Wedding togs. A question for you

powell7 said:
For those who use full frame, how much difference is there over a cropped sensor in your opinions in low light/image quality?
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For weddings I couldn't go back to crop anymore. The better low light performance is a major factor. With my A77 I hated shooting at ISO 3200, on my D600/700 I will not worry up to 6400. I hear the A99 is similar albeit slightly worse performance. Also the better dynamic range means photos just look erm...nicer. But I guess that's probably not something your average customer would notice.
 
Check out the older sony A900 as well as the A99. If you're quick the A99s appear on the sony outlet at £1400-£1500 ish.

Sigma have some f1.4 primes floating around if iso 3600 is a bit dodgy.

If you switch to canon or nikon you'll need to get stabilised lenses too.

I'd also investigate noise reduction software to see if the current RAWs could be processed a bit better so that iso 6400 was usable.
 
boyfalldown said:
O/T slightly, but why will you need to?
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The OP is used to having this advantage and may find that with a non sony camera the hand holding lowest speed increases without stabilisation so any advantage in being able to use higher isos could be reduced or wiped out altogether.
 
srichards said:
The OP is used to having this advantage and may find that with a non sony camera the hand holding lowest speed increases without stabilisation so any advantage in being able to use higher isos could be reduced or wiped out altogether.
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:) not a need then, more a consideration in maybe changing?
 
I've got an a99. Haven't used it for a wedding yet, although I've a couple coming up and have shot several other types of event (with and without flash).

I'd happily use it at ISO 3200 without any concern about noise and would not baulk at 6400 if necessary. Expose to the right a little (easy with the live histogram) and what noise there is is easily cleaned up in post.
 
Update for you all.

We went to park cameras today so the wife could see which body she preferred and she's going to go for the 5d.

Now we need to pick a lens,do we go for the

Canon 24-105 f4
Tamron sp 24-70 2.8 di vc usd
Sigma 24-70 2.8 if ex dg hsm

Or is the canon 24-70 2.8 af-s ed much much better for more money.

Any help would be great,thanks chris
 
powell7 said:
Update for you all.

We went to park cameras today so the wife could see which body she preferred and she's going to go for the 5d.

Now we need to pick a lens,do we go for the

Canon 24-105 f4
Tamron sp 24-70 2.8 di vc usd
Sigma 24-70 2.8 if ex dg hsm

Or is the canon 24-70 2.8 af-s ed much much better for more money.

Any help would be great,thanks chris
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I'm going to get shot, but she's charging for photography......surely she/you know the right answer to this for you. Sorry to be negative but
 
I'm asking for people's advise if they have any of these lenses!

We currently use sigma 2.8's but on the full frame version it has mixed reviews so that's why I'm asking about the others
 
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Yes just one, ill also be buying a 30/50mm at a later date
 
boyfalldown said:
I'm going to get shot, but she's charging for photography......surely she/you know the right answer to this for you. Sorry to be negative but
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Looking for gun emoticon ;)

I think it is an ok question to ask as the op isn't familiar with the system, a bit like me asking about Nikon gear.

As a first lens I would go with either of the Canon options, the range and having IS on the 24-105 make it good, the sharpness and being f2.8 are the winning features of the 24-70.

I take it she will probably use the Sony and 70-200 for a bit until you can upgrade everything?
 
she should learn some flash stuff at some point, its pretty useful at times
 
mark1616 said:
Looking for gun emoticon ;)

I think it is an ok question to ask as the op isn't familiar with the system, a bit like me asking about Nikon gear.

As a first lens I would go with either of the Canon options, the range and having IS on the 24-105 make it good, the sharpness and being f2.8 are the winning features of the 24-70.

I take it she will probably use the Sony and 70-200 for a bit until you can upgrade everything?
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Yes she will be keeping the 70-200 on the Sony.

She likes the look and range of the 24-105 but worried that its going to defeat the point of getting a full frame if she is going up to f4 and loosing the extra stops of light.
 
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powell7 said:
Yes she will be keeping the 70-200 on the Sony.

She likes the look and range of the 24-105 but worried that its going to defeat the point of getting a full frame if she is going up to f4 and loosing the extra stops of light.
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Personally I'd always go for a f2.8 lens rather then f4, especially as your wife doesn't use flash. With the f2.8 you can always use f4 if there's enough light but of course with the f4 lens you can't use f2.8 :D
 
mark1616 said:
For some venues neither are going to work, I quite often want one of my f1.4 options even if not quite used wide open.
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He's talking zooms so on a 5D f2.8 is the best he'll do.
 
woof woof said:
He's talking zooms so on a 5D f2.8 is the best he'll do.
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We know he's talking zooms, but for a 'natural light specialist' faster primes really ought to be a consideration.

i like natural light and it's always my first choice, but flashguns, triggers, stands etc. let me feel confidant I can always get the shot. I also have some faster primes and they're not just for low light either.

IMO there are 2 kinds of 'Natural light shooter', those that love and understand natural light and do everything to take advantage of it, and those who believe that modern high ISO cameras mean they don't need to learn flash.
 
If it's a 5D mark II or III then the loss of 1 stop of f4 vs f2.8 is negated when compared to the Sony, given the Canon's superior noise performance at high iso. Both Canon zooms are good lenses, the f4 with IS is great if she ever wanted to dabble into video. Frankly it depends on her shooting style, the 24-105 will give her a like for like FOV with the 17-70 she has already. You can use your library software to find what focal length she shoots at more often on the Sigma, 17-50mm means that the 24-70 is a good candidate with an extra stop over the 24-105mm, although there will be FOV gap between the canon and sony in the 70-105 range because of crop factors etc.

Incidentally, high ISO on Sony's above 1600 has never been exceptional, I've found after the launch of LR3, it handles noise a lot better than before and feel confident shooting up to 1600. I've never had to shoot at 3600ISO before, but if the that is the light levels she is shooting at, then as per some of the advice on the thread- having fast primes can nudge ISO back down to avoid excessive noise in the final image.
 
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For weddings i'd advise against a d800 unless you want to fork out hundreds on cards and storage. For the same price you could get yourself 2xD700s second hand - one of the finest cameras nikon has made if you're a wedding shooter - or a D700 and a great lens.

Lens wise I could happily do any wedding using two bodies with a 35mm on one and 85mm on the other.
 
decigallen said:
For weddings i'd advise against a d800 unless you want to fork out hundreds on cards and storage. For the same price you could get yourself 2xD700s second hand - one of the finest cameras nikon has made if you're a wedding shooter - or a D700 and a great lens.
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D800 is fantastic for weddings. You're exaggerating the costs of cards and storage somewhat.
 
boyfalldown said:
D800 is fantastic for weddings. You're exaggerating the costs of cards and storage somewhat.
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I shoot around 1500-2000 images per wedding and my partner does the same. We shoot around 40 weddings per year and keep backups of the unculled RAW files plus two copies of the Culled RAW.

That's roughly 140,000 images per year and roughly 70,000 between the 2 backups. With 14bit lossless images that would be around 8-9tb per year - not taking into account engagements and commercial stuff that we also do. The cost of memory cards doesn't bother me so much but time taken to transfer files (especially when shooting back to back weddings) annoyed me during the brief period that I owned the D800.

Of course you can shoot weddings with the D800 and its a great camera, but for weddings there's other cameras better suited to the job.
 
decigallen said:
I shoot around 1500-2000 images per wedding and my partner does the same. We shoot around 40 weddings per year and keep backups of the unculled RAW files plus two copies of the Culled RAW.

That's roughly 140,000 images per year and roughly 70,000 between the 2 backups. With 14bit lossless images that would be around 8-9tb per year - not taking into account engagements and commercial stuff that we also do. The cost of memory cards doesn't bother me so much but time taken to transfer files (especially when shooting back to back weddings) annoyed me during the brief period that I owned the D800.

Of course you can shoot weddings with the D800 and its a great camera, but for weddings there's other cameras better suited to the job.
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All good point, but the better suited cameras is a matter of opinion :)

However, and without being aware of all the various compression options they all have, the majority of the latest wave of cameras produce big raw files, for example the 5diii averages 33mb and x100s is about the same. The point is the d800 files aren't massively larger at 45 mb.

I know it's aside, but why on earth do you stored all your Raws following a cull?
 
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We keep unculled RAW for a year only to cover us should we need to find something - in a couple of cases we've discovered that parents or friends have died not long after the wedding and the couple have politely asked if we had any other pics of them. We were happy to oblige. In other cases we might need something for photoshopping. I think it's generally good practice to keep them for a year.

My personal preference is also to shoot the full wedding on one card (d4 and d3s both have duel slots). That's a whole other debate of course, but I don't like how I would unlikely be able to shoot a full wedding on a single card without spending hundreds on 128gb cards.
 
decigallen said:
We keep unculled RAW for a year only to cover us should we need to find something - in a couple of cases we've discovered that parents or friends have died not long after the wedding and the couple have politely asked if we had any other pics of them. We were happy to oblige. In other cases we might need something for photoshopping. I think it's generally good practice to keep them for a year.

My personal preference is also to shoot the full wedding on one card (d4 and d3s both have duel slots). That's a whole other debate of course, but I don't like how I would unlikely be able to shoot a full wedding on a single card without spending hundreds on 128gb cards.
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Interesting, something to think about. Although I hang on to selected Raws for a couple of years anything caught in the cull goes when the finished products are delivered
 
I'd actually love a smaller sensor d800 to save money and time - it's my only gripe about the camera and it's purely because the volume of images we shoot. For DR and image quality it's fantastic:)
 
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