Best Camera for Weddings? Help!

artona said:
All she needed to do was to go out and buy a Fuji S5 and a 28-200mm lens and then call into a local studio and ask if she could assist on some weddings to gain the experience.
Click to expand...


Name me one studio who is going to take on someone with one pro camera and one lens?

At your peak of 150 weddings a year would you have taken on someone like that? ... And would you like the fact that they were local and after a while would end up possibly taking half your bookings every year?
 
artona said:
its the photographs that count not the equipment cus thats what the punters look at afterwards not your shiny F2.8 500mm :lol:

stew
Click to expand...

Quite right, but the point people here were making was that one, the equipment needs to be reliable and two, you need the right tools to do the best possible job and three, even reliable equipment can break down at some point and you don't want to be half way through a wedding and find yourself with no camera! :eek:
 
hypnotic said:
Name me one studio who is going to take on someone with one pro camera and one lens?

At your peak of 150 weddings a year would you have taken on someone like that? ... And would you like the fact that they were local and after a while would end up possibly taking half your bookings every year?
Click to expand...

at approx average of 1 wedding every 2 1/2 days he would have been far too busy.
 
Dogfish_magnet said:
at approx average of 1 wedding every 2 1/2 days he would have been far too busy.
Click to expand...

I think you'll find he employed others to do some, if not a great many, of those Weddings

Either that or he shot them and had pretty much nothing to do with them after that, which again needs a small 'team' of others

Perhaps he'd (you'd) be kind enough to go to the Business Forum and explain how you achieved such a huge number of Weddings per year? Would be an interesting read

:thumbs:

DD
 
Name me one studio who is going to take on someone with one pro camera and one lens?
Click to expand...
I wont name one but i know one.

Beth already had a back up camera. All she needed to do was to go out and buy a Fuji S5 and a 28-200mm lens
Click to expand...
Beth could have bought an earlier 'S' model at first to keep within her budget.
 
I disagree with the statements of needing to double up every part of your gear, apart from a 2nd body or compact. I use a D80 with a canon ixus75 as a backup at the moment, but hopefully will have a proper 2nd body before my next wedding in march. As long as you have a good focal range covered, its really not the end of the world if a lens fails.

I could quite happily shoot a whole wedding with the 24-70, and if that were to fail, i would use the 10-20 for the wider end, and the 50mm for the rest.

What i do agree with though is that £500 isn't enough if starting from scratch. Budget lens can be sharp but they are also slow (minus a few, like my 24-70). If you get in a situation where you can't use flash or the flash gun isn't powerful enough, then you need fast glass, simple as.

Realisticly your looking at around £1500 to cover a wedding comfortably.
 
Damn, missed this.

I guess my response was direct, but it sure beats going around the houses.In my short time on here, this question has been asked over and over and ove...............zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

There is a search function and there is a whole host of advice about wedding photography on here. Plus it grates me that people think.............oh never mind.

Sigma 300-800 does equal a "peeled prawn" as well...........:lol:
 
Hi
I guess my response was direct, but it sure beats going around the houses.In my short time on here, this question has been asked over and over and ove...............zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

There is a search function and there is a whole host of advice about wedding photography on here. Plus it grates me that people think.............oh never mind.

This is one of the problems with being an established member on a forum, it gets to a point whre you have heard it all before but whats the answer - lock the forum for new posts and just use it as a search facility or make everyone do a search before posting!!

As to an earlier post that I was doing a wedding every 1 and a half days no, we employed 8 shooters - all who carried far too much equipment for the few weddings they did each year but hey did it bother me - not at all. At that time and we are talking about the mid 80s shooters thought equipment = great photographer, no change there then. There was one London photographer who came along started shooting with one Leica and a 50mm lens. He did not supply albums, just 200 prints. He was overloaded with work.

We did two revoluntionary things in our area. We were one of the first to shoot with 35mm. Uptil then we believed you needed to shoot on medium format but I started to shoot 35mm candid shots and everone loved these without a whimper of complaint about the grain. For a whole year I worried about getting complaints but we never did.

Then we turned to digital, again one of the first in the area. We were shooting didgital when most shooters were saying it was a gimic.

The point is when it comes to equipment the customer does not care what you use as long as they have a nice set of photographs of their wedding.

stew
 
Totally agree with the above post.


Never have I been asked what equipment I use but always asked if they can look at the porfolio.


Expensive cameras does not take good pics the camera man/woman does.
 
i think the general jist of it is you can take a good photo with most cameras but for consistency and reliable quality end results you need a decent camera and kit with a redundancy plan for if it goes tits up
 
artona said:
Hi There was one London photographer who came along started shooting with one Leica and a 50mm lens. He did not supply albums, just 200 prints. He was overloaded with work.
Click to expand...
The problem with that approach is that just speaking personally, I've had my fast interior lens stick shut on f11 during a wedding, and on another occasion the flash stopped working, but worked on the backup body. It turned out to be burned out flash contacts on the shutter, but without a backup body I'd have been well in deep doody.
 
Didnt anyone think of suggesting an s5pro for £500 and then renting lenses when they are needed from Stewart? Haha! While its costing more then the £500, its not an inital outlay.

Not that it really matters as i doubt she will be back, from peoples responses! Haha!
 
MJ Stebbings said:
Didnt anyone think of suggesting an s5pro for £500 and then renting lenses when they are needed from Stewart?
Click to expand...
I did, but I thought that was a bit too spammy. Spam can be nice, but only in moderation.
 
StewartR said:
I did, but I thought that was a bit too spammy. Spam can be nice, but only in moderation.
Click to expand...

Haha, so let others do it for you! Haha!
 
There's a lot of advice out there that is golden..
I'm thinking about doing some wedding photography as a supplement to my main income as a plasterer as the recession will no doubt cripple me if not put me out of business. Don't laugh lol - I did a photography degree then was offered work by a mate to train as a plasterer - it paid a hell of a lot more than being an assistant and it was a job I could walk straight into after leaving college. But I digress..

I recently shot a wedding using my D1x (had an F4E with NPH and 28-105 AFD plus an Ixus 50 as backup). 12-24 f4 DX, 18-70 DX kit lens and a 50 1.8AFD. Flash was a Metz 45 CL-4 with stofen and an SB-80DX with stofen as backup.

I've just sold the SB80DX as I don't get on with it and guess what - the Metz has packed up.. I've got another wedding to do in the new year but by then I should be back on track kit wise. Just shows that equipment can pack up at any time - and usually when it's least convenient. Luckily I've nothing booked in at the mo since I've got plastering work on.

When it comes to it I'll more than likely hire a fast lens as well (17-55 f2.8 I expect) and use my kit lens as a spare.

Any advice for me? (I ain't going anywhere and I can take criticism lol:thumbs:)
 
How about a Mk.I 5D with a 50mm f/1.8? My wedding was shot by a pro-tog with a fixed lens (on medium format) and the results are superb.

If your budget is 'per year' then consider buying on a credit card or getting a personal loan I'd say.
 
good equipment= good photographer is wrong

but a good photographer should make sure they have the kit to do the job!!

imagine getting a plastere who turns up without a trowel or bucket, wouldnt exactly fill you with confidence would it? and im sure the wedding party would be perfectly happy standing outside while you went and got a new lens from the local camera shop as the only one you had decided to seize up.
Also remember you can trip over and land on the camera(or drop it), thus ruining both camera and lens. what would you do if that happens?

i cannot think what you would say to the bride and groom when you havent got any shots and that is one of the only reasons im not shooting weddings.
 
As an aside, it's a staggeringly bad time to be trying to break into the wedding market. Every supplier, venue and snapper I talk to is seeing less work coming in, and you'll have more and more established people chasing fewer and fewer jobs.

That said, I've already closed my book for 2009 as of this week.
 
Radiohead said:
As an aside, it's a staggeringly bad time to be trying to break into the wedding market. Every supplier, venue and snapper I talk to is seeing less work coming in, and you'll have more and more established people chasing fewer and fewer jobs.

That said, I've already closed my book for 2009 as of this week.
Click to expand...


I don't doubt it, it's the same in most industries I'm afraid. The building trade is probably the worst hit so far. Big companies laying off thousands of tradesmen because the housing market has slowed to a grind - results in folks taking work from the likes of me who concentrate on the private market. Some companies go in at a loss just to pay wages.. Dog eat dog so to speak.

As long as I've got enough to pay bills and live, I'm not looking to make a fortune - just get by till this slump is over. Never know I might take it up full time and do the odd plastering job on the side (with my bucket and trowel lol)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top