 Shermie Steuart |
type of lens One of my friends recomended me to take pictures of her friend's wedding. My husband bought me a F100 Nikon with 28-200 zoom lens. I would like to know if this lens is right for shooting wedding portraits? The wedding is a combination of an outdoor wedding and indoor reception. Or should I consider using another lense? If so, what do you recommend?
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Andy |
This is a fine lens you have. If you are allowed to use flash indoor, you are all set with that one lens. If not, you may use a high speed film (ISO 400). But it is all depending on how much light indoor. On the safe side, you may get the 50mm f/1.4 or 50mm f/1.8 too. I always carry my 50mm f/1.4 lens just in case. BTW, you do have a flash, do you? I would also recommend using professional film for wedding. Hope this helps.
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John A. Lind |
Shermie, Your lens will be fine if you avoid going any shorter than about 35mm with it (shorter than that can get into some perspective problems with people's heads and background). You many, many other things to think about between now and the wedding! See the "survival guide" I wrote specifically for friends/relatives that get roped into doing a wedding (for whatever reason). It's *not* written for pros, nor is it intended to be a tutorial about how to break into the business, but for advanced non-professionals who find themselves in your position. The pix there were shot using nothing more than what is described. http://johnlind.tripod.com/wedding/ I've been shooting them professionally for about five or six years and use more equipment than is described there: studio lights and a medium format system for the portraiture; the 35mm gear is very similar, just more of it to have spares of everything. You can do it with what you have if you plan carefully and practice the things you have the least experience with. -- John Lind
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Shermie Steuart |
Thank you for answering my questions. I have a Nikon SB 800 flash. I am thinking about buying 50mm f/1.8 lens. John Lind, thank you for ther website link. It really helped me to understand about wedding photography. Shermie
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John A. Lind |
Thanks, I am in the process of making some revisions. Nearly all are pretty minor, but one change is shooting most everything at f/5.6 instead of f/8. Should have made that revision some time ago. It's applicable if you're using an aperture priority auto-exposure mode instead of a program mode. There are some reasons for opening up by a stop even though it shortens depth of field slightly . . . has to do with picking up more ambient light so that more distant background doesn't fall off as severely. Your SB800 has sufficient horsepower for the task provided you don't try to use a diffuser on it (diffusers eat about half the light . . . equivalent of an f-stop). Nikon makes an SD800 which holds an additional battery. If yours didn't come with it, get one. Street price is about $15 (amazing for something with Nikon's name on it). I also recommend using NiMH cells if you aren't doing so already . . . and Ray-O-Vac makes a one-hour NiMH charger that comes with a wall plug and a cigar lighter cord for the car. They also make a 15-minute charger, but that one *only* works with their special 15-minute "AA" cells. It will recharge normal NiMH cells, but it takes 4-5 hours instead of 15 minutes. NiMH can put out a lot of current; the combination of the SD800 with NiMH cells recycles the SB800 in under 3 seconds from "full dump" . . . and that is impressive for an "AA" powered shoe mount flash! -- John Lind
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