The weekend just gone was the first opportunity I’ve had to shoot a wedding with my new digital SLR gear and boy was it a lot of fun! I didn’t have the responsibility of being the couple’s main photographer. Instead, that role was filled by a couple who were friends of the couple getting married. However, since they were only asked to cover the formal shots in and around the ceremony I more or less fell into the role of reception photographer.

I may have inadvertently intimidated the ‘official’ photographers with my larger bodied EOS 40D, faster lenses including a 70-200 L f/4, the only external flash unit in sight and a slightly pushy approach. I did try to keep out of their way, but they seemed to be missing some great shots and I only directed the guests on a couple of occasions… Still, at least I wasn’t armed with a 1D plus 70-200 L f/2.8 like some people I know and hey, my wife was one of the bridesmaids!

The weather on the day was dark, cloudy and drizzly with a light rain that eased up every so often. Not the best weather for a wedding, but at least it meant no harsh shadows and no squinting caused by bright, direct sunlight. Being cooler also meant that people’s skin wasn’t shiny with perspiration so the use of fill-in flash worked very well.

The reception itself was held below deck on a sailing barge. I was expecting to need a lot of flash lighting, but there were some well positioned skylight windows (there must be a proper name for them, but I don’t know what it is) that provided beautifully soft shafts of diffused light that really helped to bring subjects out of the darker, tungsten-lit sides of the main room.

I was most impressed with the performance of my UNiROSS 2700mAH NiMH Performance batteries as they kept my 430EX flashing for well over 50% of the 600+ shots I took on the day. Mostly, the 430EX provided fill-in light with a Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce attached to the angled head, but the batteries were still going strong by the end of a 12-hour day.

Having my EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 with its faster aperture and Image Stablization really helped make the low-light environment workable. Most of the surrounding surfaces were varnished wood so bouncing light didn’t have much effect, but my Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce was great at softening the direct flash light and the shadows it threw.

Other lenses I had with me on the day included my Canon EF 70-200 f/4 L IS USM, but this was swapped with my Canon EF-S 10-22mm for the tightly packed reception below deck. It would have been nice to have had my Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens for the smaller details such as the cake decorations and ring shots, but it was a lot of lens to carry for a only a small number of shots. Also, not having IS on the macro lens would have made it less than ideal for the low light levels.

Lessons Learned

A second DSLR body would be very handy as changing lenses can mean lost photo opportunities. This wasn’t really an issue as I was able to anticipate the types of shots coming up e.g. during the ceremony at the registry office, photographers were positioned at the back of the room so a medium to long telephoto was required for tighter framing around the couple quickly followed by standard focal lengths for the signing of the register.

Spare batteries are essential. After approximately 500-600 shots (with IS lenses causing additional battery drain), my first body battery was beginning to wane so it was quickly replaced with a fully charged substitute. I also had a spare set of 2700mAH AA batteries, but didn’t need to replace the first set with them.

Storage-wise, there’s no such thing as having too much. By mid-evening, my 8GB Sandisk Extreme III CompactFlash card was full with RAW files and I only had two 1GB cards to provide additional storage. I didn’t want to switch to JPG so this forced me to be more selective about the shots I took and kept. Changing storage cards and deleting unwanted photos just introduces a greater risk of missing the ‘Kodak moments’.

Going forward, I’d like to add more photo storage either in the form of additional CF cards or some type of portable hard drive based media unit.

All in all, I managed to take approximately 760 shots throughout the entire day. I’ve only had a quick review of them so far, but I’ve got some shots that I’m really happy with and hopefully the newly-weds will be too. The next thing for me to do is to decide which photos make it past the first round of reviews and then start some post processing.

I certainly learned quite a lot from the experience and would really enjoy having the opportunity to take the role of second or assisting photographer some time in the future. The beauty of weddings is that there are so many opportunities to capture emotive expressions and people are more than willing to let you snap away whilst they carry on celebrating.