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Well I shot my first wedding.
Well I shot my first wedding. I guess this is an accomplishments of sorts. Before anybody brings it up I'll cut right to the chase, I didn't have an ironclad contract or millions of dollars of insurance, I shot it with the most difficult camera for action (D 800, which I will not be doing again as the buffer proved insanely difficult to work around) I did have fast lenses and brought an assistant, but did not work myself as an assistant to anyone for years on end. And I guess the biggest faux pas... I was shooting for family (free though, or rather as a wedding gift). Long story short it was my sister's wedding, and I have shot her band many times. My sister was marrying her longtime bandmate and wanted me to capture similar stylistic storytelling as their shows. Basically a slightly more romantic version of prohibition era newspaper photography. So I channeled my inner Stanley Kubrick and went dark and sharp, the venue was in a brick lined basement with restaurant style track lighting and no windows.... At night, great for the atmosphere they wish to convey but hard on a camera that is not known for being all that fast. Putting my ISO settings through their paces I set out to chuck everything I knew about wedding photography out the window (even though there wasn't any windows because it was a basement) and capture the story my sister and her new husband would want to remember. This link just has a few shots from the night, overall I provided around 160 finished shots and compiled them in a sort of linear story. and am working on a coffee table album http://ianberghammer.com/wed/h20452951#h247306ca I of course now have a newfound respect for wedding photographers, though I'm also not quite as terrified of the practice as I once was (horror stories abound). It's an interesting balancing act to have to simultaneously be a sheepherder and a fly on the wall. In the end I'm happy that my sister is happy, and though I'm not going to be immediately advertising my many thousand dollar wedding photography rates, it is a skill set that I can see myself refining. Jan 11 14 07:58 pm Link Good Job ! You captured lots of mood and got most of the necessary cliche images (like the hands with rings, etc). No need to question your skills . . . . you could easily make a business out of this KM Jan 11 14 08:12 pm Link Ken Marcus Studios wrote: This. Nicely done! Jan 11 14 08:23 pm Link As Ken said, you seem to have captured the basics. Some will fall in love with the stylized approach. Others will loathe it. That's the risk you take when you choose to go even slightly out of the norm for weddings. If you got what the bride and groom wanted, that's all that matters. Then, if you enjoyed it ... go out and do it some more. Jan 11 14 08:37 pm Link I've looked at a few wedding photographs (never shot a wedding, never will). These of yours on the other hand - are actually interesting to look at. Jan 11 14 08:41 pm Link Great wedding photos! Keep up the good work! To avoid buffering in your D800, you may need to use faster cards: a class 10 SD card and a 1000x CF card. I shoot uncompressed RAW + JPEG (100 Megs for each photo), but the fast cards keep up. The CF card is 64 GB (32 GB on the SD card), so I'm limited to just over 800 photos. ~ Richard Jan 11 14 09:27 pm Link I would hire you as a wedding photographer any day and would gladly pay a premium rate. Jan 11 14 11:28 pm Link Thanks everyone for the kind words, I do take it all to heart. As for the memory cards , I was actually using SanDisk extreme pro-16 gig 90mb/s cards with Kingston class X in the second slot. The first thing I noticed was hesitation on the trigger pull which I initially thought was a reluctance for the autofocus to find its mark in the black hole that was the room. I took the camera off of auto and started to live inside the viewfinder shooting manual focus, but kept coming up on the same issue. Every couple of shots I would press the shutter button and get an error message which went away after a moment. Finally I took a minute backstage and found that it was warning me that I had exceeded the buffer zone (largely due to the fact that I was shooting raw with mid-level noise reduction on). There really is only a 14-25 4fps buffer on the D 800, in studio that's not such an issue but if you're shooting three shot bursts in order to get the most out of your lens to shutter to ISO ratio (i.e. center shot most sharp) then you actually really quickly buffer out, and end up having to wait for everything to clear the memory. Sort of a big deal when split seconds count and there's no do over. This wasn't an issue the whole night, just during the ceremony when I was trying to capture that perfect expression. Memory card capacity is an extremely valid point though, I've been thinking about trying out some of the new 4K ready cards to see if there's any buffer difference. I can definitely understand why a lot of seasoned wedding pros would take a D700 D3s or D4 over higher megapixel D800 when it comes to shooting action. If I am to do it again I will probably pick up one of the aforementioned cameras and shoot in tandem with the D800. (Edit) In retrospect I think there might be some greater issue at work. I went back to look at how many shots there were before the camera locked up, and nowhere in that grouping did I surpass 14 shots in a minute (not really a spray and pray kind of shooter). So I tried to re-create the problem and fired 14 shots across a 60 second time frame, raw 14 bit uncompressed At 2000 ISO with ISO noise reduction sets to mid, and the camera not only locked up on the 14th shot but would not become unlocked for more than 10 min. I attempted the same with different memory cards and ran into the same issue. The camera was not even clearing a single available slot during all that time, it just choked up and sat there not responding to any buttons including the menu option. I understand this problem affected a few units around release, but I have the newest firmware, I never ran into the issues like this until the wedding. I think I will be calling Nikon support on Monday. Jan 11 14 11:44 pm Link Your images are gorgeous, I never understood why more people didn't wan't artistically shot wedding photo's I mean for a day they want to remember forever and all that, you'd think more people would want to be captured artistically.. You should offer it as a service and charge a premium for it  Jan 12 14 01:45 am Link If I ever did a wedding, I'd want to shoot it like you did, moody and black and white. Nice job! Jan 13 14 02:46 am Link Fantastic images! What about using the D800 and shooting in 'DX' mode or something to reduce the burden on the buffer (if the buffer is in fact the problem)? Jan 13 14 03:07 am Link You did good! Absolutely love the last one of the Toast. Jan 13 14 03:07 am Link I love the shot of the kid at the bar. Too funny! Jan 13 14 06:15 am Link By the way, you did an EXCELLENT job!!! Jan 13 14 06:16 am Link Awesome, I like the moodiness. Jan 13 14 06:35 am Link Beautifully done! Your sister and her groom looked wonderful! Congratulations to both families! Xx Jan 13 14 08:31 am Link They came out good, in that it is the look/style she was asking for. I shoot wedding video, and yes it & photography are hard, and I feel your initial pain & resistance. Very run & gun. After going thru 8 hours or so of the day & dwindling it down to whatever amount of photos (100 or whatev) you think of all the events and shots you took which aren't there. Definitely helps to have a 2nd eye look at them for review. Yeah, lighting & time give you little flexibility, always adapting to whatever is given. Good job tho! Jan 13 14 09:23 am Link I would have never guessed this was your first wedding. Very well done. Jan 13 14 09:16 pm Link Well done! Jan 15 14 03:26 am Link Ditto: Well done !!. Jan 15 14 04:25 am Link Well done, well captured! Very interested in finding more about your D800 issues as well as im thinking of getting them for weddings as well. Jan 15 14 05:46 am Link David Kirk wrote: +1 Jan 15 14 06:00 am Link I love the shots, and it looks like it was a fun wedding. Great job--seriously! Jan 15 14 06:12 am Link Two issues regarding your buffering issues. Number one there is no reason at all to shoot 14 bit uncompressed, when you can shoot 14 bit lossless compressed. Number Two, There is also the option to shoot 12 bit lossless compressed if the buffering is still an issue. If buffering was still an issue you could have chosen a smaller form factor down to an APSC sized sensor. Buffering in the D800 is going to be limited by the slowest card you have in the slots available. As this will likely be the SD card try removing it and shooting with just the CF card. Google Rob Galbraith, his blog has an exhaustive list of the fastest cards to use in many cameras including the D800. Nice, Joe Jan 16 14 02:39 pm Link by Joe Harvard wrote: That's all good advice, I looked back over my notes (I keep a notebook of menu changes before shooting any events, helps me suss out user error versus equipment error) turns out I was shooting 14 bit compressed lossless. Honestly in testing I didn't see any difference between 12 bit, 14 bit compressed, uncompressed, or lossless it all showed/shot r14, and r16 when there was no noise reduction being implemented, which all had a one shot return almost immediately after the buffer limit, and refilled within 3 to 4 seconds. Where I saw a serious jump in buffering capabilities was shooting DX crop (r20 with an instant refill). I shoot overfill rather than tandem favoring the CF card, 90 MB a second should be plenty. With those settings I am expecting there to be some sort of buffer slow down, problem is that instead of slowing down it locked up completely. Jan 16 14 04:44 pm Link You did a really outstanding job for what was requested and for your first crack at this genre. I am quite impressed with the images, but then mono is one of my favorites - especially when well done as it is in your case. Your sister could easily make it as a model too! Kudos to you!! Jan 16 14 08:22 pm Link i love the way you approached the shots, very nicely done for a first wedding http://ianberghammer.com/wed/h20452951#h215c9dd2 im not sure if that link shows up but the photo in color with the blue ribbon around her neck from behind is a standout (to me) but who is the woman to her left and why is she in the shot? just curious.... Jan 22 14 11:16 am Link wrongsideofthirty wrote: Thanks for the compliment. As for the woman, that would be her mother (also my mother) it wasn't a posed shot, but rather a candid moment where she was looking in the mirror as our mother looked on. Jan 23 14 03:04 am Link |
