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Hey guys, so next week I've agreed to help out some friends by shooting their friends wedding. Now I was initially very apprehensive, but after talking to the people I'm helping out a couple of things came out:
- The couple were not going to have a photographer at all, the groom has been very sick so it's a shoestring budget. They had asked my friend to take pics for them on her PnS camera.
- I've had a chat to them and they aren't expecting anything. They know I've never done a wedding and I'm really just going to be extra above what they would have had, so even if I don't turn out a single good photo they are ok with that.

So since the pressure isn't much I decided to help them out and gain a valuable bit of experience for myself at the same time.

I've been doing some searching online and found a lot of suggestions and articles on what to do and what to expect:
e.g. http://www.rokkorfiles.com/Wedding101-page1.html
http://digital-photography-school.com/we...tographers

So far I'm good to go as far as gear goes (borrowed enough to have 2 bodies, 2 flashes, 3 mem cards and a variety of lenses to use - thinking of going 70-200 on a FF body and a 17-40 on a CS body.) and I'm in the process of making a 'shot list'.

The wedding is outside on a beach, so I've been out trying to practice as much as I can with fill flash (straight on with exp dialed back, diffusers, pointed up and use the catch card etc) and I'm thinking my CPL might be useful as well. I've also been asked to help out this weekend and shoot candids at my girlfriends brothers wedding, so that should hopefully be good experience as well (as well as a chance to spy on the pro).

I've also been studying some wedding pics that I've seen, e.g. yellow15 has some amazing wedding pics, my sister had a very talented photographer at her wedding and I've been going through their pics too.

So thats where I'm at, I know there are some great photographers on here and some great wedding specific photographers. Do I look like I'm on the right track? Any hints or tips from the gurus?

don't have much advice, but make sure you have lots of memory card, lots of batteries!

I personally quite enjoy the 'story weddings' or whatever they call those unusual shots.

1.shoot in RAW
2.shoot in RAW
3.shoot in RAW!

dcd, since this is the first wedding you are doing, here are a few things you should keep in your mind:

1. There are so many things happening during the wedding and everything happen so quickly. And the wedding is not going to stop just because you/your camera is not ready. So just keep your gear as simple as possible, since you have 2 cameras, basically just choose 1 lens for each camera that you think can handle 90% of the shots. What lens is really up to you. I personally like 70-200 on FF camera (unless it's small venue) but it's up to you and your shooting style.

2. Have a meeting with the couple a few days before the wedding and go through the run down with them. Make sure you know what is going to happen so you can prepare yourself for it. And asked if they have any special shots, or group shots..etc they want on that day. You should have a copy of the run down that you brings with you as well.

3. While the groom and the bride are the most important people in the world on that day, it's the bride that you should be focused on most of the time. She should be the one that appears the most often in your photos.

4. Don't try any new fancy tricks that you have not tried before. Shoot with the settings that you are most familiar with. For example, if you have never used AF tracking before, don't try it on the wedding day just because you think it may work well.

5. Check all the camera settings the night before. Make sure you are shooting in RAW, ISO is not set to 25600, all the memory cards are formatted, batteries are fully charged, sensor is cleaned...etc

6. I personally prefer to use a few medium size memory cards than one gigantic card. If one of my 4GB or 8GB card is dead/lost, then i would lost a portion of the wedding photos, which is bad. But imagine if i use a 64GB card and the card suddenly died at the end of the day, that would be a catastrophic disaster!! (i don't even want to think how i can tell my client if that happens!)

7. On a similar topic, backup your photos to 2 different locations as soon as wedding is finished. Don't just backup to 1 location as your HDD/DVD/Computer can die anytime. So always backup the raw to two separate locations e.g. one USB HDD and DVDs. This is something i always do immediately after any photoshoot no matter how tired/busy i'm.

Quote:The wedding is outside on a beach, so I've been out trying to practice as much as I can with fill flash (straight on with exp dialed back, diffusers, pointed up and use the catch card etc) and I'm thinking my CPL might be useful as well. I've also been asked to help out this weekend and shoot candids at my girlfriends brothers wedding, so that should hopefully be good experience as well (as well as a chance to spy on the pro).

Since it's outdoor, always point flash STRAIGHT ON. Diffuser, flash point up/sideways, bounce card...etc won't make any noticable difference unless your flash is powerful enough so light can hit the atmopshere and bounce back.
Don't worry about CPL, you won't have much time to adjust it. But you can keep it with you as you can use it as a ND filter so you can still shoot at large aperture on a sunny day.

i know you say the couple doesn't have high expectation on the photos, but i would highly recommend you to find someone that has more experience to shoot with you, at least for part of the day. It's just a lot "safer" and you can learn a lot from the more experienced shooter as well.

yellow, you sound like you've done this before a few times.

Wow thanks for the replies guys and especially for the very detailed reply yellow15!

1)Great, it's good to see I'm on the right track with getting my hands on 2 camera bodies.

2) Yup I'm meeting up with them on Sunday to get some final details and go through a shot list etc.

3) Ok cool I'll keep that in mind

4) Haha I hardly know any old tricks

5-6-7) Ok so be prepared is the major point here Noted! I've got a lot of stuff to check, but I'm gonna also make a list to double check everything is good to go on the night before so I can be sure! have 3 CF cards that I'll switch out during the day so hopefully that will do.

Also good to know about the CPL and flashes. Haha if one day I get a flash that can hit the atmosphere and come back, I might put a bat symbol in front of it and see who turns up!

Only point that I think I can't do is getting another shooter. I'm unfortunately flying solo on this one. I had another friend who was keen to help out (and has shot 1 wedding before) but the couple refused his offer saying that since it's a very small wedding and they are both quite shy they didn't want 2 photographers running around. I would have been more comfortable with his there but I guess it's up to them in the end.

After reading some other articles 1 thing I'm concerned about is that a lot of people say that cameras find it tough to meter since it is 1 big white thing (bride) and 1 big black thing (groom) and WB may be a little funky (I don't have a grey card is it worth getting one this weekend?). My plan was to shoot AV mode.
I guess the best thing to do then is just on the day shoot some tests before the bride arrives and try and figure out if I need to change my Exposure compensation settings. Going with yellow15's 3rd point I guess it's better to try and expose for details in the brides dress rather than the grooms suit when I have to choose.
Any tips for changing EC on the fly? Or I guess it really depends on your camera doesn't it?

and when you are swapping CF cards, no matter how busy you are, make sure you put the old one into your camera bag securely so you won't lost/drop it or completely forget where you put it!

And since it's an outdoor wedding, normally you can just set the WB to a preset value (like sunny day, or cloudy) and it should work good enough
And since you are shooting in RAW, you can always fix the WB later.

oh well if the couple doesn't want too many photographers around, then you just have to try your best as you don't have any backups

review your pictures as regularly as you can to make sure the settings you use are okay.

re the WB, you can always just fix the WB in PP so i say don't worry too much about it THIS TIME as you have too many other things that you can't fix in PP so you should pay more your attention on those things. Just either leave it in Auto WB or select a preset WB that match the lighting the most.

re the exposure compensation, when i was shooting weddings with my D200 or older cameras, i normally under expose by 1/2 stop or so to avoid blown out highlights on the bride's gown. Then push the exposure back up during postprocessing
But now with my D700, the dynamic range is a lot better and i can recover the blown out highlight easily so normally what i do is change to spot metering, use single point focusing and move the AF point to the face and let the camera do autofocus and do spot metering on the subject's face at the same time. But Canon cameras (unless it's 1D/1Ds) doesn't link the AF point to spot metering point so this won't work for you.
And if you are using matrix metering or center weight metering, just remember the size of the bride's gown in the picture would have a big influence on the metering result so you have to do adjust exposure compensation accordingly.