Flash Wedding Photography

[kiwisr]

Been roped in to do a wedding for my brother, plenty of experience with studio flash but very little with the "on-camera" ones.

I have a 580EX, is it just a matter of leaving it on auto to get the best shots, does it automatically do fill flash or should you manually set this.

Also I know some wedding photographers use the same aperture for all photos for consistency, so should the flash be set for this or again left on auto?

Any opinions on whether the flash should left on top of the camera or should a I get a bracket so that it is off to the side (Seems to vary amongst press/paparazzi, buy I guess they often aren't after the quality)

[F308 MAN]

i was gonna wait until a few more put their two penneth forward ....

but, on the basis of your inexperience with on camera flash, you could do a lot worse than fit a diffuser (stofen or similar) and shoot the whole wedding on program and AWB.

too many people over complicate things beyond their experience (me included !)

what would be your main camera ?

d

[kiwisr]

It's a 1D Mark II, have a Stofen Omni-Bounce.

Just don't want the photos to have that horrible 'flash' look about them, just a tiny bit of fill where needed and to get the odd catchlights in the eyes.

The majority of flash work I've done has been in the studio where I've used a flashmeter - not really something I can do at a wedding.

Luckily it's a small gathering of mostly family and they aren't expecting the best - they'd be happy with snapshots, but obviously I want to do the best I can.

[aspender]

I'm a complete amateur, but took some shots in an unofficial capacity at a friends wedding recently. I used my 400D, 17-55 f2.8 and 430EX and stuck in Av (meaning the flash acts as fill all the time) at f2.8 for the indoor stuff. IS certainly helped here. I used a Stofen Omni-bounce, or bounced the flash when I could.

Keep the flash on for outdoor pics as well as it certainly adds the catchlights you are looking for and if the natural light is harsh will cut down on shadows. I played around with the flash exposure compensation a bit, typically turning it down a couple of stops.

Finally, some results:

[aspender]

Also, a couple of sites which might be worth reading up on:

Flash Flavor All about flash and weddings
Strobist Mainly off camera flash, but if you have exerience of this it might be worth getting hold of another head or two and seeing how creative you can be using your 580 as a wireless master.

[F308 MAN]

kiwisr said:

Just don't want the photos to have that horrible 'flash' look about them, just a tiny bit of fill where needed and to get the odd catchlights in the eyes.

this is all i use with the speedlite, relative to the above .... a piece of white card and two elastic bands - less than 2p .... i think perfect for what you are looking for.





you would have to experiment with settings and exposure levels to create what you're looking for.

sorry for my earlier presumptions, you now appear more experienced than i first anticipated.

good luck with the shoot.

d

[kiwisr]

All went well in the end, decided to shoot just about everything with Av at F4 using high speed sync flash. Now have 500 photos that are pretty much all perfectly focussed and exposed. The real time consuming thing will be sorting through them all and making an album.

Still seems a bit like money for old rope this wedding stuff, once you get your routine and workflow sorted out. Although I'm not sure if I'd want to be responsible for cocking up a couples photos though.

[pauljc]

kiwisr said:

Still seems a bit like money for old rope this wedding stuff, once you get your routine and workflow sorted out.

Hmm...interesting.

Lost a lot of detail in her dress but that may be down to the resizing for the web.

Edited by pauljc on Friday 30th November 14:20

[kiwisr]

pauljc said:

kiwisr said:

Still seems a bit like money for old rope this wedding stuff, once you get your routine and workflow sorted out.

Hmm...interesting.

Lost a lot of detail in her dress but that may be down to the resizing for the web.

Edited by pauljc on Friday 30th November 14:20

Looks ok to me, is your monitor set up correctly?

[Famous Graham]

Were you the sole photographer? Cos the last but one it looks like they're responding to someone else - very annoying that.

And she looks like she's groping him

But the indoor flash stuff seems to have gone well

Edited by Famous Graham on Friday 30th November 15:35

[stigmundfreud]

you wont get red eye, you only get red eye with flash sitting too close to the lens. As for side bracket or not, well, the flash doesnt make much difference ime

[stigmundfreud]

kiwisr said:

Still seems a bit like money for old rope this wedding stuff, once you get your routine and workflow sorted out. Although I'm not sure if I'd want to be responsible for cocking up a couples photos though.

money for old rope? You hit one good point as its a lot of responsibility and time consuming sorting out the images - the one thing I would say though is, and this isnt meant as a real put down but your images whilst fairly nicely exposed are not what you would call picture perfect.

Think about this saying "Give a man a camera, no training, he thinks he is a photographer, give him a saxaphone and no training he is just a man with a saxaphone".

Certainly not money for old rope and I for one wouldn't want to do weddings!