Shooting manual for a wedding...

[Kris]

Hi Guys

Few quick questions about maintaining an accurate exposure. I do like to shoot manual for night time gigs where I know that my DoF won't need to change and my light doesn't really change either, manual is great for this as once i've got it right it stays right.

My next challenge is a wedding, still wanting to maintain correct exposure but I want to vary the DoF quite alot to mix the styles of shots. How is shooting manual effective in this scenario as you'd be constantly remetering off a white cuff or a white dress and adjusting shutter to suit, therefor taking LOADS of time.

Am I best to just stick to AV (Aperture mode) for this kinda stuff and hope Matrix metering plays on my side with my exposures??

I'm shooting a wedding with another member in the next few weeks... interesting times ahead.

[gstark]

Hi Kris,

How is shooting manual effective in this scenario as you'd be constantly remetering off a white cuff or a white dress

But are you?

Really??

Remember that you are metering for the light that's illuminating your subject, rather than the subject itself.

Apart from the fact that metering off a white dress, or a white veil, or a white cuff (a white anything! ) will yield an inaccurate result, the difference between a wedding and some other gig is not that the lighting is changing from shot A to shot B - usually it's not - but that you are shooting within a succession of lighting scenarios.

The bride's home might be scenario A, the church scenario B, the reception might have four or five different scenarios, but for most of what you're shooting, the underlying lighting conditions - which (again) should be what you're metering for - will remain constant for a range of images.

Does that make any sense?

and adjusting shutter to suit, therefor taking LOADS of time.

Why should it?

Once you have established your EV for a given situation, much of the rest should come down to basic maths. For any given EV there's a whole range of acceptable shutter speed/aperture combinations, and if you want to open your aperture by, say, three stops to reduce the apparent DoF in the image, then you'll need to adjust your shutter by the same three stops to retain the same EV.

Or is there something in your question that I've missed?

[Kris]

Thanks Gary!

Let me reread that a few times, the last part I do understand but sometimes in the heat of the moment, you just flick the aperture dial to what you want without actually remembering it was 2 or 3 stops, therefore requiring the shutter to be changed to get the same EV

Not sure about the first part, bit hazy there but to get the right exposure why wouldnt I meter from the brightest part of my scene and adjust exposure to suit?

[Reschsmooth]

Not sure about the first part, bit hazy there but to get the right exposure why wouldnt I meter from the brightest part of my scene and adjust exposure to suit?

Because that would significantly underexpose the darker areas, I am thinking. What you may actually want to be "properly" exposed (yes, bad use of the word as there could be many "properly's") may not be the brightest object. Think dark red roses on white table cloth/against white dress - if you expose for the cloth/dress, the roses may come out very underexposed. If you expose for the roses, the cloth/dress may be somewhat overexposed, but in the range of acceptable limits.

Others who are smarter than I can correct me and provide more clarity.

[Kris]

Not sure there, if I get my brightest scene 'correct' then the camera is fine to meter everything else as grey


ie: brides dress at +1 EV, the rest would come out fine. If the brides dress is the most important thing to get exposed correctly then i would meter for that, +EV a bit to get it a bit brighter than middle grey (EV 0) the rest should fall into line

Hmm maybe im wrong

[Reschsmooth]

No Kris, sounds about right to me, although I feel like I haven't had to 'meter' for ages as I have mostly been using my lights, mostly.

[gstark]

Not sure about the first part, bit hazy there but to get the right exposure why wouldnt I meter from the brightest part of my scene and adjust exposure to suit?

Let's get back to basics for a moment. What's the purpose of metering? To determine how much light is falling on your subject, right?

Whether there's a bright (or a dark) part of your scene has nothing at all to do with the metering, per se. That's to do with how you might want to expose for the shot, but always remember that your metering is going to be presuming the it's looking at a grey object.

In the case of a bride's white dress, your meter is wanting to meter it as if it's a grey wedding dress, and it's going to be giving you a reading based upon that assumption. How happy with that will your bride be?

Assessing bright (or dark) regions of the scene is to do with the broader dynamic range of light that you're having to deal with, and that may - or it may not - have a bearing upon how you assess your exposure.

For instance, a really bright area - that you may deem important - in the frame of an otherwise dark image might dictate that you actually need to add light to the image (reflector, fill flash) in order to attain a lesser dynamic range (and therefore more even exposure) to make the whole image work.

But that brightest area might also be insignificant in terms of the image that you're shooting ... and this it should be ignored.

In the case of a bride's dress, it's probably not as significant as you might think, because (getting back to our basics) your primary concern should be the amount of the light that's illuminating your subject.

And your subject is really the bride who is wearing the dress, rather than the dress itself, isn't it?

If you check-meter for the dress, and then check-meter for the face, you're going to get vastly different readings. Clearly, at least one of those meter readings will not be correct.

But if you accept that there will be a similar amount of light falling on the bride's face as there will be on her dress (and that will generally be true) then you need to try to determine which of those parts of the subject - or maybe the grass that she's standing on - will give your meter the most accurate reading, especially given the fact that amount of the light falling on the subject(s) is the same.

Hopefully that hasn't confused you too much. Try to absorb this, and we'll take the discussion further ...

[PiroStitch]

This where metering mode comes in. You're thinking too much as a spot meter.

If you use the matrix or centre weighted metering mode, the camera will take into account the amount of white and dark tones. Usually I just focus on the face and meter for that. Unless really bright sunlight is hitting the subject, you shouldn't have too much of an issue with highlights.

Shoot in Raw and away you go. The 5D I noticed handles overexposed areas by up to around a stop.

Shooting in manual during a wedding isn't too difficult. As Gary said, at bride's place - 1 lighting scenario, ceremony - maybe variance of a couple if you jump between taking photos of the bride and groom to the candid photos (unless it's an evenly lit room), portraits - few scenarios but they're not running around so you don't have to change that quickly, reception - couple of variances.

Don't overthink it Kris. Keep it simple.

[Kris]

Thanks guys, alot to digest. Piro, I think you're right. I may be thinking too much

I'll be shooting in raw, packing 16GB of memory cards, a Epson P-3000 and I'm going to focus on getting the more creative shot, rather then a straight on (there will be a few of those of course)

Should be interesting! I'm nervous

Thanks Gary and Piro for your feedback!

[Willy wombat]

Good luck - I did a shoot for some people (non wedding) on the weekend and it was the first one I had done in a while so it took me about 20 minutes to get back intot he swing of things.

Managing my technical exopertise with the camera was one thing (I shot apperture priority with CW metering, and used some fill flash in dark places). The other challenging thing was giving artistic direction to the people involved (an equally important aspect) which you should be prepared for. Look at me - look at him, look at her, look down, stand up, sit down, go over there, lets try this, etc. Haivng some idea about what shots you are going for is important.

[Matt. K]

Using a hand-held incident meter, or using the inbuilt matrix, spot or center weighted settings...if these are used correctly then all of them will give you the same exposure information. The trick to getting accurate exposures is to be aware of those situations that will cause the meter to give you a poor or incorrect reading. These situations include, strong backlighting, predominantly black or white subject (metering off a white wedding dress or a black tuxedo will give you a grey dress or a grey tux), metering a scene with a high contrast (spotlight on someones face, for instance) or metering off a scene that contains large areas of specular highlights (sunlight shimmering on water etc). Let's presume the lighting in a well lit church calls for F5.6 at 1/60th of a second. Then all of the metering methods if used correctly should give you a value of F5.6 at 1/60th of a second. It then follows that if you understand how to evaluate the reading from a spot meter then that meter is no less accurate than a $1000 incident light meter. The real question when evaluating exposure is "What am I exposing for?" Normally the answer is skintones, unless you are after a special effect. There is not much point in getting a perfectly exposed wedding dress if the brides face is in deep shadow and prints as black. I prefer to use my cameras matrix meter most of the time as I have found it to be very accurate. I always check the histogram for the first few shots and again if the lighting changes. If my subject moves into an area where the light comes from the rear then I will meter off the face and or add some fill flash. If the bride and groom are both wearing white then I will add 1 or 2 stops to my exposure or meter off a grey card held in the same light. You are not being 'non professional' if you prefer to use matrix or spot or center weighted....you are only being 'non professional' if you don't understand how they function and when the reading may need to be modified.

[Kris]

Thanks Steve, im not the only shooter for this so there will be the primary guy doing the conducting, come reception im the main guy but none really needed there. Its an easier way to ease myself into this kinda thing. I'm lucky!

[Kyle]

I have little to offer you chris except that once you take your ~20th shot it feels like it gets a little easier, You will find yourself become familiar with your surroundings and it gets easier.

Good luck mate, you're assistant/partner is a top guy who knows his stuff, im sure you will both do just fine!

[Kris]

Thanks Kyle, should be fine and hopefully fun at the same time! It's going to be a BIG day

[Biggzie]

Ok, my 2 cents.

Firstly I would say that the Brides dress will be the 2nd most important subject for the bride. her face will be the most important. get that right and you will have some grace with the dress.
The Groom will be saying to himself "oh no not another bloody picture", but Im sure he will be quite happy if you can keep the Bride happy.

The other thing I can say is that you will be photographing from bright white in the dress to probably black in the suits. Im not sure how much dynamic range your sensor can capture. From memory our eyes pickup about 12 stops of light, but slide film can only capture about 5 stops. Ive never worked out what my digital captures, but its nowhere near my eyes. Id experiment a little before hand.
I would be probably using the Bracketing Function in Av mode, at least to start with. I think that might give you some extra flexability with exposure as well as getting all the eyes open at once

Apart from that, all I can say is I hate weddings ... bad place to take a camera ... Good place to pickup a date though

[Kris]

Thanks for the tips

5D sensor, DR? No idea. Pretty good from memory.

Shooting RAW which will help alot. Will take multiple shots of the critical ones to ensure I get no closed eyes. Won't bracket, as I can do the same thing with a single RAW file and to bracket uses up mega space @ 12meg per file

[shutterbug]

The bride's home might be scenario A, the church scenario B, the reception might have four or five different scenarios, but for most of what you're shooting, the underlying lighting conditions - which (again) should be what you're metering for - will remain constant for a range of images.

YEP !! Same scene....same exposure..makes life easy when it comes to album design.

I love shooting in M mode I try to get it right incamera so less work for me late. I am a jpeg shooter

Vince

[jdear]

Good place to pickup a date though

our very own wedding crasher