wedding: lens question

what to do?

quick question.

which ONE of the following would you recommend for a wedding, i'm assuming;

likely to be dull enough lighting in the church and likely to be sitting nearish enough to the front.

also - just talking about the ceremony in church

canon 70-200 F4 L (not IS and not very discreet) or canon 55-250 F4-5.6 IS or sigma 24-60 F2.8.

I'm leaning towards wanting the 70-200 but it'll draw attention and it doesn't have IS.... i think the 24-60 wont have enough reach, but then again could crop....

by the way, i'm obviously not the photorapher!!

thanks in advance.

Stephen

I would use the 24-60 f/2.8 if the light's going to be bad.

DotOrg

- canon 70-200 F4 L - great but may be too dark for f4

- canon 55-250 F4-5.6 IS - rubbish, f5.6 is too narrow

- sigma 24-60 F2.8. - great but quite wide


why not bring two lenses?

what to do?

thanks for the replies.

trying to avoid two lenses in church as am just gonna be sitting in the seat alongside everyone else, wont be moving around etc and the hassle of carrying camera and lenses around the church.

think i'll just go with the 24-60, shoot in raw and can crop after if needs be.

smelltheglove

I was at a wedding yesterday with a 18-70 3.5 - 5.6 lens. A very bright church so not too bad but defo go with the sigma.

I dont do flash in churches but the pros did. They used flash for every shot.

LeoB

DotOrg wrote: »

- dark for f4

- canon 55-250 F4-5.6 IS - rubbish, f5.6 is too narrow

Perhaps you will explain why this lens is rubbish!! I have one and think its quite a decent lens,small, light and discreet. The I.S. works quite well have only used it indoors twice and was happy enough with it, but im no expert

what to do?

ok - just a follow up question.

used the sigma 24-60 F2.8.

was about 30 feet back from altar. church was not overly dark. flash was not being used by anyone so i didn't use it either.

used the camera on auto focus, on AV priority. was having trouble with the autofocus - camera focusing on people in front of me, all sorts of things except what i wanted. so i switched to single point focussing (the centre point - canon af). turned the aperture to 2.8, focussed and snapped away. ISO to 800.

about 70% of my shots are blurred - just slightly out of focus but bad shots - i'm surprised at this as the shutter was very fast.....

most of the rest of the shots - the centre point is in focus but the people immediatley to the left and right are out of focus - I understand dept of field and that is all it is.

so i guess my question is what did i do wrong??? have been thinking about it a lot. had to use 2.8 as anything else was blurred - but my using 2.8 i've a narrow DOF????

anything i can learn from this????

thanks very much in advance for any lessons.

DotOrg

post up one of the bad pictures so we can work out what went wrong.

also, all the people who say wedding photographers are overpaid, take a note of this post ;-)

what to do?

thanks dotorg. i'd rather not post up the pictures as i'm pretty sure the people in question wouldn't want the images on the net......... i'm sorry as i know this doesn't help

ps - an aside i know - but i actually asked the pro at one stage if he'd mind taking a picture of me and the missus - this was much later in the day and he was standing around doing nothing - i was very conscious not to disturb him when on the job - (he was using a canon 5d with the 16-35). i handed him my camera (350d) in AV mode and he made a point of sniggering in front of a few people and made some comment along the lines 'oh dont worry, i'll switch to manual and get you a proper picture' ..... when i got home and looked at the data he took the picture in fully auto!!

Tactical

Don't be worrying about using the 350D.

The "pro" is the person who let themselves down here. They have proven in every sense that they are not a professional by any stretch of the imagination.

I know a girl who has her own studio in a small town (and its in a retail area). She does a lot of weddings (as well as other commissions).

Nothing unusual so far you might be saying...

Now I'll tell you that for her work she uses a Nikon D40. Not the D40X, but the D40.

The amount of comments she says that people make about her camera being tiny compared to those "traditionally" used by "pro's". Her response is probably one of the best I've ever heard... "its what's behind the lens that matters, not what's between the photographer and the subject..."

She produces good work and her clients are happy. She's a good studio set up and uses the D40 for all her work.

If she can produce the results then why not.

I've seen some excellent work done with the 350D, its a very capable unit when coupled with good quality glass. So stick with the body and try not to buy EF-S lens as they'll limit your ability to upgrade to the 5D and upwards later if you wish. My advice would be to invest in the 580ExII flash unit and some fast L series glass while keeping the existing body.

smelltheglove

I wouldnt pay any attention to the pro. I have sometimes used my camera thinking oh god the pro must think this is brutal. I have a Konica Minolta 5d. I love my camera, it fits me perfect but I need something better for sports. I have used my camera with no flash while pros beside me would be flashing away, it is what is behind the camera. My iso at 400 aint that good and I wouldnt dare go past 400. I have a 3.6 - 5.6 lens which I used for this photo below, it is a kit lense so nothing special.

Settings used for this shot are 5.6 50 mm 1/20 shutter speed and iso 400, the top iso I would use. Only slight brightening in pp.



Now I would not be a pro, I'm only starting in weddings but I think its not a bad shot. Thats just me. Anyway I'm showing you this just so you know it is not your equipment that matter at all.

Dades

what to do? wrote: »

i handed him my camera (350d) in AV mode and he made a point of sniggering in front of a few people and made some comment along the lines 'oh dont worry, i'll switch to manual and get you a proper picture' .....

What a twat.

I hope you get some keepers from the shots you took.

Fajitas!

what to do? wrote: »

ps - an aside i know - but i actually asked the pro at one stage if he'd mind taking a picture of me and the missus - this was much later in the day and he was standing around doing nothing - i was very conscious not to disturb him when on the job - (he was using a canon 5d with the 16-35). i handed him my camera (350d) in AV mode and he made a point of sniggering in front of a few people and made some comment along the lines 'oh dont worry, i'll switch to manual and get you a proper picture' ..... when i got home and looked at the data he took the picture in fully auto!!

He sounds like a right arse.

It could be any number of things, such as shake, or just not getting the focus spot on, but don't worry about it.

The lady with the D40 is a good example

AnCatDubh

I've been wondering about this type of shot and was so glad to see you posting the practical experience that you've had. I'd welcome people to have a read of the following data and see if you arrive at a similar conclusion;

The obvious one may be simply camera shake with lowish shutter speed in a hand held environment.

However, I too wondered at a f/2.8 value if the depth of field was the culprit and thought that the question you raise on 'depth of field' is one distinct possibility.

As we know the depth of field is caused by many factors other than the aperture value. Using an online DOF Calculator ( http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html ), i've run a number of possibilities based on the detail of the OP's updated post; The results for a 350D at 30ft and f/2.8 are as follows;



I'm guessing here but i'm thinking that most of your shooting would have been at the upper focal length of the lens i.e. 60mm(getting as tight a crop as possible perhaps). I could be wrong here but if i'm right you should have had 8.29ft of depth of field starting at 26.4feet distance from your shooting position.

The depth of field calculator would suggest that if shooting at 24mm (same other parameters) then your depth of field increases to 185feet starting at a distance of 16.2 feet from your shooting position.

So if your estimate of 30 feet distance from the subjects is correct then depth of field (according to the DOF calculator) shouldn't have been an issue - a little tight perhaps starting at 26.4 feet, but sufficient to get a sharp image.

Next, in order to understand the effect of distance to subject on depth of field, i'm going to play devils advocate here and suggest that perhaps the distance you estimated to the subject matter was incorrect by maybe 5 feet i.e. your subjects were 25 feet from your position.

The following data relates to such a circumstance;



At the upper end of your lens focal length (60mm) the depth of field drops to 5.72 feet and starts at 22.5 feet. This is rather tight i'd suggest but nothing that you couldn't cope with given your setup on the day. You would want to be fairly sure though.

The change in depth of field is more dramatic at the lower end of the focal length - at 24mm it becomes 71.2 feet starting at a distance from your position of 14.6 feet.

I may be wrong but it would appear to my understanding of the depth of field and the parameters that you supplied, and the resultant data, that depth of field shouldn't have been at fault for your blurred results in this case. However I would draw attention to the narrowing of the depth of field based on the focal length of the lens and the distance to subject - certainly it is getting much tighter at 25 feet distance to subject than at 30 feet with 60mm focal length.

Please, someone else do your own analysis on the data presented above and see if the conclusion on depth of field is correct (I would like to see this being validated / dismissed by a second source).

So, if it isn't depth of field then you are probably down to available light without flash causing the camera to seek a lowish shutter speed allowing for shake/vibration/etc.. and despite raising the ISO to 800, everything you could throw at it wasn't enough to satisfy a proper exposure keeping an appropriate shutter speed.

Therefore am i correct in suggesting the following are the possibilities for the scenario that you were presented with;

(a) increase the ISO further and suffer the resulting grain (call the resulting image arty!)
or
(b) stabilise the camera with a tripod / bean bag / and give the camera what it needs to take a sharp image.

I hope the above is of interest to people and gives a little insight.

Cheers.

(Attachments are just the images included above)
.

what to do?

thanks AnCathDubh.

thats very interesting, and very detailed!

you are correct - i was at 60mm end - however, i read somewhere that zooms tend to perform at their worst at either end of the range - so i always try to stop just short of full zoom - so i was probably shooting at 57 or 58mm.

and yeah, it could have been 25ft, or 35ft...

thanks again.