra 400 rated at 200, developed at home with a unicolor c-41 kit and scanned on a Kodak pakon f135+

 

[matteiflex]

Wow, good work Jon. How does portra respond for you rated @200? It looks great in the photo above.

 

[Jon Buffington]

I like it at 200. It has such a wide exposure latitude that I purposely shoot at 200 or greater in this situation. I would rather overexpose than underexpose so less to worry about in tricky lighting situations where the meter maybe fooled and underexpose. In practice, I could compensate but in a wedding, I tend to be rushed and concentrating more on other things so can make exposure errors.

 

[Russ]

I always overexpose my Portra films by 1/3 a stop (160 @ 125 and 400 @ 320) and it always delivers superb results. Portra 400 is an amazing film. Especially when you consider it's speed. These are Portra 400 snaps, with no post processing.