Need help with filters

Algoessailing · Sep 23, 2004

I got roped into taking pictures of a friends wedding in the middle of october. So far, I have only been concentrating on landscape photos, and have only taken snapshots of my kids, no real work with flesh. I am looking for suggestions for filters to enhance my pics. The ceremony will be in the afternoon in a gazebo (its in the bahamas, so I'm not sure if the backdrop will be water or trees). I know that in landscape, 2:00 in the afternoon is very bad light, but like I said, I really don't know much about portrait. If anyone has any tips on anything else (lenses, film speed, shutter speed, etc), about this shoot, please feel free to give your opinions/suggestions. I really don't wan't to buy a book about it (portraits aren't my thing), but I would be willing to check out any websites with good tips. Thanks
Dave

oh yea, I forgot to mention, I shoot film.

ksmattfish · Sep 23, 2004

I wouldn't worry about filters. Learn fill flash; that'll help you more at 2:00 in the afternoon. You are going to find that the shadows will end up very dark if you expose for the background.

A polarizing filter will reduce glare, and saturate colors, but it also blocks 2 stops of light.

Big Mike · Sep 23, 2004

The usual advice is to tell your friend to hire a professional. Weddings are (supposed to be) a once in a life time event. Why take chances on the photos?

That being said, you may be able to do a great job.

Take a backup of everything you can. Bring extra batteries and twice as much film as you think you will need.

As far as filters, I would suggest a polarizer, if any at all.

Do you have an accessory flash? If you are going to use flash at all, don't rely on a built-in flash. Even better would be a flash bracket to really move the flash away from the lens. With it being in the afternoon, possibly in bright sun light, you will want to have some fill light so the faces are not shadowed. Either from flash or maybe from a reflector. You could get an assistant to hold a reflector as to light up the faces.

What lenses do you have? Something fast (large aperture) might come in handy if you want to throw a distracting background out of focus. Although they probably want to capture the background in some of the shots (as it's in the Bahamas).

You might want to practice shooting portraits outdoors until the time comes. Try a few different films etc.

Good Luck.

Algoessailing · Sep 23, 2004

Big Mike said:
The usual advice is to tell your friend to hire a professional. Weddings are (supposed to be) a once in a life time event. Why take chances on the photos?

That was my thought exactly. But, do to very unusual circumstances (one of those being my wife and I are paying for everything) I "get" to take pictures.

I do have a nice flash, not sure what it is, but I paid $150 used. I haven't used it much, though, but I will.

I have several lenses, unfortunatly no high quality. 28 mm Albinar will go to f2.8, and 28-80mm pentax f3.5.

Practice I will, anyone have a suggestion on what film to try?

Thanks

Algoessailing · Sep 23, 2004

ksmattfish said:
I wouldn't worry about filters. Learn fill flash;

Sounds great, what is it?

ksmattfish · Sep 23, 2004

Algoessailing said:
ksmattfish said:

I wouldn't worry about filters. Learn fill flash;

Sounds great, what is it?

Click to expand...

Use a flash at about 1 stop underexposed to deal with harsh shadows caused by high contrast lighting (such as 2:00 in the bright afternoon sun).

Here's how I do it:

Aperture is chosen based on flash power and distance to subject

GN @ ISO 100 divided by distance to subject = aperture

I normally use a Vivitar 285 flash, which has several power settings (full, 1/2, 1/4, and 1/16), so I have a choice of apertures. If your flash only has full power, then you are stuck with one aperture.

I don't want to completely eliminate the shadows, or it won't look natural. So I close the aperture down 1 stop.

I meter the background or ambient light at the selected aperture to determine the shutter speed. Bright, sunny days will be where you'll wish you had a leaf shutter camera (flash sync at all speeds) or a camera with a higher flash sync speed.

Big Mike · Sep 23, 2004

Algoessailing said:
Sounds great, what is it?

Taken from http://www.geocities.com/y124g/fill.html

Example 1:

Sunny afternoon with harsh shadows cast on the faces of those whom you wish to photograph.

Procedure: Meter the scene, preferably with an accurate meter like the one in your SLR.

Let's say you are using ASA100 film and the meter tells you that your subject calls for f/11 @1/250 sec. You can certainly use this setting on your Mat without a flash to get a proper exposure but the shadows on the faces of your dear ones are going to result in pictures you probably won't want to look at too often. To get decrease the shadows, you will need to use a flash output almost equal to that of the ambient light ("almost equal" looks better than "equal" when using fill flash for this purpose). To do this, you must lie to your flash. The flash doesn't care what shutter speed you have selected but it does pay attention to the film speed and the aperture, so you have two opportunities to lie! Since you want, say only a half stop less exposure that the daylight meter reading, the easiest way to do this is set the flash to f/11 but tell it that you are using faster film by setting the ASA dial on the flash to somewhere between ASA100 and ASA200. Thinking that you are using this imaginary faster film, the flash will output just a little less light than it would if you'd been truthful with it. if you wanted one full stop less light to be outputted from your flash you could either tell the flash that you are using ASA200 film or you could be truthful about the film speed but select the f/8 aperture on the flash and leaving the camera actually set to f/11.

ksmattfish · Sep 23, 2004

The flash doesn't care what shutter speed you have selected

The flash doesn't care about squat, but you and your friends will care if you choose a shutter speed higher than your flash sync speed, because the flash won't evenly expose across the image.