I managed to shoot an entire wedding, for a friend, with a 30D, 17-85 f/4-5.6 lens and a 580EX flash with no modifiers. There was no pro at all and I did not have to do any posing or anything, just capture the day. I made some pretty horrendous gaffs, but by shooting in raw I was able to save the day reasonably well. The results (post edit) are in an album here -
http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/EezyTiger/200610_Kim_and_Andy_Wedding.
Some lessons learned....
- Shoot in raw. It will help you out with any WB issues and, to a degree, exposure errors. Raw certainly saved my bacon.
- If you don't know your flash system then get to know it well before the wedding. Left on full auto you are likely to get surprising and possibly disappointing results. If you can avoid using flash you will make your life a lot simpler, but sometimes you may just have to use it, either because there is not enough light or you need to provide fill against backlighting. If it is sunny then you will almost certainly need flash outside because the party should be posed facing away from the sun so they don't squint. Either that or they will be in open shade but perhaps with a sunny background.
- The 50 f/1.8 may sound like great idea, and it may save you from using flash indoors but consider the following....
. The lens is sharp when stopped down a bit but not great wide open at f/1.8. If you stop down to f/2.8 you're no better off than with the Tammy.
. The AF is noisey and can hunt quite a bit in low light and may not prove that accurate
. It has nice bokeh when wide open but as soon as you stop it down the five blade aperture causes pretty ugly pentagonal specular highlights in the background.
. As I mentioned, I shot an entire wedding with an f/4.0-5.6 lens. I used Av mode at f/5.6 for most indoor stuff. Although f/1.8 may sound great you'll still be streets ahead of me when I had to use my 17-85 even if you only shoot at f/2.8.
. Since you have the Tammy I'd stick that on one body for the wide stuff and the 70-200 on the other body. Keep the 50 as a backup, but, to keep things simple, don't plan on using it.
- Exposing for the dress and everything else is a tough gig if you're not experienced. The dress is paramount. You must expose well for the dress and not blow the detailing on it. If you have constant, even lighting then use manual exposure so you can control what is going on and not have to keep dialing in EC every time the scene/subject changes. If you shoot with flash I'd say manual exposure is even more important, in order to hold the background exposure steady. Let the flash take care of subject illumination and allow the background to be underexposed just a fraction.
- If you are shooting indors with tungsten lighting and also using your flash then be very aware that you are mixing two very different colour temperatures. The ideal solution would be to use a CTO gel (colour temperature orange) to warm your flash so it matches tungsten light. Then you can easily use tungsten WB. If you have a yellow/red background and a blue/white subject your shots will look very weird - Some of mine did
- Check your histogram frequently, and check for overexposure - blinking highlight indicators on the image itself.
- If you can stabilise your background/ambient exposure by shooting manual you will still need to be ready to ride that FEC control for your flash. Canon's ETTL-2 system is very protective of highlights and is very prone to underexpose if you are not careful. Anything bright and reflective in the scene - glass/metal/white paintwork etc. - can fool the flash metering and cause it to quench early and underexpose the shot. If the frame is full of wedding dress then you will need to bump up the FEC by a couple of stops in order to get the dress looking white and not grey - but check the histogram to make sure you don't overcook it. Conversely, a predominance of black, like a row of tuxedos, can fool the flash into overexposing - the camera sees all the dark material and figures it will need to add a lot of light to make it "middle grey". But you want black tuxedos looking (near) black, not middle grey. Be on top of that FEC once more.
- Stay out of the way of the pro. He is being paid to get "The" shots and when he is taking photos he is going to want people's eyes focused on his lens, not yours. If people have two cameras to look at you will b****r up the happy couple's shots and neither they nor the pro will be pleased. If he is friendly and offers advice etc. then that is great. You may even be abe to complement each other's work and everyone will benefit. Who knows what opportunities may lie further down the road? It would probably be worth having a friendly word with the pro at the start of the gig, just so there are no misunderstndings. It would also be good if the B&G explain that they have asked you to shoot as well, just so he understands his clients' wishes.
- You asked about apertures and focal lengths. It's hard to offer advice without knowing the venue, the distances involved and the lighting inside and the weather outside. Sure aperture is important, for creative DOF, but the thing not to get caught out on is shutter speed. When I shot in Av mode, even with flash, my shutter speed was roaming all over the place and quite a few shots were ruined due to motion blur in my subject(s). IS saved me from camera shake but 1/40 was not a good speed for freezing motion in candid subjects. I'd say you need to keep your shutter speed at 1/60 as a minimum and that will influence your choice of aperture and ISO.
- Flash modifiers - a Stofen Omnibounce might be useful but it depends what colour walls and ceilings the venues have and how close they are. They are wasteful of light, but if the environment is advantageous they can work very nicely. A cheaper alternative would be to make your own bounce card, from a piece of white card and a rubber band, or fun foam. Have a look here for a rather long winded, but ultimately worthwhile, instructional video....
http://www.abetterbouncecard.com/
I think that's enough rambling for now. If you have any questions feel free to ask. If I think of any more crucial points I'll add them later.
By the way, I'm not a wedding tog - I've only ever shot the one wedding - but I have been doing my best to learn how my camera works and the quirks of Canon's flash system and how to tame it (a bit).
