Help starting out

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jonk

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Hi guys, sorry if this is a stupid question but could anyone advise on whether I have the correct gear for starting out?

I have always had a love of photography since completing my degree in graphic design. And am currently looking at starting an open university course.

I recently photographed a couple of weddings for friends (who had both been let down by a local photographer going bust). I borrowed a Canon 20D and a 400D from another friend and fortunately both days seemed to go really well (even with my very limited photography knowledge) and I have now been asked to photograph 3 (paid) weddings next year.

I decided I would need to purchase some of my own gear and get used to using it so have just been and bought a Nikon D7100 as my main camera and then a D7000 as a reserve. I couldn't afford some of these amazing lenses I looked at so instead have settled for a 35mm f1.8 G, a 50mm f1.8 G, the standard 18-105mm f3.5-5.6 and then a 70-300mm f4-5.6 G. I also bought a couple of flashes 700 and 910 and obviously some memory cards.

My question is do you think it is fair for me to charge (albeit a small amount) to photograph a wedding with this non-professional setup? and also will this range of lenses be ok for most eventualities.

I am hoping that if all goes well to slowly upgrade my lenses (am I correct in assuming a 24-70mm f2.8 will give much better results in a church) and then look at full frame cameras in the future.

I am quite comfortable with photoshop CS4 and Lightroom so feel I can make some reasonably good edits if required.

Many thanks in advance, any advice will be greatly appreciated.
 
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Not sure how much I can help as I've never shot weddings but I will give my opinions even though you've bought everything already. Personally, I wouldn't have bothered with the D7100 and D7000, I think a used D700 and maybe a D90 or similar for a backup would have been a better idea.

I have owned both of those primes and are both great lenses, obviously, the only limiting factor is that they're fixed so don't offer any flexibility. The 35mm should be wide enough for most things. You can get quite a few good 2.8 zoom lenses from the likes of Tokina and Tamron etc which would probably suit your needs more as f3.5-5.6 might not be enough in churches etc. Some form of 24-70 or similar range would probably be what would be on your camera for 80% of the time

The next thing that I'm sure everyone will say, you could be sporting the newest pro gear and still take crap pictures. So the question isn't whether you can charge for your non pro setup, but whether you can charge for the results ;) I've seen some pretty shocking wedding pictures that people have charged for and customers have been happy with, which always makes me wonder why I don't give it a go!

Not sure if this helps at all haha!
 
Haha cheers James, looked at a couple of 2nd hand D600/700's but really wanted new. My plan was to use this set up for the next 6-12 months and then sell the d7000 with the 2 zoom lenses and splash out on a full frame camera and a couple of fast lenses. Thanks again.
 
jonk said:
Haha cheers James, looked at a couple of 2nd hand D600/700's but really wanted new. My plan was to use this set up for the next 6-12 months and then sell the d7000 with the 2 zoom lenses and splash out on a full frame camera and a couple of fast lenses. Thanks again.
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No worries. I guess some people prefer new but there are a lot of bargains to be had out there... All of my gear bar my first Bridge camera have been used or refurbished! Only things I've bought new are the two prime lenses you have and some flashes ;)

But yeh, once you go full frame, you won't ever want to go back!
 
What would be the difference if I bought a full frame?
 
jonk said:
What would be the difference if I bought a full frame?
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Usually, better image quality, better low light performance, the fact that your lenses operate as the focal length they should I.E a 50mm on Full Frame is 50mm but on a Nikon Crop sensor (1.5x) camera it's effectively a 75mm.

However, when it comes to comparing say a D700 to a brand new D7100... Not sure what would come out on top there! Would probably be very close
 
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Nice one, thanks again I am slowly learning these bits.
 
jonk said:
Hi guys, sorry if this is a stupid question but could anyone advise on whether I have the correct gear for starting out?
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It's a stupid question, you've already bought it. :)

If it was a list of options, or you'd bought some gear and were looking to fill some gaps, it'd be valid, but you've bought it.

As for the 'charging' it's not about the gear. A 'professional' camera is the one that's up to the job. Wedding photographers don't need the top of the line bodies required by sports photographers because we don't work in such a testing environment. You should charge if you can guarantee results, have insurance and a full set of backup plans in place. What you charge is then based on the quality of the end product and the local market.

I'm not familiar with Nikon bodies, but my preference is for 2 cameras identical in use and that I can use without thinking. The Canon low end bodies are a nightmare for me because there's not enough functionality without hitting menus. I'm guessing it'd be the same with Nikon.

You haven't mentioned flash? What's your plan?
 
Phil V said:
It's a stupid question, you've already bought it. :)

If it was a list of options, or you'd bought some gear and were looking to fill some gaps, it'd be valid, but you've bought it.

As for the 'charging' it's not about the gear. A 'professional' camera is the one that's up to the job. Wedding photographers don't need the top of the line bodies required by sports photographers because we don't work in such a testing environment. You should charge if you can guarantee results, have insurance and a full set of backup plans in place. What you charge is then based on the quality of the end product and the local market.

I'm not familiar with Nikon bodies, but my preference is for 2 cameras identical in use and that I can use without thinking. The Canon low end bodies are a nightmare for me because there's not enough functionality without hitting menus. I'm guessing it'd be the same with Nikon.

You haven't mentioned flash? What's your plan?
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He did mention flash.. Nikon sb700 and sb910
 
I'd say that any client is paying you not for having good gear but for producing good photographs. If you can consistently provide good sets of photographs, the client won't care what you took them with.

If you had thousands and thousands of pounds worth of kit and took bad photographs the client wouldn't pay.

I think you should practise enough and expand your knowledge until you're confident you can consistently produce good results.

Good Luck!
 
Thanks again guys, sorry if it came across as wrong but I don't mean can I only charge if I have the best full frame camera & top of the range lenses regardless of the quality of my work. I only wondered as I was concerned that if I was to say charge £1k for a wedding for example which I will photograph on my D7100 with a D7000 as a back up and with the lenses mentioned. Regardless of how good composition etc am I offering a worse quality end product (picture quality) than a someone with full frame and expensive lenses?
 
jonk said:
Thanks again guys, sorry if it came across as wrong but I don't mean can I only charge if I have the best full frame camera & top of the range lenses regardless of the quality of my work. I only wondered as I was concerned that if I was to say charge £1k for a wedding for example which I will photograph on my D7100 with a D7000 as a back up and with the lenses mentioned. Regardless of how good composition etc am I offering a worse quality end product (picture quality) than a someone with full frame and expensive lenses?
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You can achieve better results with your gear than someone with top gear that doesn't know how to use it, I think that's what we are getting at. Although you're saying you're not talking about gear, you are.

Why don't you post some samples of what you have done already?

Also, what are you going to be offering the client for £1000? All the pictures on disc? Any printed? Photo album? Access to them online? etc etc
 
jonk said:
Thanks again guys, sorry if it came across as wrong but I don't mean can I only charge if I have the best full frame camera & top of the range lenses regardless of the quality of my work. I only wondered as I was concerned that if I was to say charge £1k for a wedding for example which I will photograph on my D7100 with a D7000 as a back up and with the lenses mentioned. Regardless of how good composition etc am I offering a worse quality end product (picture quality) than a someone with full frame and expensive lenses?
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Is this a serious question?

The quality of a photograph is determined 99% by the software driving the equipment (you :wave: ). You might have been into photography 12 months or 25 years, you might have a compact or a medium format DSLR, you might never work for money or charge £2000 a day. Non of those facts have any correlation to any of the others - and none of them say whether you're any good at photography.

Even if it was about the gear, if you don't understand whether it's 'good enough' why did you buy it? :thinking:

I would be genuinely puzzled, but having read through your other posts, you're in that 'someone told me my pictures were awesome, I'm going to be a rich wedding photographer' phase. :lol::lol:

Bluntly - that someone probably knows 9/10s of 4/5ths of f all about shooting weddings. I'm not saying you could never be a wedding photographer, or that you take crap pictures, just that you haven't got a clue how little you know right now. You've no idea what exif data is, what makes a decent lens for shooting anything, how your work-flow will work, where you'll get customers, at what point you tell the Inland Revenue, when do you need insurance, how's your website going to fit in to your marketing plan, what's the tax situation with buying gear, will it affect your other income? and on and on...

A bit like 'me and the lads were having a kick about down the park, my Auntie Joan was watching and she says I'm easily good enough to turn pro, so I've bought some mid price Adidas boots, where do I get signed up?'

If that made you laugh, how many pro footballers are employed in your town? how many full time photographers? (in my town it's about 20 full time footballers and about 6 fulltime photographers) there's hundreds of guys playing for pub football teams and thousands of people who own DSLRs who's mum thinks are as good as those so called 'professionals' :)
 
Hi Jonk and welcome. You'll find there are lots of knowledgeable people on here and many professionals who might be able to help on the business side of things - isn't there a separate forum board for that?

I just wanted to say that a wedding is their big day, hopefully never to be repeated, so it's really important that you are able to get things right. I think it's fair enough stepping in if they have been let down, but only you know if you have the skills and confidence to ensure they get their memories captured, and also to charge them for it. It is a big task and if it was me, I'd be practising like billy ho! :)

I've just completed the OU course. It was fun and interesting (and an easy 10 credits I hope!), but it doesn't equip you for setting up in business. I think places like the Photography Institute are more geared towards that.

I'm not familiar with the Nikon range of cameras, but you can easily test out the quality of the images you can get from your equipment by printing them out at album sized prints - assuming you'll be doing them an album? I think there are plenty of wedding photographers who don't use full frame cameras.

It sounds like your editing skills will be fine, you just need to ensure you have something good to edit :) Good luck!
 
Cheers again for the advice guys.

Phil, I have no aspirations of making big money from this, I work full time as an electrical engineer and have no plans whatsoever to give up the day job. Yes it was a serious question (it is what I believe forums are for) and believe me, I do know just how little I know. That however is why I am spending a little bit of time and money in trying to improve myself, I am yet to meet anyone who was great at photography straight from the womb. Nobody has told me my pictures are awesome so I am suddenly seeing ££££ signs, rather a few people who are getting married liked the pictures I took and have asked if I would photograph their weddings. They know I am not a pro photographer and I have been 100% transparent with them in my abilities.
The reason I bought the camera's I did was purely so I could start using them straight away and practicing for the upcoming weddings. Although I don't know too much about wedding photography, I feel I have to disagree slightly with your comment about The quality of a photograph is determined 99% by the software driving the equipment (you )if that was the case, why do professional photographers use £3k cameras if they only make up a small 1% of the overall quality, I do understand that a monkey with a £10k setup will still take rubbish shots, but I was trying to gauge whether a competent photographer could get the same (or very similar) results with a £500 camera as a £3k one.
James, I have since been out and purchased a D600 as on your advice I researched the benefits of full frame and a 24-70mm F2.8 nikon lens and am looking at buying a 70-200mm F2.8 as I feel these would be the best investments going forward.
My grand plan is to spend 90% of my time behind a camera on personal projects/leisure and just a small period of time actually trying to get paid work. I also train at a local MMA gym and have asked if I can take some photos at the next fight (although I am fighting last so not sure how my nerves will cope)to just gain experience in different environments.

Also the £1k was a figure plucked out of the air, in my mind I am only looking to cover costs of travel etc. I would love to cover weddings for people who have a very small budget yet am aiming to get good enough to give great results.

I have uploaded some more pictures from the wedding here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/99457099@N02/sets/72157634830338002/and would love any feedback.

From what I have learnt the last few days I think a few of my biggest mistakes were:
Wrong ISO, inside the church, I used a lens at around 300mm F5.6 and quite a high ISO on an old 20D which resulted in quite a lot of noise. I have then used a noise reducer in LR which has given a lot of the shots a slight blur rather than crisp finish.
Also on quite a few of the long shots I think the autofocus may have just missed so they are slightly out.

Thanks again
 
jonk said:
Cheers again for the advice guys.

Phil, I have no aspirations of making big money from this, I work full time as an electrical engineer and have no plans whatsoever to give up the day job. Yes it was a serious question (it is what I believe forums are for) and believe me, I do know just how little I know. That however is why I am spending a little bit of time and money in trying to improve myself, I am yet to meet anyone who was great at photography straight from the womb. Nobody has told me my pictures are awesome so I am suddenly seeing ££££ signs, rather a few people who are getting married liked the pictures I took and have asked if I would photograph their weddings. They know I am not a pro photographer and I have been 100% transparent with them in my abilities.
The reason I bought the camera's I did was purely so I could start using them straight away and practicing for the upcoming weddings. Although I don't know too much about wedding photography, I feel I have to disagree slightly with your comment about The quality of a photograph is determined 99% by the software driving the equipment (you )if that was the case, why do professional photographers use £3k cameras if they only make up a small 1% of the overall quality, I do understand that a monkey with a £10k setup will still take rubbish shots, but I was trying to gauge whether a competent photographer could get the same (or very similar) results with a £500 camera as a £3k one.
James, I have since been out and purchased a D600 as on your advice I researched the benefits of full frame and a 24-70mm F2.8 nikon lens and am looking at buying a 70-200mm F2.8 as I feel these would be the best investments going forward.
My grand plan is to spend 90% of my time behind a camera on personal projects/leisure and just a small period of time actually trying to get paid work. I also train at a local MMA gym and have asked if I can take some photos at the next fight (although I am fighting last so not sure how my nerves will cope)to just gain experience in different environments.

Also the £1k was a figure plucked out of the air, in my mind I am only looking to cover costs of travel etc. I would love to cover weddings for people who have a very small budget yet am aiming to get good enough to give great results.

I have uploaded some more pictures from the wedding here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/99457099@N02/sets/72157634830338002/and would love any feedback.

From what I have learnt the last few days I think a few of my biggest mistakes were:
Wrong ISO, inside the church, I used a lens at around 300mm F5.6 and quite a high ISO on an old 20D which resulted in quite a lot of noise. I have then used a noise reducer in LR which has given a lot of the shots a slight blur rather than crisp finish.
Also on quite a few of the long shots I think the autofocus may have just missed so they are slightly out.

Thanks again
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Man, I wish I had your kind of money! Definitely a better setup though, a D600 will enable you to properly pump up the ISO without losing quality. And on the note of you getting wrong settings and such, it might be worth using aperture priority mode where you set the aperture you want and then the camera selects shutter and ISO.

Either that or putting it on Auto and seeing what settings the camera selects for each situation and learn from that. Personally, since I started photography with Fuji S6500 I HAVE used manual but that's just how I prefered to learn, some people prefer to do what I suggested. The exposure meter you will see in the view finder is also another very useful tool :)
 
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jonk said:
...

Phil, I have no aspirations of making big money from this, I work full time as an electrical engineer and have no plans whatsoever to give up the day job. Yes it was a serious question (it is what I believe forums are for) and believe me, I do know just how little I know. That however is why I am spending a little bit of time and money in trying to improve myself, I am yet to meet anyone who was great at photography straight from the womb. Nobody has told me my pictures are awesome so I am suddenly seeing ££££ signs, rather a few people who are getting married liked the pictures I took and have asked if I would photograph their weddings. They know I am not a pro photographer and I have been 100% transparent with them in my abilities.
The reason I bought the camera's I did was purely so I could start using them straight away and practicing for the upcoming weddings. Although I don't know too much about wedding photography, I feel I have to disagree slightly with your comment about The quality of a photograph is determined 99% by the software driving the equipment (you )if that was the case, why do professional photographers use £3k cameras if they only make up a small 1% of the overall quality, I do understand that a monkey with a £10k setup will still take rubbish shots, but I was trying to gauge whether a competent photographer could get the same (or very similar) results with a £500 camera as a £3k one.
...
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Because, like you said - "I do understand that a monkey with a £10k setup will still take rubbish shots".

Great gear will get you nowhere, good enough gear in the hands of a genius will give awesome images. Awesome gear in the hands of an idiot will give rubbish.

New photographers tend to obsess about image quality, noise and pixels. Working pro's obsess about light and composition.

The 'quality' of a photograph is down to lighting, composition and timing, and has nothing to do with IQ as photographers measure it. Pro's will buy the appropriate gear to do the job, so there's no point in buying a £3000 body if your photography 'company' turns over £5000 a year, that's not a smart business decision ;).

OTOH If you're earning enough, then having gear that means you're not buying compromises makes sense, so twin card slots, low light ability, weather resistance and tough build become important. But basically, just like any other business, you should buy equipment that makes economic sense too, not just 'stuff you fancy'. Becoming a 'professional photographer' isn't just being an amateur who charges, decisions should be 'business based'.
 
Phil V said:
Because, like you said - "I do understand that a monkey with a £10k setup will still take rubbish shots".

Great gear will get you nowhere, good enough gear in the hands of a genius will give awesome images. Awesome gear in the hands of an idiot will give rubbish.

New photographers tend to obsess about image quality, noise and pixels. Working pro's obsess about light and composition.

The 'quality' of a photograph is down to lighting, composition and timing, and has nothing to do with IQ as photographers measure it. Pro's will buy the appropriate gear to do the job, so there's no point in buying a £3000 body if your photography 'company' turns over £5000 a year, that's not a smart business decision ;).

OTOH If you're earning enough, then having gear that means you're not buying compromises makes sense, so twin card slots, low light ability, weather resistance and tough build become important. But basically, just like any other business, you should buy equipment that makes economic sense too, not just 'stuff you fancy'. Becoming a 'professional photographer' isn't just being an amateur who charges, decisions should be 'business based'.
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I have to agree with the part about people obsessing about iso noise(me for one) we all want the best equipment(again me included) but the guy who shot my step daughters wedding with a d70 and d100 produced some seriously good images so sometimes its the person behind the lens.
 
These are snaps and that's all that can be said. Done for free fair enough but not chargeable.
 
all the photos on flickr look slightly underexposed? I am not familiar with printers, but the one I have (Epson SX445W or something) prints to somewhere around half a stop to a stop darker than what i see on screen (this could be down to my personal preference of brightly lit screens) so when they decide to print them, it might come out really dark? just a thought
 
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