How to be confident in your camera (eg, during weddings)

[analoguey]

Why would you consider 35mm over MF? Most older ones were shot on MF afaik(pre-digital?)? Why not Mamiya 6/7 vs f100/f5 or d4s?

(curious)

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[Slixtiesix]

Yes, interesting indeed! Apart from this, I wonder of how much importance are wedding photographers today anyway? Now that almost everyone has a smartphone with built-in camera and many amateurs are equipped with at least semi-pro DSLRs. Does this vast amount of image generating capacity not render the role of the traditional wedding photographer absurd? Or do wedding photographers still stand out by their extraordinaire artistic abilities, or simply by the fact that they have a professional lighting setup?

 

[MattKing]

Why would you consider 35mm over MF? Most older ones were shot on MF afaik(pre-digital?)? Why not Mamiya 6/7 vs f100/f5 or d4s?

(curious)

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Because of the incredible improvement in the films since when I was doing my early weddings.

And because the market has changed - the demands for quantity are much higher, and in order to achieve the throughput you need, you are most likely going to have to have films scanned now - the labs aren't set up to do volume production from negatives.

Most of my weddings were shot using a Mamiya C330 with a prism finder. I'd miss that simplicity if I was to do modern wedding work, but wedding photographers have to be realistic.

 

[analoguey]

Hmmm. True that.
What was the average no of photos shot in a wedding earlier? 100-200?

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[MattKing]

Hmmm. True that.
What was the average no of photos shot in a wedding earlier? 100-200?

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I used to aim for that: 8 - 15 rolls of 12 exposure 120, or the equivalent in 24 exposure 220.

 

[horacekenneth]

Thanks for the input. Having a clear contract is great advice.

Besides that I'm hearing have a back-up camera and use it alongside your main camera and consider doing something less stressful which I can appreciate.

Yes, interesting indeed! Apart from this, I wonder of how much importance are wedding photographers today anyway? Now that almost everyone has a smartphone with built-in camera and many amateurs are equipped with at least semi-pro DSLRs. Does this vast amount of image generating capacity not render the role of the traditional wedding photographer absurd? Or do wedding photographers still stand out by their extraordinaire artistic abilities, or simply by the fact that they have a professional lighting setup?

Interesting point, but I have yet to attend a wedding where all the instagrams and the uncle of the bride's dslr pictures (both of which look fine when they go up on facebook the day after the wedding) can hold a candle to what the photographer puts out a couple weeks later.

Matt, what you are saying about 35mm is interesting. It is true, when my wife is putting these wedding agreements together she is estimating a much larger number of final photos than 100. Maybe medium format in a wedding today would fit better in a digital/film hybrid setup.

 

[benjiboy]

Yes, interesting indeed! Apart from this, I wonder of how much importance are wedding photographers today anyway? Now that almost everyone has a smartphone with built-in camera and many amateurs are equipped with at least semi-pro DSLRs. Does this vast amount of image generating capacity not render the role of the traditional wedding photographer absurd? Or do wedding photographers still stand out by their extraordinaire artistic abilities, or simply by the fact that they have a professional lighting setup?

I don't really care who shoots weddings as long as it's not me, I did it for nearly twenty years and I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than do another.

 

[Xmas]

The wedding photo business does not exist any more even with the gays adding to cememony count.

Brides get all the guests cphone and dcamera shots and videos e-mailed to them...

The only thing Ive not seen is the happy couple doing selfies.

Hot news is not much different.

ie bank robbers don't do selfies either yet.

At least that monkey was not doing anything.

 

[benjiboy]

It's fifty years since my wedding and I may be old fashioned, but although it's nice for couples to have informal snaps from their guests on their phones or digital cameras to supplement the official photographer's work but would I want my friends and relatives snaps to pass on to my children and grandchildren and on to my descendants as the only record of the event ?, an emphatic no.

 

[Poisson Du Jour]

When I was the Event Photographer at a nudist resort (1995 to 2009), I used either a Canon EOS 50E and a variety of L-series lenses, or an EOS 5 (which had many years' worth of running Velvia). The tally was:

• 38 weddings
• 29 Renewal of Vows ceremonies
• 41 Christenings / Baptisms; and
• 57 Anullments of Marriage (over that time frame).

The first two were fun, romantic and generally nondescript. The fourth though, often resulted in somebody stepping into separate the warring parties. Babies were the least favourite; it would have been good for the cameras to pack it in so I didn't have to photograph such screaming things as they were dunked under, but no, Boss wanted "the works" and confidence to tackle the best (everybody 'dressed to the nines' with just a bow-tie) as well as the worst (pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, debauchery, cake fights, people flying off trampolines into trees...).. Never at any time did the 50E or 5 play up and all frames were correctly exposed and in focus. I suppose in hindsight that reliability gave me confidence 'on the wing'. I really did not have any confidence starting out at that place (clothing was not optional: every soul right down to the resident possums had to be clothes-free) and I really just travelled with the flow, going up on weekends and long weekends when plans had been made. My chief concern was keeping the cameras protected from champagne spray and general alcohol-fuelled shenanigans. Orthodox (clothed! ) weddings require a high degree of professionalism and confidence in knowledge and application of equipment and always having a backup handy. Looking back at my long film use in photographing a variety of ceremonies, I would never do that again (film) given the speed, readiness and reliability of digital that we have today. Film is my chosen personal medium for landscape, scenic and other personal use. But anything formal is done to benefit everybody else who is more accustomed to digital and likes to see the results shared around. A file or files can always be written to film at some time if desired.

 

[benjiboy]

My dream job, one I would come out of retirement for

 

[John Koehrer]

The first advice I give aspiring wedding shooters is "the first question you should ask yourself is what is my back up plan if it all goes wrong and the bride's father sues me "?

"Run away, run away."...........Monty Python.

A customer had a problem with her brand new Leica M6. The shutter was capping.
Oh well, at least she bought it at a competitor and brought it to us for service.

And we didn't have to deal with a cranky customer. See, every dark cloud etc.

 

[E. von Hoegh]

My wife and I have gotten some interest in shooting film for weddings. We always bring a film camera with us to get a few pictures but this past summer we did a wedding almost entirely with film using a Canon Elan. It went great, photos came back even better than we expected. One day we'd love to do it with medium format.

My concern, however, is that the cameras we have are all used. We've tested them on our own to make sure they work but couldn't they fail at any time? Just recently my Nikon F2 came back from a CLA and the shutter was dragging on certain speeds, only exposing half a frame.

What are things (tests, exercises, etc.) to do with electronic and/or mechanical film cameras to give the greatest possible assurance that they won't fail on the day of reckoning? And how can I be as confident as possible in my equipment? It isn't as easy when you can't see the little picture on the back.

Thanks for your advice,
Horace

If you're using an old camera, be certain it's in tip-top mechanical condition. Bring a spare in the same condition. Be utterly familiar with your equipment, you should be able to use it without conscious thought. Spare batteries for everything. I used to use a Nikon F, because it was recently overhauled and I was utterly familiar with it - this was in the mid to late 90s when the camera was 30~ years old. I never had a problem - even with fill flash, I'd just change the power level on my Metz. You can't reshoot a wedding...

 

[Thomas Bertilsson]

Be familiar with your equipment. Know its quirks, and its twists and turns. That inspires confidence.

Have the equipment serviced in regular intervals. Preventative maintenance.

Carry several backup bodies. I recommend getting used to a particular camera. Purchase three or four bodies and lenses. Use them all during the wedding, so that even if one camera fails, 75% of the pictures are OK. Redundancy is king. I know this sounds perhaps a bit silly, but it really does help if you can do this.

Otherwise, same as with a digital camera, you just have to trust the equipment. Failures do happen with digital cameras too.

 

[Mark_S]

My wife and I have gotten some interest in shooting film for weddings. We always bring a film camera with us to get a few pictures but this past summer we did a wedding almost entirely with film using a Canon Elan. It went great, photos came back even better than we expected. One day we'd love to do it with medium format.

My concern, however, is that the cameras we have are all used. We've tested them on our own to make sure they work but couldn't they fail at any time? Just recently my Nikon F2 came back from a CLA and the shutter was dragging on certain speeds, only exposing half a frame.

WARNING- RANT FOLLOWS

Several people on this thread have made comments about how older equipment may be less reliable. I disagree. 7 years ago, I purchased a new, top of the line canon digital camera for my wife as a christmas gift. At the time we lived in Maine, and we had a tradition of taking a walk in the woods, in snowshoes on New Years day. We went on our walk, and she carried her new camera, I brought a Cannonet QL17 rangefinder. I shot 2 rolls of film during our walk, and her camera stopped working half way through the walk. Certain that the week old camera would be under warranty, we brought it back to the camera store where I bought it, and they returned it to Canon for service. We were told that the camera was not servicable, that it had been abused (by operating it at extreem low temperatures), and due to the abuse, the warranty was not valid. Canon stated that no camera could be expected to operate properly under those conditions, despite the nice photographs that I showed them, taken with a 40 year old canon camera on that same walk.

If we compare our society today to what it was 50 years ago, we have moved from having a minority of women employed to having the majority of women employed, we have computers which have massively increased our productivity, yet for most of us, there is little change in our standard of living. I believe that in large part this is because so much of what we are using that productivity for is to produce disposable items. The cameras which are being produced today - even the high end cameras - are not being designed to have a working life of 10 years or more. Most of the cameras that I use were designed and built to operate more or less indefinitely. Last month I had a niece who got married, and I wanted to take some photographs at the wedding - I brought a MF camera (Hasselblad 503CX) and before the wedding I sent the camera and two lenses in for CLA (David Odess does a great job) My equipment operated flawlessly, despite being the same age as the bride, I believe that the prints that I produced will outlast the images that the professional photographer who did the wedding produced.

When photographing a wedding, you are creating images that will remain with the bride and groom for decades, I believe that the only responsible way to do this is with film, using a camera with which you are comfortable (shoot a lot), and film which you know.

 

[benjiboy]

The best way to avoid equipment failure at weddings is to tell the happy couple to get a professional wedding photographer instead of you, because they get paid to worry about it.

 

[Sirius Glass]

The best way to avoid equipment failure at weddings is to tell the happy couple to get a professional wedding photographer instead of you, because they get paid to worry about it.

+1000

 

[benjiboy]

+1000

I just don't understand why people who don't have to put themselves in the firing line and have all the worry and aggravation that wedding shooting entails, I only attend weddings as a guest these days and leave my camera at home.