Photography Forums UK

[BNA]

Firstly apologies for the length of this, please stick with me though!

I have been asked to help a friend out who is doing a wedding on a budget and take her wedding photos. I like taking photos and am a keen amateur (I shoot in manual) and I have just upgraded my kit to a D7000 with 2.8 24-70 lens and I have just ordered an sb-700 – I am hoping that having good kit will be a good start to getting this right, and of course provide many enjoyable hours using it in the future!

Whilst I know that there are many pro’s out there who are understandably not keen on amateurs doing wedding photos for the biggest day of someone’s life, this is happening and I am going to do the best I can – I have set their expectations low!
Its all a little last minute, – my flashgun arrives on Tuesday and the wedding is on Friday. I have all day Tuesday and Wednesday to practice but I thought I would ask for some advice as I have nothing to lose.

The flash side of things is my biggest worry, I have spent all day researching and I wanted to summarise what I have learnt and either get it corrected if I have misunderstood and get some additional help if people wouldn’t mind.
I hope this will also help other people as there is a lot of info on the net and it can be quite hard to digest! Some positive feedback would be very much appreciated! – I know I can’t master this in the time I have but anything to improve the pics will help – I am OK in lightroom but there are some things that just can’t be fixed so I want to get it as right as possible from the start!

I appreciate that I have massively simplified things and its a lot more complicated than this, but I am working with what I have! Here goes...

Fill in Flash. This is used when shooting outside to eliminate shadows, especially in bright light. Point the flash directly at the people you are photographing, put it on TTL and dial it down between 1 and 2 stops (I think for me to use it manually is a bit ambitious at this stage).

Indoors. Always bounce the flash so that shadows are reduced. Put it on TTL, make sure the surface you are bouncing off is white and consider the angle the flash is at so that the bounce falls on the subjects nicely. Here I have a slight problem. I went and checked out the wedding venue and the place where the Bride and Groom have suggested for the photos is quite dark and it has a low ceiling which I believe from memory has lots of close wooden beams which I am assuming would be very bad to bounce a flash from?

From what I have read quite a few examples have talked about directing the flash over the photographers shoulder (so away from the subjects?) I assume they then have a big bounce card to direct the light back to the subject? – Some guidance in this area would be appreciated please!!! – Any tips on a big bounce card? – Making or buying a good one? (the flash does have one built in but I assume I will need something bigger than this?

The other indoor locations for the photos are not ideal as there are lots of things on the walls which I think would be distracting in the photos – outside is the ideal but I fear its going to rain. My alternative is a well lit staircase, but here its a very background and I don’t really want to shoot up at people as its unflattering and shooting down would be directly into the light – which with the fill in flash may be OK but it feels a little risky to experiment on the day with this!

The flash is controlled by the aperture setting, the shutter setting you change depending on how much ambient lighting you want to let in. I was pretty much planning on leaving the aperture on 2.8 for the group shots, and not really needing any depth if everyone is in a line.

For handheld shots make sure the shutter speed is above the focal length to minimise camera shake (– the one really annoying thing about the 24-70 is that is has no VR!)

Do I need to swat up on slow sync / fast sync rear flash etc?

The d7000 has great reviews at high ISO settings so on the whole I am going to try and limit my use of flash if possible (or try and take two – one with, one without). But I am guessing I will need to use the flash during the day.

Any other tips / links are all gratefully received. Many thanks in advance!

[Bob]

There are a few tips HERE