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Monday, August 8, 2011

Equipment Required for Wedding Photography

The following are from notes from my Wedding Photography Course when all we shot was in film. There are updates to cater for digital but in principal nothing much has changed from what you need to photograph a wedding.
In my opinion that is.
Some may want to try photographing a wedding in film or both. I understand some still do shoot only in film.
My ideal would be to do both which is what I was doing when I first started to use a digital slr.

Camera Equipment
35mm slr camera or digital slr or both.(2 bodies)
Lenses: Minimum standard zoom(35-70mm) standard (50mm),wide angle(28mm) and portrait(100 0r 135mm)
You can photograph a  whole  wedding with a good standard zoom.
Captured on film

Capured on Pentax  istD* Wandilligong Victoria

Captured on film
Medium Format(Film) was once  considered the “professional” standard equipment. You can offer a top quality but expensive product if you have this equipment.
Flash:   A flash should ideally be of the tilt and swivel type and either on camera or off the camera on a bracket.The metz range are ideal or the brand name top of the range flash that goes with your camera.Your flash should be able to be manually adjusted and also have TTL and Auto settings.

Accessories:

Tripod, cable release,reflector board or folding reflector, various filters including soft focus,small stepladder( for getting a little height when needed for group shots or couple shots), camera bag,small penlight,rubber bands,filter holder,light meter that can also meter flash, umbrellas, street directory(and GPS if you have one), location maps,lens brush, lens cloth. (A lot of filter effects can of course now be applied in post but I used to do some in camera, eg blurry edges.)

Film:
I  was using  fuji films for colour(nps 160,nph 400,npz 800)
Ilford xp2 (400) for black and white.
Kodak has similar films to these and it is a matter of your own preference.

Digital Equipment:
Digital Camera and compact flash or sd cards(several) I think smaller capacity cards are a better option than putting all your shots on one card.
Computer and photo editing software(photoshop,lightroom, Aperture)
Digital Printer.( comes in useful but would use a dedicated lab for wedding prints)
Scanner.(For scanning negs if using film)
If you can afford it a portable storage device.
CD burner and/or DVD burner.
A Lap top or desk top computer is essential of course. I prefer the Macintosh Systems.
A video light can be very useful instead of flash equipment. I also  have a 1950's quartz halogen super 8 movie film light that is great for indoor spontaneous shooting during a wedding when used sparingly. It gets very hot quickly.





   






   
   






























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