How much memory for a wedding?

DoubleT

DoubleT

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Matt
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im shooting my first wedding this weekend ( a family member)

im just a little worried about weather i have enough memory or not.

i most probably wont be taking my laptop to dump pictures onto as i feel its another thing for me to look after and keep safe, ill most probably be drinking as the evening goes on so wont have a car to keep as "base"

i have 4gb on my d80 and 5gb on my d300,

im shooting all day and all night, covering the bride getting ready, the church and the reception.

im going to shoot in raw+basic for most of the day, especially for the "posed" shots.
i think i should be able to get away with shooting jpeg on the d300 for most of the day though, what do you think?

will i have enough or shall i buy another 4gb for the d300? ( 540pics in fine jpeg)
 
TBH mate I would try and stick with RAW as much as possible, the last thing you want is for a perfect shot to be ruined by blown out highlights and not being able to recover your JPEG shots.
 
DoubleT said:
im shooting my first wedding this weekend ( a family member)

im just a little worried about weather i have enough memory or not.

i most probably wont be taking my laptop to dump pictures onto as i feel its another thing for me to look after and keep safe, ill most probably be drinking as the evening goes on so wont have a car to keep as "base"

i have 4gb on my d80 and 5gb on my d300,

im shooting all day and all night, covering the bride getting ready, the church and the reception.

im going to shoot in raw+basic for most of the day, especially for the "posed" shots.
i think i should be able to get away with shooting jpeg on the d300 for most of the day though, what do you think?

will i have enough or shall i buy another 4gb for the d300? ( 540pics in fine jpeg)
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Hi DoubleT, Firstly good luck with the wedding. To be honest I wouldn't shoot JPEG at all if you can avoid it. If your doing shots outside then you may have strong light to contend with and would want the 'recovery ability' that is offered by shooting in RAW. Given the importance of suich and event I'd recommend two things:

1) By another quick card for the D300.
2) Lay of the booze until you've got a card full of good shots! :bonk:

Hope that helps.
 
Shoot RAW, you are going to be working in a lot of differing lighting, much easier to sort out white balance later.

I would get some more cards. I regularly shoot 30-40GB at a wedding, you won't need that much but always better to be safe than sorry.
 
ok thanks guys. raw it is then. i did feel that would be the main order of the day anyway.

ive just ordered another 4gb compact flash, so shall be here by the weekend.

i think i will have to try and find a way to take the laptop with me as a dumping ground for pictures "just in case"
 
WeddingHack said:
Shoot RAW, you are going to be working in a lot of differing lighting, much easier to sort out white balance later.

I would get some more cards. I regularly shoot 30-40GB at a wedding, you won't need that much but always better to be safe than sorry.
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just had a quick look at your website.

theres some lovely photos on there, great work (y)
 
^^ just had a look myself. Have to agree some great pics, and the website is fairly nice too!
 
Definitely more cards, as Duncan says 30-40GB is easy to use up at a wedding.

Pete
 
If you are only doing from the ceremony onwards then 10G should be enough even with RAW. It all depends how you shoot though, machine gun style or double tap.
 
Just buy some more memory to be safe, it is VERY cheap now! I just picked up 8Gb for £15 of a decent make (it was from scan but I am sure you would be able to get 4-8Gb cheaply enough.

Might be worth writing down all the shots you want: her mum+her dad; her mum, her dad + her; her mum, her dad + him; etc etc in a notebook and ticking them off as you get them. It beats missing a vital shot! Have you got spares for the flash, have you got a million batteries for the flashes, do you have spare batteries for each camera. Do you have a way of indicating which memory cards have been used and which haven't and are they blank now? Does everything work now?

Good luck!
 
Did a wedding in Raw on the 350D the other week and took just short of 300 shots which took up around 3 gig of card space so even with larger file sizes your 8 gig should be fine.
But as others have said stick to Raw it gives so much more post processing control
 
ive got a list of intended shots so im covered there, ive got back up batteries ( 1 set ) for my SB-800.

and i have 5 batteries for my camera.

they both have battery grips so there will be 2 in each and one spare, i think this shall be ample.

i will take my battery charger with me just in case.

and yes everything is working fine.

i have a helper with me too for a church shot uim after, as im not alowed to move around in the church i have 2 angles of attack as it were.
 
CaptainPenguin said:
Did a wedding in Raw on the 350D the other week and took just short of 300 shots which took up around 3 gig of card space so even with larger file sizes your 8 gig should be fine.
But as others have said stick to Raw it gives so much more post processing control
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were you the main photographer? how long did you cover the wedding for?
 
DoubleT said:
ive got a list of intended shots so im covered there, ive got back up batteries ( 1 set ) for my SB-800.

and i have 5 batteries for my camera.

they both have battery grips so there will be 2 in each and one spare, i think this shall be ample.

i will take my battery charger with me just in case.

and yes everything is working fine.

i have a helper with me too for a church shot uim after, as im not alowed to move around in the church i have 2 angles of attack as it were.
Click to expand...

I have an SB800 and SB600, they do tend to eat batteries. I would have 3 spare sets :)

Anyway looks like you've got it all covered hope its a great day. Haven't been to a wedding for a couple of years :( I do like a nice bit of wedding cake............ slobber...... Fruit one not sponge.....
 
i do have another set of batteries actually come to think of it, but these arent the same power as my main ones, i think they are 1800 and my others are 2800 ( rechargeables)
 
DoubleT said:
i do have another set of batteries actually come to think of it, but these arent the same power as my main ones, i think they are 1800 and my others are 2800 ( rechargeables)
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The more the merrier. I have looked at the battery pack for the SB800 but it uses another 6 AA batteries!! I want a Li-Ion battery pack :)
 
Just my 2p worth.

Double up on what memory you already have - compared to the investment you've already made in bodies and lenses, the extra cost is negligeable.

Take a couple of spare sets of Duracells for the flashgun(s) - just in case. You'd look a bit silly if you ran out of flash at the critical point!

Stay sober until you've taken all the pictures and put the gear away safely. If you are the main photographer, you're there to do a job, not to have a p*** up.
 
Nod said:
If you are the main photographer, you're there to do a job, not to have a p*** up..
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:clap: good point.

thats the difficult thing, the person getting married is my brother-in-law.
he wanted me to get all suited and booted the same as all the other men but i said no because i wanted a little professional distance from the congregation.

im needed to be in a few shots too thats why i have a helper, unfortunatly hes not used a SLR before so he get my D80 in auto mode for those moments!.

ill save the beer untill the disco lights come on :)
 
I've shot four weddings to date, all in raw. The first was for a family friend and I was the only tog. No pro was hired. I was pretty clueless and shot 622 raw images. The last three weddings have been as a 2nd shooter and I have shot something like 930, 620, 738 raw images in that order. So for me, if I work on about 1,000 raws as a likely maximum that will get me in the right ballpark. About half my shots are from a 30D, at around 8MB per file, and half from my 40D at 14MB per file. So that suggests I'd need 500 x 8MB = 4GB of storage for my 30D and 500 x 14MB = 7GB for my 40D.

Of course, real life is never fair, so you should always have something in reserve so a 4GB +2GB for my 30D and 8GB + 2 GB for my 40D would be reasonable. More would be better but that should be enough. I do have 1 x 8GB, 2 x 2GB, 1 x 1GB and 1 x 512MB, which has been sufficient for me, up to now. I shall be getting more cards and will buy at least 8GB cards for the future. To be honest I'm tempted just to get 2 x 16GB and be done with it. I don't see much point in piddling around with silly 2GB cards (or 4GB for that matter). I know all the arguments about eggs in one basket blah, blah, blah, but I've never yet lost a file/card and from what I've read, even if a card supposedly becomes corrupt the chances of recovering the files are in excess of 99% success.

I do have a photobank and a laptop and do grab an opportunity to download and verify my files at some point, roughly half way through things, but to date I have never formatted a card during an event. I always secure what I have and continue shooting without erasing anything.

Hopefully, if you apply similar reasoning to your own cameras, their files and your shooting style you should be able to answer your own question.
 
i did a wedding the other week with a d300 and did 16gb quite easily just with raw, as others have said stick with raw and forget about the jpeg and then just do a batch conversion later.

also go for the 14bit raw as it'll give you a bit more dynamic range for the variably naff lighting you're going to encounter
 
Just a lighthearted joke-in my experience after all the drinking-very little memory at all LOL
 
some great input there tdodd, thanks very much.

with regards to the raw batch processing , ive never done this before, can anybody give me a quick "how to" guide using CS3.

thanks
 
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