Need some serious suggestions for a night/evening wedding

JulieLawsonPhotography

I have been asked to do an evening wedding in Mansfield next week. Here is the details. Both have been married before, so they want a private ceremony. Just them, the two children, justice of the peace and me and my assistant. Very small. She told me that she will be wearing a black evening dress. They want to do the formal portraits before the wedding and the wedding itself should be lit by lanterns. I did do some test shots with my niece the other night. I know I will have to use my tripod. All I have at the moment is the 18-55 and 55-200mm lens. I meet with the bride today and am going to strongly, but sweetly ask that we do the portraits just before sunset...around 7:30 my time. I think I can get some pretty portraits in that light. For those not familiar with Mansfield, it's a pretty open area so I think I will get some good light even for the evening, I think. My friend did a wedding earlier this year and they did some creative portraits outside and she used the flash straight on............and they looked very neat.

They are very set on a moonlit wedding, which, if the moon is out I have an idea for a portrait done with long exposures. I am going to tell her that when I do some of the portraits, they can't move.

I'm rambling, ugh, sorry.......strobist type light aren't an option as I don't have the budget to rent that stuff, nor the time to practice it. So, here are my test shots, don't cc the poses, though.

exif data
5.6 1/6 ISO 400


Shot in manual mode, same exif data as above pic


same info as above. I did do some dodging of the background to bring out more "light" in the background. Obviously, I need to work on that technique to make it look more natural to my eyes, at least.


5.6 1/60 ISO 400 Aperature Priority mode


same exif data as above photo


Can anyone offer some advice?

Thanks in advance,
Julie

Scott_Quier

For the ceremony, I might suggest you rent a lens or two (check here for a couple of places). The Sigma 30 f/1.4 and/or the Canon EF 50 f/1.4 would both be good choices. Then use them stopped down to about f/2 and you'll have a winning combination. This will/may allow you to get decent shutter speeds during a lamp lit ceremony:D

Because your group shots are going to be quite small, you might be able to get away with a shallower DOF there as well. Either way, the IQ of the photos produced with the two primes will so far out-shine your kit lens, you won't believe the difference.

Swartzy

A couple ideas Julie. Don't be afraid to get your ISO up (yes more noise but will be great if exposed properly). At a higher ISO, your flash won't have to work as hard and you'll gain better command of the ambient light/flash mix. By lowering your shutter speed, more ambient light will fill the frame.

Also, if you have a reflector, you can have the assistant hold it off to your side and bounce your flash off that towards your subjects. Interesting lighting direction results. Twilight is tough. Using a faster lens as Scott suggested will help with the entire shoot. Dependent on focal length (how far you are from your subjects) you can get away with wide aperatures. F/2.8 can grab a scene very sharp if it's a good lens and affords you the ability to manage ambient/flash mix much easier.

The examples here are nice and sharp, although the light is dead on. Using a diffuser such as a better bounce card aimed at a reflective source (that's where the assistant can really help) will give some interesting light. Don't be afraid to try some different lighting/angles and such. You'd be amazed at what this attempt will produce.

david_h

I'd agree 100% with the advice above. You need to use a pretty fast lens and crank up the ISO. I've not used a D40, but I'm sure it's fine to at least ISO1600. Use that with an F1.4 or F1.8 lens (which you should have in your collection if you want to shoot weddings) and you're good to go.

Anyway, I'd use manual mode or your exposures will be all over the place (don't go below 1/30 for the shutter speed) and use your flash (I assume SB800) in i-TTL mode, dialed down as low as it will go - you can check your histogram to see if you need to tweak it up a bit. Outside, it's fine to use the flash straight on - dialing to the lowest setting will help avoid that fake flash look. You will obviously be shooting in RAW because you might need to make some little adjustments to exposure and white balance when post processing.

Sounds like it will be fun.

JulieLawsonPhotography

david_h wrote:

I'd agree 100% with the advice above. You need to use a pretty fast lens and crank up the ISO. I've not used a D40, but I'm sure it's fine to at least ISO1600. Use that with an F1.4 or F1.8 lens (which you should have in your collection if you want to shoot weddings) and you're good to go.

Anyway, I'd use manual mode or your exposures will be all over the place (don't go below 1/30 for the shutter speed) and use your flash (I assume SB800) in i-TTL mode, dialed down as low as it will go - you can check your histogram to see if you need to tweak it up a bit. Outside, it's fine to use the flash straight on - dialing to the lowest setting will help avoid that fake flash look. You will obviously be shooting in RAW because you might need to make some little adjustments to exposure and white balance when post processing.

Sounds like it will be fun.

Thanks all for the advice. She and I are meeting Saturday night at the time the portraits will be so that I can test the lighting with her. She is so easy going, which is great. I did some great bit of news. I was calling around to lens rental places and all were too out of what I wanted to spend. So, I called a friend of mine that has her own studio asking if any of her other photog friends that shoot with nikon had a 50mm lens that I could "rent" from them. I know that was bold, but I really needed to rent or borrow this lens for this wedding. Anyway, she says, "I have two canon, one is a 30D and it has the 50mm 1.8, I'll let you borrow that" How cool is that?! She is going to let me pick it up on monday so that I can practice with it monday night, tues and wednesday and then shoot the wedding on Thursday. She shot in a similar situation last year where there was only one light source and she said that she cranked that baby to 3200 ISO. The couple apparently loved the look.

You know I'll be posting pictures when all is said and done. If anyone has anymore advice.......please give it to me.

Scott_Quier

JulieLawsonPhotography wrote:

Anyway, she says, "I have two canon, one is a 30D and it has the 50mm 1.8, I'll let you borrow that" How cool is that?! She is going to let me pick it up on monday so that I can practice with it monday night, tues and wednesday and then shoot the wedding on Thursday.

You'll have to let us know how the testing goes. The copy of the 1.8 I had was slow and inaccurate focusing in darker environs. I've read where others have had the same problem. I hope the copy you get to borrow performs better for you.

JulieLawsonPhotography

Scott_Quier wrote:

You'll have to let us know how the testing goes. The copy of the 1.8 I had was slow and inaccurate focusing in darker environs. I've read where others have had the same problem. I hope the copy you get to borrow performs better for you.

Oh, that makes me nervous......well, we'll see. My niece is going to let me practice with her monday night or tuesday. we'll see what happens. I can only pray that it will do what I need for it to do.

Scott_Quier

JulieLawsonPhotography wrote:

Oh, that makes me nervous......well, we'll see. My niece is going to let me practice with her monday night or tuesday. we'll see what happens. I can only pray that it will do what I need for it to do.

That's why I mentioned it - so that you can be aware of the common performance characteristics of that lens - so you wouldn't be surprised by it. There's a reason why it only costs about $80.

heatherfeather

Scott_Quier wrote:

You'll have to let us know how the testing goes. The copy of the 1.8 I had was slow and inaccurate focusing in darker environs. I've read where others have had the same problem. I hope the copy you get to borrow performs better for you.

It is such a pain in really dark situations. I hope you find something to use as a backup. I found it was just too slow for what I needed it for, though loved the look- when it worked.

JulieLawsonPhotography

heatherfeather wrote:

It is such a pain in really dark situations. I hope you find something to use as a backup. I found it was just too slow for what I needed it for, though loved the look- when it worked.

Well, I'm bringing my Nikon and my 18-55 and 55-200mm lenses. I'm thinking that I was going to use the Canon for the actual ceremony because I can bump the ISO really high. Will this lens be able to accomodate that without flash or is it going to be a pain? I'm just going to have to practice with it Monday night with one light lit outside and see what happens. I will have a better idea which camera to use for what once I am able to test them both out.

crockett

JulieLawsonPhotography wrote:

Well, I'm bringing my Nikon and my 18-55 and 55-200mm lenses. I'm thinking that I was going to use the Canon for the actual ceremony because I can bump the ISO really high. Will this lens be able to accomodate that without flash or is it going to be a pain? I'm just going to have to practice with it Monday night with one light lit outside and see what happens. I will have a better idea which camera to use for what once I am able to test them both out.

3200 ISO on Canon 30D....? Definately, please do some test shooting. I've done a fair amount of high school sports shooting with a Canon 30D to help out a friend. We are constantly living in the ISO 1600 f1.8 - f2.2 land (If we're lucky). We usually shoot at f2.8 in RAW and proposely underexpose and correct in post. We won't touch ISO 3200, for us its always been mud.
ISO 1600 is bad enough, but the noise reduction software out there can work wonders (we use Noise Ninja).

Another point is if you do shoot ISO3200, make sure your exposure is spot on. The closer you can get to a perfect exposure the less noise you have to deal with.

The 50mm f1.8 in low light is a searcher. The two I've tried in low light have made me want to pull my hair out.

I just read a great tip on another board about a wedding photog who tapes one of those larger projection laser pointers (not tiny speck ones but the kind that can make shapes) on top of his flash bracket and he swears all of his Canon lenses focus extrememly fast, accurate and reliably using the laser spot as a reference. I've never tried it myself but I will if the situation ever arises.

My 85mm f1.8 can be a dog in low light at times. Very frustrating. The 2 50mm f1.8's I tried were even worse.

InsuredDisaster

I've been told by some that the sigma 30 1.4 looks very sharp even wide open. It may have some focusing issues (mine did) but if it works for you, it might be a good thing if you can get one in the future. They are a tad costly through.