what lens should i rent for an outdoor wedding?

brianhanley

I am doing my first wedding, it is outside, not sure if it will be sunnry or rainy, but its totally outside, both the ceremoney and reception, thanks!



18-200mm VR?

I currently own 18-135mm and 50mm 1.8..... nikon d80

thanks!

Art Scott

Give us a list of everything you own.......camera equip wise......if what is listed in you siggy is the extent of your equiptment then I suggest you get a flash bracket that the camera rotates on (custom braciket or stroboframe rb or rt series...... can be found on Ebay at good prices), and off camera cable forthe flash and a good flash....if it is outdoors in the day time you have adequate equipment to do the job......the 18-200 vr would be nice also.....but flash bracket and flash and off cam cable would top my list even higher.....you need a decent tripod also.......You can FOOT ZOOM to make up the difference between 135mm and 200mm.......................The flash is used to shoot every shot exceptthe ceremony it self (stop when Bride is handed off to Groom and begin again when the "officiate" say I present to you Mr & MRS...........that is your first flash shot after the ceremony ends................especially with Mid day weddings you need flash to get rid of facial shadows...........

HTH

brianhanley

SB-600 Flash

Spare Camera: D50

Rented Camera:D80

Owned lens: 18-135mm Nikon Lens and 50mm 1.8f NIkon Lens

I was thinking of having the D50 with the 18-135 around my back as just a back up camera if the D80 crapped out. And having the D80 with the SB600 and the 18-200mm VR lens as my main camera.

by the way, is there any way to decrease teh amount of time between flashes of the sb-600??? it kils me how long it takes to recharge between shots!!!! can i get differnt batteries?

MrBook2

On the SB-600 recharge time, I can't really say. I have only ever shot it with Energizer NiMH 2500 mAh rechargeables, and I have not really noticed it taking all that long to recycle. Whatever batteries you use, BE SURE TO BRING SPARES!

You might want a flash bracket and something like a Stofen Omnibounce to soften up the flash a little, but that is up to you. The Omnibounce is cheap, the flash bracket can be pretty pricey.

If you are outside, you may find that you want to put the camera into FP high speed sync mode, so you can take pictures with flash faster than 1/200th of a second. Search the forums for more info on that, I am sure someone else has said how this works better than I could.

The 50mm 1.8 is a great lens for this type of setting, in my opinion. (Note: I am not actually a wedding photographer, but I pretend to be at every wedding I go to.) Don't try and shoot it wide open (f1.8) or too far stopped down (f16 or more) as you will likely find the shots too soft. I found that f4 was just about perfect for a reasonable depth of field with nice blurry backgrounds and good sharpness, but your milage may vary...

As for another lens, you can't really go too wrong with the 18-200 VR. It is extremely versatile, and as long as you aren't shooting folks against a brick wall, the distortions present in this ultra-zoom shouldn't be problematic.

My best advice is to shoot in raw or raw + jpeg. You will have more work to do afterwards, but you can save shots that might be lost if you screw up the exposure. I would also say that you should take something bright white and put it next to something black in your backyard on a clear and a cloudy day and play around with exposure. The stark contrast you can get with this combo (bride + groom) can fool even good autometering.

--Aaron

Scott_Quier

I'm a Canon shooter, using a pair of 30D (these are 1.6 crop factor cameras), so I can't really give a lot of Nikon focused advice, but ....

I find that I can cover 90% of a wedding with just one lens, my EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS.

My second string lenses are my EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS and my EF 24-105 f/4L IS. The first provides the length I sometimes need and the second provides a suitable backup for the 17-55 (but only for outdoor work - IMO it's a might too slow for indoor work).

A flash is always a good thing. Working outdoors, you would use it for fill purposes, especially if you are shooting under high contrast lighting conditions.

A flash bracket where the camera rotates under the flash would be good as well. This has been covered in much detail in other threads. An appropriate google search string to find these threads might be some variation of "flash bracket camera rotate site: dgrin.com" (no space after the colon).

As for more general thoughts, see the thread linked in my siggy.

Oh, good luck and HAVE FUN!