What you should know before taking on your first wedding.

What you should know before taking on your first wedding.   Part II

Equipment- Your Camera. 

Good wedding images can be produced with any high quality camera in the high end consumer or professional range.  The latest digital cameras, 35mm film cameras and even medium format film or digital cameras are all quite suitable.  As I previously mentioned, the main thing is know your camera well and have total control over all of its functions so that no hesitation is required to shoot quickly and easily.  Automation is another issue to be considered.  Even some top pros use their cameras and flash units in auto mode, however the know how to override theses features when they have to in order to achieve specific or special effects and incase the automatic systems were to fail.  There are some cameras that have no automated systems so all setting have to be adjusted manually- if you have this know-how, that is another feather in you thinking cap.  Many experienced photographers know how to set there cameras for daylight conditions as well as flash settings at various distances without the aide of internal or external exposure meters. 

What with all the other things that you need to concentrate on while covering a wedding, it is certainly handy to have a camera equipped with auto focus and auto exposure features as long as you know the limitations of those features in certain conditions.  A big one is “subject failure”; this can occur in large churches or receptions halls where the camera’s or flash unit’s sensors “see” the vast dark areas surrounding the subjects and expose for those areas leaving the subjects, such as a bride and groom dancing in a large ballroom or walking down the aisle of a church to be grossly overexposed.  In digital photography, the loss of highlight details (known as blown out highlights) can be disastrous because this condition is not repairable in Photoshop.  Many camera and flash systems now have built in features to compensate for this problem.  It is important that you test you equipment in larger areas to see if this is a problem.  The equipment that works perfectly well around the house and in small ore medium sized rooms may fail miserably in large venues. 

Even if you system is state of the art and fully automatic, you must be very careful to make sure all the settings are correct.  The ISO of the film or the ISO setting you wish to work with on your digital camera must be set correctly.  Some, even up to date cameras have synchronization settings such as M  X  V.  Believe it or not the M is for disposable flash lamps which have not been used in mainstream photography for decades.  The X is for electronic flash and the V is a self timer mode which is rarely needed or used.  X is where the setting has to be- the other setting will NOT synchronize with you electronic flash unit.  I usually bring my older lenses and cameras with these setting to a camera technician and have that switch locked in place or the M and V settings totally removed or disabled.  Some cameras have different sockets for M  and  X.  I have the M socket plugged or capped. 

Many focal plane shutters have a limited range of speeds that will synchronize with your electronic flash unit.  Some will synch only up to and including speeds such as 1/30, 1/60. or 1/125 or may have a red X on the shutter dial of 1/80.  Nowadays, new technology as enabled FP shutters to synchronize at virtually all speeds.  Whatever your camera offers, you must be aware of this and set the shutter accordingly when using flash for indoor lighting or fill in lighting when work out of doors.  If the shutter is set above the usable range, the frame will only receive flash illumination on ½ of the frame or none at all. 

Flash Equipment.   The entire issue of flash units can be very disappointing in that none of the lower priced consumer models are really suitable for wedding photography- they just don’t have the guts!  They are not designed for long duty cycles, that is. hours and hours of continuous use and sometimes flashes in rapid sequence.  Some of theses flash units can actually burn out. Some suck battery power  to the point that you will be changing batteries every ½ hour and many have very long recycling times thus  negating any kind of rapid sequence photography.  Murphy’s law dictates that theses units come to their untimely demise at the most inopportune times during ceremonies and when shooting important highlights of the wedding- the same goes for battery failure.  Some of theses cheaper models have outrageously high trigger voltages (going through the shutter’s synchronization mechanism) so that can kill you shutter and with digital cameras, destroy all the electronics in the camera. All of this is not good.   Even if a cheaper unit does not blow up and take your camera with it, they usually don’t have the power to accommodate shooting large groups and areas, using bounce lighting or providing enough depth of field or depth of lighting for some of the required shots. 

The good news is that there are a good number of medium to high priced flash units that will do the job and give you years of service.  Some brands are Vivitar,  Sun Pack, Metz, Q-Flash, Norman and  Lumadyne. The listed brands have been considered industryy standard workhorses for a long time.  The units that are marketed  by the major camera manufacturers such as Nikon, Canon, Olympus and others are usually of good quality and commensurate with the quality of the cameras they are designed for.  Some of the units mentioned are for strictly manual use, other offer option for use in dedicated TTL, auto and manual modes.  The power of theses units range from about 80 watt/seconds to 200 watt/seconds and some of the higher end models are available with  built in modeling lamps, zoom reflector systems and special reflectors for wide angle and telephoto photography.  There are also a vast array of add-on accessories to modify, spread and soften the light- all very good for wedding and portrait work.  Again, in the beginning the KIS- “Keep It Simple” rule applies.  You don’t want a contraption hanging off your camera that is overly complicated and unwieldy.  A solid well built unit with adequate power and battery life,  properly secured to you camera will do the job.

I mention the phrase “properly secured” in my last paragraph.  What I mean by that is not only for safety so that the system does not fall apart when in use but just as importantly, the flash unit’s position in relation to the camera lens.  With all the great new electronics innovations and cameras and flash units, it is amazing that the actual position of the flash unit in nearly, or I dare to say, always bad- especially for wedding and portrait lighting.  The unit usually ends atop the camera, mounted on a “hot shoe” or slightly off to the side depending on the actual construction of the equipment.  The unit is very close to the lens and worse yet, with built in flash features, just inches from the lens.  Theses kinds of mounting methods cause some of the worst results and over the years have managed to give flash photography sort of a stigma or bad name.  The results are extra-flat lighting, distracting shadows forming behind and beside the subjects unless they are far away from the walls, and “red eye” from almost light entering the eye from almost a concentric angle and reflecting back the blood vessels in the retina- giving the subjects eyes a rat-like appearance.  The best place for this light is around 12 inches from the lens and directly above it. Keeping the flash too close to the lens also exasperates the “black hole effect” caused by the rapid fall off of light (the inverse square law) behind the subject.   There are dozens of brackets available for this kind of positioning that will conveniently “flip” to accommodate vertical and horizontal compositions.  Some brands to research are Strobframe and Jones Brackets.  Going along with the KISS theory, one light on the camera photography is clean and simple but still rather flat and in some cases uninteresting.  By elevating the flash unit above the lens you will see some vertical modeling which helps with separation of the planes of the face and between the subject and the background.  Red eye will be avoided and having the light over the camera will help a little bit with that black hole thing.  Some camera and flash manufactures offer special extension cords that allow the flash unit off the camera will all electronic dedication remaining intact. 

Some very advanced professionals preach that the flash equipment has no business on the camera at all.  The do their wedding works with an array of  radio triggered lights positioned around the room and do their formals with portable studio gear.  This is all great but theses techniques are not learned overnight and are not the thing you want to try out on your first wedding even if you have the equipment. 

LENSES

In the olden days it was quite common for professional photographers to cover a complete wedding, from start to finish, with only a normal lens.  That still remains true and is very much in keeping with the KIS theory and keeps Mr. Murphy at bay as well.  Sure it is handy to have wide angle and telephoto options and if you have a zoom lens- you are in business with those conveniences.  Using various focal length lenses and settings can be great bit there are some pitfalls.  Wide angle lenses can be great for dramatic church interior shots but when you are photographing people in close circumstances certain distortions can set in that are not very flattering to the human face and form.  Shooting full length portraits and groups, with a wide angle lens or zoom setting, a too high a viewpoint can cause foreshortening which makes people appear disproportional and overly short.  This phenomenon can also distort facial features.  Shooting too low can causes the reverse effect so you have to make sure the camera is a waist level and totally parallel to the subjects.  Too long a lens can overly compress the image so that it appears claustrophobic or look  like the background is only inches behind the subject.  In low available light conditions long lenses are more difficult to keep steady and in focus when hand held at large apertures and slow shutter speeds- a tripod will be required.  Those telephoto lenses sure come in handy when you can’t get close up and personal in church.  When ceremonies are restricted, however, some clergypersons are nice enough to restage a few quick scenes for you and if you shoot low- you won’t see the empty pews in the church.  In such cases you can use your normal lens, you flash if needed- just combine there with you distant shots in the album and you got yourself a great ceremony sequence.

Styles.  For the time being don’t allow yourself to get hung up on styles or schools of thought.  Just worry about getting clean concise story telling images.  The stylization will come from experience and your talent potential.   


Some rough news. 
You have to provide some spare equipment.  If you do not you are playing Russian Roulette with your client’s best interest.  A spare camera and flash is a must.  If you have theses in one form or another you are protected.  Again, if you do not you are inviting Mr. Murphy and a whole gang of evil spirits and gremlins to your assignment.  Even the finest equipment can  unceremoniously drop dead in its tracks due to some anomaly only known to a camera or electronics technician after performing an autopsy or hopefully a diagnostic exam.  So bring extra stuff- plenty of film or memory cards, spare batteries, spare connector cords all those things that cam become problematic if you don’t have them on hand. 

My attitude:  I am not one of theses professionals you look down on amateurs and part time photographers.  Some of those folks will eventually become professionals and perhaps open their own enterprises.  It is far better, to me, to bring there people into the folds of professionalism before they become “bad” competition.  Bad competitors charge low ball prices and oftentimes do mediocre work or worse.  The go into business perhaps with good intentions but simply do not know what they are doing.  The public tends to paint all people in the same profession with the same brush and the more  bad apples there are in the bunch the situation deteriorates  proportionality.  The more educated and savvy folks who come up, the more things will improve  for all of us.  We all have to star someplace and everyone can not afford the time or the money to quit their day job and go back to school.  Frequenting this on line forum, reading books and watching instructional videos and DVDs, attending seminars and classes and most importantly gaining on the job experience by assisting established pros.  Oh- speaking of assistants  bring one along on your first job. Enlist there services of your spouse, significant other, a friend or fellow photography enthusiast.  It is good to have someone there to help transporting equipment,  keep track of film or memory cards,  act as a script person to man a checklist or shot list and of course, to lend some moral support. 

I hope this helpful.  In the future, I intend to create many articles and lessons of a more advanced nature.  If you are really interested in becoming a pro or just want to improve you photographic skills- stay tuned there is a lot more coming from me and the other moderators.

Good luck to all!