First time doing wedding shots in the church. Please help.

[NJMAN]

Ah, yes, now its clear... Thanks Mike!

 

[NJMAN]

but I'm surprised the paid photographer is allowing it.

Yes, Im surprised too, but pleasantly surprised and very grateful! Im sure it will be a great learning experience for me. And best of all, I get to practice at another family wedding in 2 months, and will probably gain lots of insight from this first experience.

Thanks to all of you for your good advice.

 

[Leo]

Another tip....shoot RAW+L JPG, that way when your pictures come out dark or white balance is off you can adjust when you process your RAW images. If your pictures does not need adjustment you can just use the JPG file. Oh and carry at least a 4gb card.

 

[EOS_JD]

To add to the above, say you are in the church and it's pretty dark (Ive seen shutter speeds with an f2.8 lens of 1/60th at ISO 800)!

Now move that to the 28-135. At 135mm you will be 2 stops slower than my 70-200 f2.8L IS. That's a sgutter speed of 1/15th at ISO800. Any movement from your subject and the image will be wasted. You can go to ISO1600 and get 1/30th but even that isn't very fast to stop motion.

Now go to the 50mm f1.8. That is 1.333 stops faster than my zoom and gives a shutter speed (at the same settings) of 1/160th! I'd probably amend my settings though..... Lower ISO and reduce the aperture till you get a suitable shutter speed.

Regard memory if you soot RAW+JPG I'd say get around 8Gb of memory. I shoot about 8-10Gb when using this mode and I back up to an Epson P-2000.

 

[NJMAN]

What would you say is a bare minimum shutter speed for stopping the motion of someone walking slowly up and down the aisle with the 50mm f/1.8 lens? Probably 1/60th and no less? I want to keep ISO down to 400 or less if possible.

 

[Big Mike]

It really depends on the movement. If they are standing fairly still, 1/60 might be OK. If they are walking it might be iffy...I'd prefer 1/90 or 1/125. If you use flash, it will help to make the images sharp because the flash burst is much shorter than the shutter.

I'm editing shots from a wedding right now, I just checked my isle shots and the one at 1/60 does have some blur in the heads & faces. My other shots are at 1/80, 1/125 & 1/160...they are very sharp.

 

[NJMAN]

Excellent! I was just practicing in some really dimly lit rooms in my house with no flash and 50mm, had the ISO set to 400, with aperture priority set to f/1.8. My shutter speeds never went below 1/125, which is plenty fast. The exposure was spot on, and the focused areas were sharp. This is turning out well! Thanks for your input.