Lighting Suggestions for Daughters Wedding

[jrw]

One really good online resource for wedding and portrait photography with on and off camera flash is Neil van Niekirk's Tangents blog on his website http://neilvn.com/
He does run through some practical approaches to getting the flash/ambient balance that you want. Once you start to grasp the concepts there is no substitute for going out with your camera and flash to practice. Have fun with it!

[conropl]

Thanks all!!!
I will be looking into the flash bender... I do like the idea of that. I have to start digging into speedlights, and see what direction to go there. I think I like the idea of packing speed lights easier that moon lights, but I still want to get a moon light or two some day also.

Sean - Have you used the small soft box on the flash bender?

Thanks Joel for the pocket wizzard model numbers... that helps. I was thinking Einstien lights for a lighting system... it sounds like I was on the right track there.

One really good online resource for wedding and portrait photography with on and off camera flash is Neil van Niekirk's Tangents blog on his website http://neilvn.com/
He does run through some practical approaches to getting the flash/ambient balance that you want. Once you start to grasp the concepts there is no substitute for going out with your camera and flash to practice. Have fun with it!

Thanks for the link... I agree on the practice. I have a lot of time to learn (wedding is a year away), but that is why I bring it up now. I want to get the hardware and practice. I won't get a chance for redo's, so I need to get better and get it to be more second nature before next July.

Again... thank you all.

Is a flash bracket worth it? My daughter is a light skinned blond that tends to get red eye. I thought the bracket would help with the red eye. Any suggestions on the hundreds of brackets out there, or is it a waste? If I get one, I was tinking of a flippable bracket to use it in both portrait and landscape orientaion.

Pat

[Kayaker72]

Hi Pat,

Sounds like fun. But also sounds like you will be shooting in several different conditions. I am thinking that you might do best working with natural light given the bonfire and twilight wedding for candid shots and then the flash for indoors. Or maybe be prepared for a mix of flash/non-flash shots. Not to always be thinking of gear, but you might want to play with the 100 f/2.8 and 70-200 II to see if they let enough light in under "twilight" and "bonfire" conditions. They might. A few years ago I shot some fire dancers and looking at those shots and I did get some keepers at 1/60, f/2.8, ISO 3200. But I also remember wanting more light and throwing out a lot of shots as I tried higher ISO and slower shutter speeds. So you might consider something faster (85 f/1.2? 135 f/2?) and practice with it now. I think you have wider covered (24 f/1.4). Or maybe you feel good enough about ISO 6400/12,800 with the 1DX.

The other thing I would be prepared for is to be a little bold. For formal shots, tell people where you want them to be, how you want their hands and smiles. But, more important, even for a "journalistic" style of shoot, you still need to pose candids a little. Walk up to people, get groups together. You will know who is connected to whom so capture these people together for your daughter.

I think you can mix in both being the father of the bride and taking a few shots. But I would definitely do one or the other at a time. I like to have fun at weddings, so my camera often sits. But I try to make "rounds" about 3-4 times, every 45-60 minutes or so, and to capture major events. Also, capture the less obvious. The venue, the seats, the center pieces, a distinctive feature, etc.

Enjoy!

[neuroanatomist]

Not to always be thinking of gear, but you might want to play with the 100 f/2.8 and 70-200 II to see if they let enough light in under "twilight" and "bonfire" conditions. They might. A few years ago I shot some fire dancers and looking at those shots and I did get some keepers at 1/60, f/2.8, ISO 3200. But I also remember wanting more light and throwing out a lot of shots as I tried higher ISO and slower shutter speeds. So you might consider something faster (85 f/1.2? 135 f/2?) and practice with it now. I think you have wider covered (24 f/1.4). Or maybe you feel good enough about ISO 6400/12,800 with the 1DX.

Personally, I think I'd go with f/2.8 zooms for flexibility and raise the ISO as needed. I have both the 85L and 135L, my concern with using them at events is DoF – even with individual portraits, I generally stop the 85L down into the f/1.6-2 range, with >1 person in the shot you'll often need careful posing to get faces in focus at wider than f/2.8.

I get usable results with the 1D X at ISO 12800 with DxO Prime NR.

[conropl]

Personally, I think I'd go with f/2.8 zooms for flexibility and raise the ISO as needed. I have both the 85L and 135L, my concern with using them at events is DoF – even with individual portraits, I generally stop the 85L down into the f/1.6-2 range, with >1 person in the shot you'll often need careful posing to get faces in focus at wider than f/2.8.

I get usable results with the 1D X at ISO 12800 with DxO Prime NR.

My 24mm f/1.4L II gets pretty good DOF and will be good for wide shots. I think I prefer the 70-200 over the macro for everything else. Other that the weight difference, it is more versatile and focus in low light is faster.

I have not been real happy with ISO's above 3200 on my 1D X, but that has been night sky type shots and the noise on the blank background of the sky can be more noticeable. I think you may be correct with the type of shot we are talking about here. We have people coming over tomorrow night and plan to have a fire (and somors) - I will try a few shots with the ISO set at 12,800 and see what Lightroom can do. You have been using DxO NR programs for some time now, and have suggested it in the past... so you have a fair amount of experience with it at night (based on some of your night shots) - Is it that much better than the current lightroom (I actually have ver. 5.x)? I think it was HDNitehawk that had said a little while ago that he thought that the latest Lightroom versions had caught up to DxO in NR. I may be remembering wrong, but I think it was him and I think that was the basic point. I typically limit myself to 1600, but will go to 3200 if needed. I would like to use higher ISO's... 12,800 would be very helpful in the type of shots I like to do.

Pat

Edit: I was wrong - HDNitehawk was comparing Lightroom and DPP. Not DxO. Sorry about that.
http://community.the-digital-picture.com/showthread.php?t=8266&page=2

[Sean Setters]

Here's another backup solution: http://www.the-digital-picture.com/N...spx?News=18440

[conropl]

Here's another backup solution: http://www.the-digital-picture.com/N...spx?News=18440

That's really nice. I have a few small drives with up to 1TB storage, but did not really want to lug around a laptop. This is nice in that you do not need the computer to us it. Not a bad price either. I have dual CF card slots so I can always have back ups put on cards as I go along. So I need to decide, do I buy more cards, or buy something like the Passport. I think having a second medium like this would be the wisest. The wireless transfer is not real helpful with this camera, but maybe for other uses.

Thanks, I may do this.

Pat

[Sean Setters]

I just called Western Digital's technical support. Apparently, the My Passport Wireless Pro won't allow you to simply plug in a card reader (into the USB port) and have the drive copy images off the card. The only way it'll do that is through the SD card slot.

That makes the drive significantly less useful, in my opinion.

[conropl]

I only use CF cards... so count me out on this one. Too bad though.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G870A using Tapatalk

[peety3]

Full disclaimer: I'm the kind of guy who will take a near-truckload of lighting gear to a studio shoot, and an armload to the zoo with family. Speedlights, to me, just aren't enough. Outdoors, especially against sunlight, you're going to end up against what I call the sync speed curve: ISO 100, 1/250th, and now you're stuck living at f/5.6 or f/9 depending on conditions. Once you have to stop down, you're throwing away some of your speedy light, and now you have to cheat them closer and closer to the subject to have any hope of them doing what you want, especially if you're shooting through ANY modifier (even a 1/4 CTO gel costs you 1/3 stop). HSS lets you open up, but my non-scientific research suggests that as soon as you transition to HSS, you've given up 1-2 stops more, so HSS is only an option if you were ahead of the curve already but you want thin DoF.

If it were me, I'd take a good, hard look at (renting or buying) a Profoto B2 kit. A one-light kit means you could put the sun behind and fill the front, or put the sun in front on one side and fill on the other. A Zoom Reflector is relatively compact and very powerful. An OCF 1x3 softbox is quite lightweight and will fit in a suitcase just fine. You can get a $6 brass thingy to screw on top of a monopod (if you'd have a holder) or a tripod to use as an impromptu stand. The B2 is 4-5x the power of a 580EXII, with better recycle time, and being a separate pack/head kit, helps keep the center of gravity lower. It can do HSS so you can do thin DoF if you wish, but it also has the power so you can keep it comfortably back out of the frame.

Not a direct comparison reference shot, but at least a worthy example of what these can do. I shot team photos for a charity walk in April, and had three lights: a Profoto B1 to my far left, with a Zoom Reflector, another B1 just barely to my left, with a Widezoom Reflector (smoother coverage, but big enough that you can't put it in a suitcase), and a B2 to my right, with a Magnum Reflector (gains a stop on the Zoom Reflector). Yes, it was three lights, but they were all about a half-stop under their max (in the hopes of making the batteries last, which they did far better than I expected) and I kept them back far enough that I could easily move one large group out of the way to my right while another group came in from my left and they wouldn't be a major trip hazard. See http://photos.templin.org/images/TeamBlitz-101.jpg

Also, I was a guest at a family wedding and brought a "lightweight kit", in this case a B1 (one stop more power than a B2, but all the weight in one place so it can be top-heavy) and my 1x3 softbox. I shot available light during the ceremony, then added the light when they drove the green pickup over to the reception. In order to help out the paid photographer (who was essentially screwed by the toast being so late), I just turned on the modeling light (20W LED, comparable to a 70W incandescent bulb) and took the remote off so I wouldn't fire the B1 during those shots. See https://www.flickr.com/photos/alibea...57657308084120 for what I got.