back in the dark ages...

[mysteryscribe]

Trust me I have this same conversation over and over in real life as well.

So person asks, "What do I do about shooting a wedding during the ceremony in a dark church. Answer buy a long zoom lens with anti shake.... then run your iso up to 32oo...

Get whiz Mr Bill, there was a time when film speed didn't go any where near that high.... there were no anti shakes lenses.... not really any zooms either and we STILL managed to shoot shots during the ceremony.

How did you do it, you might ask.... A solid lens of 200mm and under in my case. I never shot a wedding in the national cathederal... On a damn good tripod... With an iso 160 cps film...

How in the world did you avoid movement you ask.... Sometimes you didn't mostly you did. You would be surprised how many times in a wedding everything is still for a 1/10 of a second even longer.... I forget what its called now, since no one uses the term, but in every action there is a second when nothing is moving.

Lighting a unity candle, when the they are trying to get the candles lit, they are standing very still and the candle has almost no shake. The ceremony is lousy with moments like that.

If you look at the old wedding albums from the time before all the modern stuff, you will see that it was possible to do all back then without all the cute toys of today. Nothing wrong with toys at all guys, it just isn't the only way to do things.

 

[Don Simon]

Amen.

I just mentioned in another post that I recently asked an assistant in a camera shop if he had any primes; he didn't know what I was talking about. What I didn't mention was that prior to this the same assistant had been trying to sell a customer a more expensive camera than they came in looking for, explaining how the next model had a longer zoom and more megapixels and so was better.
I am tempted to go back again and hit him with an Adams book.

 

[mysteryscribe]

Used to be they asked you how you wanted to use your camera, not how much equity you had in your house.

 

[cal_gundert05]

Kind of related is how the changing technology has resulted in different subject matter in pictures.

Today I was in the university archives looking at a collection of postcards from the early- to mid-20th century. The first thing I noticed was how many postcards were printed drawings, as opposed to being printed photographs like many are today (did that make sense). Even when the postcards were reproductions of photos, many of them were from photos of buildings like schools and churches. There were, however, some postcards made from photos of nature, some of them including people.

I guess what I'm saying is that, while mysteryscribe is right about fast lenses and cameras with more megapixels are toys, these toys allow us to play many more (and some would say funner) games.

 

[mysteryscribe]

remember to the buyers were different back in those days.... I shot auto races on 100 speed film in 1960 so it wasnt all about the technology.

Motel owners bought postcards;. People wanted shots of building to remember their vacations. Not to many people wanted a card of a stock car race but they could have had one.

thats were panning and shooting out of the turn came from... There were techniques to enable a photographer to do most of the things you do today. Just had to do it differently.

 

[ksmattfish]

Before I bought a DSLR I didn't use anything faster than ISO 400 at weddings. I just never found a high speed (faster than ISO 400) film that I liked much. Medium format Tri-X at ISO 1250 in Diafine is tolerable, but most everything else was too grainy for me (although I like it in other photog's work), and I was never happy with the color. When you read the fine print, there's really no such thing as a film faster than ISO 1000 or so anyway. I tried out a bunch of Konica 3200 C41 color film; I guarantee it was really ISO 800. That's been the case with everything else I've tried too. Sure, go ahead and shoot it at 3200 like the box says, but the negs are going to be thin, about 2 stops thin.

At the majority of the weddings I am not allowed to use flash during the ceremony, and usually I have to shoot from the back or balcony. I put the camera on a tripod, and wait for a pause in the action. Or not, I like motion blur. I didn't have many zoom lenses for my film cameras, and what I did have I didn't trust, so all I used were fast primes.

Now I have a selection of primes and zooms. Zoom lens technology has come a long way in the last decade. When I got my f/2.8 zoom lens ( non IS ) I never even considered that it would be seriously usable at f/2.8. I was hoping that f/4 would look good. F/4 looked great, so I tried it at f/3.5. Eventually I've worked my way down to f/2.8, and it's been a wonderful relevation that I'm very happy with the sharpness. The image quality is much better than any zoom lens I've owned before; the build quality is another story. It's the first lens I've ever worn out (it needed some internal parts replaced) through normal use: just zooming and focusing.

Digital rocks at high ISOs. I can sometimes shoot a second camera hand held. My results from digital ISO 1600 are as good as my results from Fuji NPH 400. The color neg film probably has a smidge more dynamic range coming out of the camera from a single exposure, but most of the lighting conditions I encounter are either within the range of digital and neg film, or way past both, and once Photoshop gets added into the mix the potential apparent dynamic range of the finished print from either is pretty impressive.

Stitched from 2 exposures, Canon 20D, hand held, ISO 1600, 1/80th @ f/2.8, Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8, refusing to bend to the Rule of Thirds!!!