photo session tips wanted

Wook

I just had the news and request to shoot a comfirmation day...for a family member.
Since i really do not want to mess up such an important day, i would like to hear from you guy's any tips regarding to films i should use or general advice. most of them will be portraits and group photo's. will do a combination of colour and black-white.

My equipment will be :
Minolta Dynax 7 with 28-80 lens plus a 70-300 lens
Canon (no idea which ones yet, has to be decided+lens)
Tripod

Suroundings will be :
Indoors (house)
church
gardens

Ps:boards really could use an upload or gallery function.

Samson

Portraiture is not really my thing, but a few suggestions/tips would be:
Use print film (more tolerant of less than perfect exposure).
Pay particular attention to backgrounds and make sure nothing distarcting is in the background.
Use a small blip of fill flash outdoors.
Do not use flash as a direct light source indoors, bounce it off a white ceiling or wall.

havok*

One thing on composition, probobly the most common mistake with amature photographers when taking people is they give waaaaay to much head room. Dont place the head in the the centre of the image, leave as little head room as the composition allows.

FinoBlad

This is a great challenge, not as scary as a wedding, just right. I've no experience exactly but I can make a few recommendations.

Find out what the max aperture is on the Canon, and pick the biggest and forget using the other camera except if you have a break down. The minolta covers all the focal lengths you want, 30-50 for group shots; 80ish for a full length portrait and 100-130 for a head and shoulders, but the Canon may have these lengths and a bigger aperture and you may want to see which has a better flash [watch red-eye]

~Keep your apertures wide open to limit dof, and as samson says to take out distracting backgrounds.
~Dont use b+w film for group shots, only some portraits
~Use print film for the extra lattitude.
~Have spare batteries in your pocket
~Bracket for crucial shots
~Take some candid shots for insurance
~Dont forget your tripod, its useful to use even if your shutter speeds are ok.

As for film recomendations; film choice is too subjective to advise. Do your research, but to help you start here with Kodak [VC=Vivid Colour, NC=Natural Colour]

~After you pick your film, take a test roll, using some of the conditions that you might encounter.

Agfa have some useful tutorials;
Portrait photography
AgfaNET

Good luck ;-)

Wook

thanks guy's !

Figment

Dont be afraid to get up real close. My photos of people improved 10 fold when i stopped being afraid of the subject

Kell

I got to do the incidental candid stuf at my sisters wedding and it was all B&W. Of the x amount of rolls that I took, 36 were of wedding album quality which I was really impressed with. I used an F90 with a 24-70 lens and used it at 24mm nearly all the time. I overstopped by about 2 stops for nearly every shot as I like to get really black blacks and really white whites. I hate pasty stuff. But anyway, yeah. If you are taking shots on the steps of the church, try go for as wide angle a lens as poss to take in laods of the background too.

Hope it helped.

K-