Wedding Photography Blues

My family and I recently went to a wedding reception for my wife's cousin wife. I have found recently that I have reached the stage in life where I am more likely to go to a funeral than a wedding,  so it was a nice change, and of course it goes without saying that weddings are a lot more fun to take photos of.

As someone who enjoys most types of photography, weddings raise a bit of a dilemma. Obviously you want to take your camera, but you also don't want to get in the way of the official photographer and be a pain to the bride and groom.

Most importantly I don't want to make the official photographers job any harder than it already is. I always have a lot of respect and sympathy for professionals doing difficult jobs like this and I am sure they find amateurs like me, even ones that are invited guests a right pain. The last thing I want is for me to make their job any harder than it already is. Anyway it is always instructive to watch the photographers at work.

So I try and compromise and take photo's of areas the official photographer tend to miss. I remember from my own wedding (even though it was many years ago), how much you miss of what is going on. I try and take photos in situations the professional is not going to see such as activities of the guests and give them to the happy couple as a thank you. At the same time of course it gives you a chance to practice your hobby.

In terms of good photo opportunities this wedding was a cracker. The bride was Tunisian/French, the groom English and to cap it off one of the relatives was a top notch bagpipe player. So we had a unique mix of Arabic/French/English disco, the hokey cokey, and the gay Gordons on the bag pipes. To cap it off, we also had belly dancing. If you can't get at least one good photo out of that, give up now!

However taking photos at night in a disco was always going to be challenging photographically speaking. In fact it is difficult to think of more difficult lighting conditions. plus we had a situation  with lots of movement (i.e dancing), a hand held camera with limited angles. You soon start to see why wedding photographers get paid so much, or why they carry the kit they do.

So how do we get some decent photos in conditions like this? Well we have a number of options

1. Use a Flash
2. Use the fastest lens possible and keep the aperture wide open
3. Crank the ISO up
4. Embrace the moment

1. Flash

Let me say first off that I don't like to use flashes. One of the reason I bought a DSLR's was because of its ability to take better images in the poor light and to reduce the number of times I had to resort to flash. I dislike the way flashes flatten the scene(darkening the background). I also find they can be very obtrusive when used at public events.

I do have a quite a powerful all singing/dancing flash which allows me to do things like bounce the light off the ceiling, but due Sony's unique hot-shoe design, I can only use it in manual mode which makes life even more challenging. After a while you realize that using such a flash is as much an art form as using the camera .While this may be possible in a studio, where you control, lighting,etc; at a live event with people moving around all the time it is a hit and miss affair

 Of course there is always the camera's own flash, but this is less powerful cannot be tilted to do things like bounce it off the ceiling.

I must admit using flash is probably something I should learn more about.

One of the things I recently find out was that when you use a flash in a dark room, the shutter speed makes little difference, since the period of the flash defines the exposure time. Then there is the flash sync time, which is basically the shortest shutter speed that you can use your flash with. Any faster and the sensor is not fully exposed and part of your image will be obscured by the shutter. Then there is front and rear curtain sync, which are too complex to go into here, but can make a difference if you want to capture objects moving across the plane of the lens with the flash.

2. Use the fastest lens possible and keep the aperture wide open

I took the my fastest lens I have with me which is my  F2.0 50mm prime. But even with this cranked to its maximum aperture, I my shutter speed was still between 1/10 and 1/30 a second, which was really too slow for hand held (Even with the camera at maximum ISO). Not only that, but it meant the I got a very narrow depth of field meaning you had a only a few people in focus,.

3. Crank the ISO up

As I said in point 2, even with the ISO pushed to my camera's maximum(ISO 3200), I found that I was only getting a shutter speed of 1/10 sec.

Increasing the ISO seems like a get out of free card, but it has its issues. The main one being that the higher the ISO goes, the more noise you will get. Generally at 3200 ISO with my camera, the photos are very noisy and I try not to use it above ISO 400 if I can help it. However sometimes it cannot be helped (top tip, never let your camera choose the ISO for you). While other cameras have a bigger usable ISO range, at some point all will hit this problem.

Saying that, this is one of those situations when I wished I had a Sony A7S and I am surprised more wedding photographers don't have one for these sort of events. It also emphasizes the point that camera manufacturers should really concentrate more on overall noise reduction and light sensitivity rather than stuffing in more pixels onto a sensor

One way around the noise issue is to process them via photo manipulation packages such as Lightroom. These have noise reduction features in their RAW conversions. I tend to use ZonePhoto and generally have ignored these settings, since I try to use the low ISO settings when possible where noise is not a great issue. (Noise processing can also greatly extend your RAW processing times)

However in this case I used the feature quite  aggressively and I was quite impressed with the improvements.  OK, it did not produce exhibition quality photos since they did introduce some softening in the image, but they made a very noisy mess into something far more acceptable

4. Embrace the moment.

OK. So the rooms dark, with flashing lights, your lens is too slow and cranking the ISO produces an image that looks like it has been sprinkled with 100's and 1000's and you don't want to use the flash

 So what do you do about it?

Well once answer is become more creative about the shots you take.

With the movement of a disco, by using the slow shutter speed we can blur the subjects and capture some of the energy and motion at the event. I also tried my wide angle zoom at its widest setting  (10 mm) to take the entire room in, which worked quite well.

It is in these sort of situations where your skills and experience can come to the fore in making the best of a difficult situation. OK, they will not always work, but sometimes you get some interesting shots

In these situations you take the light where you can get it

In moderation the in built flash works well. No way could I got this shot otherwise

I try and look for angles that the professionals won't try. Like adding context by including other guests

The belly dancer (I think it wsa the brides sister) was excellent, but without using flash there was no way to get a good picture of her. But the slower shutter speed shows the dynamism of the dance 

Again slow shutter speed adds a surreal quality

I wasn't sure how a wide angle would work, but actually I quite liked the effect

He's making a list, and checking it twice...

It's that time of year....

As I have stated before, one of the reasons for writing this blog was to prove (to myself as much as anyone) that the quality of photography is more than just a function of how much money you can spend on equipment or locations. Instead it is more about making the best use of what you have around you and utilising the equipment to hand with imagination and skill.

However even I must admit I am not immune to camera envy. 

So as we run up to Christmas, I thought it would be a good opportunity to play camera fantasy football and think about if I won the lottery tomorrow (ignoring the basic requirement that I would actually have to buy a ticket) what camera I would get if I had the chance. (You never know maybe I've been a really good boy this year and Santa will look down fondly on me [unlikely - Ed.])

The cameras

As I have said in previous blogs, I am a Sony user.

Now the reason I bought Sony is largely lost in the mists of time put it is partly because it gave me good price per buck at the time, but over the years I have come to appreciate it's strengths (and bemoan it's weaknesses).

For example I really like the EVF (even though I think Sony could do far more with it). Many photographers say it will never be as good or as clear as the OVF. While this may be true (and they are getting better all the time), the ability to provide the information such as histograms via the eye piece, makes up for this and more. It would be something I would sorely miss on a purely optical viewfinder.

Also I like the fact I am getting live-view all the time, allowing me to see how the photo I will get in real time. In consequence, there is no need for me to constantly switch between back screen and live view. All the information is there at my eye level, so taking much of the guess work out of photography.

One of the biggest advantages is that I can use the camera almost totally without needing to wear glasses. My eyesight is not bad, but it is not as good as in my youth. I now have to wear glasses when reading,  but because I can see everything via the EVF, I can generally leave my glasses in my pocket. 

Sony has also done some interesting things in the camera sphere recently. Don't get me wrong, Nikon and Canon are fantastic camera marques, with a great history, but you wonder whether that very history is stopping them progressing.

Now dyed in the wool Nikon and Canon users may disagree with this, but I'm not the only one who thinks maybe having won the battle of the DSLR's, they are losing the next battle ground, that of mirrorless cameras.

Sony on the other hand has less to lose by shaking up the DSLR market, and they have produced some great mirrorless full frame cameras recently . The A7 range seem almost too good. Small to hold with high resolution, they have a lot to recommend themselves to photographers.

However Sony still seem to be trying to work out, what is best specification, using the same basic camera shape and configuring it for a number of different uses.

Firstly we have the A7R, with its insane number of pixels, Then the A7 with fewer pixels, but faster focusing  and frame rate.

However the most intriguing of all is the A7S. While in modern term it has a measly 12 Megapixels, each one of them is used to trap more light giving it unbelievable low light performance. The A7S fixes two things that I find irritating in cameras. Firstly, the need to use a flash in low light situations and secondly the noise the shutter makes. Because of the limited pixel count, the A7S has the option of using a full electronic shutter, which is totally silent. This is a great camera for any indoor work where you wish to be discreet, or at night when you need maximum low light performance.

Also people should not be put off by the number of pixels either. 12MP is pretty great for most situations and the photos don't seem to suffer .

The low light performance is insane, with a 3 stop performance difference against say the Nikon D810. What that means in practice(apart from the ability to take photo's virtually at night)  is that you can increase your shutter speed or uses lens with smaller maximum apertures and still get great shots.

One of the perceived weaknesses of Sony is the number of available lenses available. Sony have addressed this by offering adaptors meaning a Canon, Nikon, Leica etc user can transfer their whole lens collection to the A7 camera.

So if I had the choice, which one would I buy. Like I said, the A7S intrigues me, but in reality it is designed for video photographers where the reduced resolution is not an issue. The A7R is a great landscape camera, but not general purpose enough.

So that leaves the A7....

Except it doesn't.

Sony recently announced the A7 MkII. This combines all the good bits of the A7 (full frame, contrast and phase detection) with 5 axis optical stabilization, so improving focusing and low light performance in one step. If I had a choice this would be the camera I would get. Any one want to lend me £1600?

Also I would throw in in a Sony A6000 just for those days when a full frame mirrorless is just too bulky.

Oh darn it,  because it's Christmas, lets just throw in a A7S just for those dark winter days when a maximum  25600 ISO is just not enough.

The lenses

Of course a camera is no use without decent lens. At present I have a small range of lens, from a 50mm pancake, to a 70-300,mm zoom. However there are some significant gaps in my inventory. For example for wildlife 300mm is just the minimum, but really we need 400 or even 600mm lenses. A lens like the 150-600mm Tamron would be great, but is £1000. Even nicer is the Sony SAL70400G 70-400mm with it's F4 aperture, but now we are talking close to £2000. However until the inheritance comes in. I may just have to look at getting a 1.6x teleconverter.

At the other end, a wide angle lens would be great for landscape work. Something like the Tamron SP AF 10-24mm f / 3.5-4.5 DI II Zoom Lens would be a steal at £400 (hah!)

Of course we are not even touching the surface when it comes to lenses. If you go to the Sony Gold series lens you can end up paying upwards of £1000.

And herein lies a problem.

The A-series lenses are not compatible with the new mirrorless full-frame cameras. OK they offer an adaptor, but that means you are being treated like Canon and Nikon user, rather than a loyal  Somny user.

The truth is the success Sony has achieved with the mirror less range has put the present DSLR range in doubt. For example when I bought my camera, there was a clear upgrade path from the A37 to the A57 - to the A65 to the A99. Now there are is only the the A55 and A77 II. The A55 is entry range and the A77 is high end, so there is no clear upgrade path.

Put it another way, when I was younger I used to listen to Chris De Burgh. His songs were quirky and had good tunes. Then he got to number one with Lady in Red and spent the rest of his career writing slushy love sonnets. Sony having found professional success with there full frame cameras mirrorless range, but they haven't been showing us much love recently to us A-Series users, providing no clear strategy on where they are going in that arena

Something Else

Something else I've always had a hankering to try is infra-red. Now almost all DSLR's can see infra-red, but filters are put in place to remove that light from the sensor. But you can get your camera converted to allow it to capture that wavelength. The images produced are surreal and almost other-worldly I would love to give it a go. I also have a theory that Sony A-Series cameras are the perfect camera for this sort of conversion, because they have permanent live view due to the SLT. So when one day I do upgrade, I would seriously consider changing my present camera to shoot infra-red.

  

Anyway it just leaves me to wish you all a great Christmas, have fun with your photography and a happy photographing new year