Question about doing a wedding.

Holly Marie · Jun 20, 2008

I am doing my first wedding paid tomorrow. And what I was wondering if I should set the camera's settings to take the largest picture during the wedding/reception or have it on medium. I know to have it set to large while doing the formal pictures but am wondering about the other. And sorry if this is in the wrong place. I was not sure where to put it. Thanks in advance!

NateWagner · Jun 20, 2008

when you say "largest picture" I'm assuming that you mean highest pixel count? If so, I'm wondering why you would take photos of a wedding with anything other than the largest your camera can take.

Is it because you might not have enough memory, in which case I would suggest getting more cards. is there some other benefit that I'm not aware of?

I would personally recommend using the largest photo setting the entire time (my personal preference is using raw) The reason being is that this results in less compression and less loss of detail. The more info you have in the pictures the better in case you screw up. It's easier to fix a photo that's in raw or even large than it is to fix a medium or small one. The other thing is what if one of the photos that you took in medium they decide they want blown up. If that happens you'll really wish you had the larger photo size and I say better safe than sorry.

If I misunderstood the question then just ignore my rambling.

Holly Marie · Jun 20, 2008

Nope that's what I meant. Thanks so much for taking the time to answer. I am worried that I do not have enough memory. I have a 1gb and a 2gb card I think that's plenty for now but I will be buying more in the future. Thanks again!!

NateWagner · Jun 20, 2008

well, if you are doing a whole wedding and being paid for it, I would definitely recommend that you splurge and get more memory. It is definitely the sort of thing you would kick yourself for if you ran out of. In addition, I would say you definitely owe it to the person whose photos you are taking to be prepared with plenty of everything (including memory).

Secondly if one of your memory cards dies (which has been known to happen, usually at the most inopportune moment) you will be absolutely screwed.

Basically my thought is, memory is cheap enough that particularly for a paid wedding there is virtually no excuse for running out.

Rachelsne · Jun 20, 2008

Yikes you need more memory-swap out cards regularly so that you reduce loss if one card fails

you also should be shooting raw-for the main reason that you can correct more things in editing, so if you mess something up-wrong wb or what ever it will be easily correct

schumionbike · Jun 20, 2008

yeah, my memory dies on me after 250 shots the other day. good thing I was able to recover the picture later but that was scary.

*Mike* · Jun 20, 2008

Memory is insanely cheap - spring for it. It's someone's wedding after all...

SpeedTrap · Jun 20, 2008

I am not sure what camera you are shooting with but when I step out to shoot a wedding I carry 16-20 Gigs worth of cards. Not one of them no name cards (All SanDisk Ultra).

If one of your cards fails you will be in a lot of trouble. You should also be shooting everything in your highest resolution; you can always make the files smaller later. I would recommend RAW over jpg file it will give you the best options for post production.