Help with Shooting a Wedding

Deadlock

Hi folks,

My sis is getting married in a few weeks and I’ve been asked to take some candid shots at the event and so would appreciate help with a couple of questions I have and any advice you would care to give me.

In terms of kit….I’ve just bought a 430EX for my 20D and am expecting delivery of a Gary Fong lightsphere in a few days – based on comments I’ve read here. For lenses, I have a canon 24-70L (which I imagine will be my standard lens for the event), a sigma 18-200, and Canon 100mm macro.

So, following the advice in other threads I read the excellent flash info at http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/

However, I still have a few questions…

Firstly, the camera has flash compensation to increase or decrease the power, but then so does the flash itself – so which should I use and why?

Secondly, I’m trying to figure out what sort of setting would be best used for a white wedding dress with a groom in black. The best results I’ve been getting so far (using some off-white curtains and the black fascia of a floor standing speaker) seem to be by doing the following:-
For a shot exposing for the couple and not the background set the Mode to ‘P’ (which tends to give a reading of 1/60 @ f4)
Set ISO to 400
Set evaluative metering
Set custom function 4 to 0
Add in +2/3 flash compensation on the camera
Press the asterisk button to get an exposure lock on the dress
Recompose the shot
Set the AF dot for the point to focus on
Press the shutter
Check the histogram for blown highlights and dial down the flash power if there are any.

For shots where I want to capture the ambience and background light, I’d set it to Av, dial in whatever I wanted for the aperture, use a tripod and repeat the above settings/procedure.

Ok so that’s what I’ve come up with after an hour or so of experimenting with my first flash. So please tell me what settings/procedures would be better to try and make sure I get well exposed shots of the wedding dress (and couple).

By the way, its in an old castle and its chapel so I’d imagine (though have still to check for myself) that lighting conditions will be pretty terrible. Its also worthwhile noting that I'm not going to be the pro - but he'll only be there for a short time and regardless, its not an excuse for not trying to get the best quality shots I can.

Thanks for all your help.

pathfinder

Deadlock wrote:

Hi folks,

My sis is getting married in a few weeks and I’ve been asked to take some candid shots at the event and so would appreciate help with a couple of questions I have and any advice you would care to give me.

In terms of kit….I’ve just bought a 430EX for my 20D and am expecting delivery of a Gary Fong lightsphere in a few days – based on comments I’ve read here. For lenses, I have a canon 24-70L (which I imagine will be my standard lens for the event), a sigma 18-200, and Canon 100mm macro.

So, following the advice in other threads I read the excellent flash info at http://photonotes.org/articles/eos-flash/

However, I still have a few questions…

Firstly, the camera has flash compensation to increase or decrease the power, but then so does the flash itself – so which should I use and why?

Secondly, I’m trying to figure out what sort of setting would be best used for a white wedding dress with a groom in black. The best results I’ve been getting so far (using some off-white curtains and the black fascia of a floor standing speaker) seem to be by doing the following:-
For a shot exposing for the couple and not the background set the Mode to ‘P’ (which tends to give a reading of 1/60 @ f4)
Set ISO to 400
Set evaluative metering
Set custom function 4 to 0
Add in +2/3 flash compensation on the camera
Press the asterisk button to get an exposure lock on the dress
Recompose the shot
Set the AF dot for the point to focus on
Press the shutter
Check the histogram for blown highlights and dial down the flash power if there are any.

For shots where I want to capture the ambience and background light, I’d set it to Av, dial in whatever I wanted for the aperture, use a tripod and repeat the above settings/procedure.

Ok so that’s what I’ve come up with after an hour or so of experimenting with my first flash. So please tell me what settings/procedures would be better to try and make sure I get well exposed shots of the wedding dress (and couple).

By the way, its in an old castle and its chapel so I’d imagine (though have still to check for myself) that lighting conditions will be pretty terrible. Its also worthwhile noting that I'm not going to be the pro - but he'll only be there for a short time and regardless, its not an excuse for not trying to get the best quality shots I can.

Thanks for all your help.

If you have been to the photonotes site, you are off to a good start.

Shooting brides gowns, and grooms tuxedoes, can be interesting as you are beginning to figure out. What do you meter off, white or dark. Or can you find a neutral gray card?:D

You might shoot in P, but that is not my first choice. 'P' ASSUMES that you do not want a shutter speed slower than 1/60th, and usually picks the largest aperture of your lens - ~f4. I strongly prefer to shoot with my camera in Manual mode with the flash set to ETTL. This will allow me to control my foreground to background lighting ratio, and to use the shutter speed of MY choice. YOu may find you want to shoot at f5.6 or even f8 at times. I do not like to shoot groups at f4, somebody always seems to be just out of focus at f4 for me. YOu may be better at this than I am.

If this is truly a castle, you will not have a ceiling to bounce off of, BUT you MIGHT find a nice white wall which will act as a giant North windowllight if you can bounce your flash off of it. Think Rembrandt window light.

One way to deal with the metering of flash off a white dress, versus a black tuxedo, is to find a correct exposure with the flash, and then set the flash in Manual mode as well as the camera. Now, unless you change the aperture, the flash exposure is entirely controlled by the flash to subject distance. If the flash and the camera are both set to manual - and if the flash to subject distance never changes, the correct exposure does not change, and you can shoot away, and only change your aperture as you move your flash further from the subject. Your camera to subject distance does not really matter IF your flash is NOT mounted to your camera - eg: off camera flash.

Shooting in RAW is highly adviseable. If you prefer jpgs, I would suggest a big CF card, and shooting in RAW +jpgs.

Sounds like you have a pretty good idea of what you are doing.

I shoot in Av a lot, but you MUST remember that in dark areas it WILL drop your shutter speed off the face of the earth and give you shutter speeds of 1 second or even slower, not hand hold-able by any mortals.

vinceman

I second the suggestion on using RAW. It might be tedious workflow-wise, but it will give you leeway on exposure as the white and black combos of the B&G will give you a hard time getting consistent exposure. Buy CF memory to compensate for the extra storage if needed.

I'm not sure if you got this covered but attention should also be given on getting backup equipment. Using film DSLR or renting one would be better than nothing.

Good luck!

Deadlock

Thanks guys.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated. I’ve been spending a lot of time reading and trying to digest a few of the recent threads on ETTL as there is lots of good info there.

With regards to a few of your points...
- It’s a 13th Century Scottish castle – so I guess that’s as real as it gets.
- Yes - I only ever shoot raw for the versatility in post processing
- I’ve only ever used M, Av and Tv modes before. However, having never used any flash before my lack of confidence made me try out P mode (which is still RAW) for the first time – however as you point out, it is incredibly restrictive so I’ve changed back to M (or Av for background exposure if I can use a tripod)
- You are right - using a grey card would immediately rectify the issue but as I’m doing candids its not really going to be possible – so I was really hoping for advice on how to best judge wedding dress shots. And perhaps to get a baseline methodology to give me the best chances of getting a decent shot straight out rather than risk trashing every shot.
- From my experiments so far its looking like expose for the dress and add in + 2/3 compensation will give a decent enough baseline before checking the histogram and making any necessary adjustments
- Thanks for the tip about getting an exposure right for setting the settings/distance and just reusing that - but I really do change everything all the time for whatever situation I'm in - but I'll give it a shot if I can.
- Oh and to answer one of my own points – RTFM!!! – the manual does state that if the flash power is adjusted on both flash and camera then the flash setting is used instead.

Thanks again.

Scott_Quier

Here's what I would recommend:

• With indoor flash, I use manual almost 100% of the time. The ambient doesn't change much so it's really easy to figure out a baseline shutter speed from which to deviate, depending on the desired effect.
• Set the flash to ETTL and the FEC to at least +2/3 stop. This tends to compensate for the flash wanting to turn the dress gray. Sometimes, a little more, sometimes a little less, depending on what else is in the shot.
• As soon as you can at each shooting location, take a couple of test shots to dial in your manual settings.
• Don't worry about getting a CWB. Shoot an examplor gray card and do the WB correction in post. The only exception to this that I can think of is if you are planning to deliver JPG at the scene of the crime, in which case you would need a good CWB for all your shots.
• After having used one at a number of events, I would take a pass on the Fong Dong and take a look at the Better Bounce Card. It's cheaper (OK, you've already spent the money on it), and it so much lighter and easier to deal with, and it produces nearly identical results. The difference is that you sometimes get better shadows where you want them. Very effective device.
• If you don't have one, find yourself a good flash bracket. My favorite is the Newton Brackets Di100FR2 Flash Rotator. The name aside, this bracket folds for easy storage, is rigid when deployed, keeps the flash where it belongs (above the lens) and doesn't induce much, if any, stress on the flash hot-shoe mount when you move from portrait to landscape (or back) orientation. You can see it here.
• Exposure settings - It's kind of a toss up between exposing for the dress and exposing for the faces. You don't need to worry about exposing for the black as, no matter what you do, the black tux will be plugged! As for the dress/face issue - if you expose for the dress (make it white not gray) you will usually over-expose the faces. Go for faces and the dress will be a little blown in spots. Use your judgement - what's most important in that shot; usually it will be the faces and the emotions therein. The time to get critical about the dress is when you are doing dress detail shots - then you must get it right!