Essential Kit for Wedding Photographers-Non Photographic.

Much is made of Camera Equipment and other things photographic when people are seeking information about getting started in Wedding Photography.
There are essential items that are overlooked and usually you will already have them.

1. A reliable air-conditioned car and a full tank of petrol.
In Australia the wedding season is usually in hot weather.
You need to stay cool and be cool when photographing a wedding and moving around the different locations.
Also if you car stops you are in big trouble.
I once went off in my Camry station wagon  on a wedding and forgot to fill the tank up before I went.
I was still a long way from home and realised the tank was nearly empty.
Thankfully I had completed the wedding.

A well earned cup of coffee after the wedding assignment is completed. Roof of my car is used as a table.
2005

2. A GPS navigating system and a street directory.

If you get lost you are in even bigger trouble.

3. A time sheet for your wedding day.

Essential to have a plan. See my previous post on wedding timetables.

https://geoffthompsonsblog.blogspot.com/search/label/wedding%20photography%20timetable

4. A wedding photography agreement.
 You need to have yourself covered by a contract if things go wrong.See my previous post on this.
https://geoffthompsonsblog.blogspot.com/search/label/wedding%20photography%20agreement

5. Water and food.

You need to stay hydrated. You need food also to keep your energy levels up.
Your clients will not necessarily be supplying you with food and drink.
It is a long day.

6. Phone. When I started mobile phones were unheard of. Could you do one now without your phone.

7. Drivers license.

You could get stopped by police. I have been.
Ironically I was on my way to photograph a police wedding.

8. Credit card and/ or cash.

You might need to pay for  a car park  or even by something like batteries or an sd card if the need arose.

9. An assistant to help you on the day.

https://geoffthompsonsblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/working-witrh-assistant-wedding.html

Either as second shooter and/or as a helper.
I started out doing weddings by myself but found it essential as I got into it to have an assistant.

If you haven't got all these bases covered you may strike problems on the big day.

My Ideal Digital Camera

In looking at some of the top end Digital Slr's and even the enthusiast models I have become less and less impressed with the technology overload.
The other day I met a camera enthusiast who has not been in photography all that long but has some top end Canon Digital equipment.

He was looking  for some basic instruction but was obviously caught up in the technology overload and was showing me all the settings he had his camera on and what he would do to take a basic portrait.

I must confess I was terrified of the world he had immersed himself in.

The menu on his camera was so much more elaborate than my  "lower end" Canon camera.

And he was an amateur enthusiast.

It put me off buying a higher end full frame slr.

There was a time with film cameras when you had a minimum of things to select and think about on your camera and when taking photographs.

1. Film type, Daylight or tungsten  and Iso of film? Colour or Black and white, negative or transparency?

120mm,220mm,35mm.5x4.

2. Camera type. 35mm ragefinder,35mm SLR, medium format SLR or TLR.(6x6,6x4.5,6x7,6x8,6x9)

3.Shutter speed.

4. Aperture

5. Lens type.

6. Flash or available light?

7. Tripod or hand held?

8. Was I producing prints or slides? Enlargements or standard prints.

9. Metering mode.

Any processing and printing and correction of faulty exposures was done by the film lab.

Now all of those things are in reality incorporated in one way or another in the digital realm.

But throw in.

Raw or Jpeg?

High Dynamic range.

Picture styles.

Various flash settings and adjustments.

In camera editing.

White balance.

GPS

WiFi

Full frame or APSc

Image stabilisation

Auto focus or manual focus

Focus selection points

Flash cards

Tethered or un-tethered shooting

Remote control

Slave shooting using on and off camera flash

Photoshop, Lightroom etc.

in camera special effects.

And the list goes on.

The closest I have come to my ideal digital camera was I think the first one I purchased.

The pentax *istD.

It had some basic digital adjusting to do but was effectively a digital version of the Pentax MZS which was the final flagship Pentax SLR film camera.

You could run with the default settings and produce some great pics.

The menu was no where near as confusing as the current crop of digital cameras.

6 mega pixels but still produced a very good picture.

Using it was more like the experience of using a film slr.

In addition it was compatible with my large collection of Pentax lenses.

I still have the camera.

It sufferred at my hands once from having coca cola spilt over it.

It did get it fixed.

There is a lot to be said for cameras that are sealed against such things.

Thankfully this camera is now fully functioning again.

I am being drawn back more and more to shooting film.

It may be more costly per shot but that will help curb the addiction of firing off digital salvos when ever I have a camera in hand and that is often.

It will also cut down on many hours spent "playing" on a computer.

The results will more than likely be purer and better.

So watch this space for some film shooting results in the future but not very often.

There are apparently a lot of photographers returning to film.

http://www.slrlounge.com/9-film-shooting-wedding-photographers-you-should-follow

The author with wedding couple Tidbinbilla ACT. Pentax *istD.Cropped from landscape original.2006.

Sydney Harbour Ferry Pentax*istD

Pentax*istD

Pentax*istD

Pentax*istD

Waiting for the Punt (Ferry) Pentax*istD

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.