In the Church – Exposure and WB

[Fintan]

July 26, 2008 at 8:58 pm

Ok first of all, I’m at home with a few rolls of tri-x on the top of a hill.

I’ve been asked to do a friends wedding. I’ve turned down so many over the years, its not my scene at all. I’ve got prices and websites for the bride but she’s insisting I do it. And for full payment but thats another story, I wont take any.

Add in the fact I dont have a dSLR anymore and she wants digital. Now I’m really bricking it :shock:

My big worry is good exposure and WB in the church and looking for any advice from you guys.
Maybe a recomendation for a good book or two aswell.
I expect to hire a D3 for the week.

Thanks in advance

Fintan

[eas]

July 26, 2008 at 9:54 pm

Hi Fintan.

the d3 has exceptional auto WB. I’d suggest using that for the day and shoot raw.

As far as metering and exposure the d3 is excellent in this regard too but at the end of the day you have to know how to use it properly and realize when it’s not letting you do what you want to do and override. D3 nef files have an incredible ability to hold detail in the highlights even when the seem blown. You’ll have good latitude for fixing exposure in post if you need.

Really tho, wb and exposure is not different the church as it will be anywhere else during the day.

what are you going to do for lenses and flash?

good luck with the wedding

[GCP]

July 26, 2008 at 10:52 pm

Fintan, I’d say you if you are hiring the camera make sure you ahve enough time to get used to it and get to know it. Personally I shoot a few weddings every week so my policy is to “shoot it and go”. I dont want all the rest of the week just getting it right. I use the Canon 1Ds MkII and on auto its not great. I always use everything in manual mode WB, Flash and camera. I just dont trust auto and I prefer to control the machine. I manually set WB with a colour temp meter during the day and inside with the Metz flash I find 6000K about right – the Canon 580 flash needs to be about 4800K to 5200K as its a blueish light source. Most days outside it varies from 5200K to about 7000K so a mid point there is not bad.

I suppose if you treat it like your film camera and don’t overexpose – go slightly under if any is the best I can say.

Watch the lighting in the church as some churches are terrible. Sodium lighting and Fl-d are not nice if you cant kill with flash. You can use filters for these lights though.

[Allinthemind]

August 5, 2008 at 7:01 am

Hi Fin,

As Gerry says. Watch out for horrible lights in the church, I did one the other week, no flash allowed, they all had orange hair and blue shirts (sunlight through the windows). Mono is a good end to that saga.

Scope the locations and find a few spots (regardless of weather) to get some crackers.

Leave your tripod at home unless the church is really dark (I use a monopod for these), outside at iso400-800, you shouldn’t ever need the tripod). You can sohot the D3 at ISO3200 and get pretty reasonable shots.
The D3 metering is fabulous. If the sun comes out, the automatics will drop the exposure a bit (there is an active d-lighting automatic option that recognises a bright contrasty day and will drop the exposure 2/3rds of a stop and lift the shadows). This is the first camera that I’ve been happy using on auto at a wedding.

Get a flash unit (I’m sure you will), or better still 2 flash units (you can fire the second unit wirelessly for better lighting).
set the flashgun to “TTL”, not “TTL-BL”. The only decision, is “Is the flash the mainlight or the fill”? I find -2stops is a subtle fill level. Set the camera to TTL-FP (will then sync at any speed up to 1/8000th).

I don’t envy you, the prospect of shooting a wedding with unfamiliar gear.
The 24-70 is a great lens (to hire), as is the 70-200, although there is significant light fall-off in the corners wide open (not such a bad thing). There is a lackof a high coverage zoom of quality to cover the walkabout shots (something like 35-135 would be perfect).

You know the photography and composition side of it. My last bit of advice would be take all of the key shots 3-5 times, to be sure to be sure, it’s easy to get a card that can take 500 shots, it’s daft not to use the space.
Good luck

Si