Alrighty,
Our wedding is not going to be no $10,000 Shin-Dig. We are paying for this ourselfs.
we have a friend who is a great photagrapher. She will be using our s9100 for the wedding photos. We live in michigan in town but a couple blocks from lake michigan.
We are looking for some tips & advice on where to have the pictures done, would the lake michigan be a good backdrop ( lighthouses also there ) if its sunny, then i dont know if the lake would be good or not. We may of course take some inside the church, but also would like ones done outside. It will be Augaust 4th, 07.

wondering about some lighting, etc.

Thanks

insanefirewall wrote: If your friend is a great photographer, let her use her own camera, and set up the shots the way she suggests.

She'll do a better job with her own camera than with yours, and she probably already has some good ideas about how to take the pictures. Trust her. Trying to get her to do something that she's unaccustomed to doing probably won't work out well.

I completely agree with TC. Wedding photography is not easy (which is why good wedding photographers aren't cheap). Giving someone a camera he/she is not familiar with in a situation they are not familiar with is a recipe for disaster. Has this friend ever shot a wedding before?? Light and exposure are tricky, as is the people management aspect of the job. Throw in the fact that the camera you mention is probably not the best tool for the job, you should be prepared for perhaps less than perfect results. The typical advice given to amateurs who ask if they should shoot a friends wedding is to run away, or at least schedule major surgery for the date of the event to avoid potentially ruining a friendship.

she has shot before and does have the expierence, we will be giving her our camera for a few months so she can get used to 'this' one.

like i said b4 we dont have the money for an expensive camera or a photagrapher. these are getting developed ( touched up also if needed ) by one of her friends which i guess owes her a favor.

but yes, this is what we will be using and trying to find the best spot for these pictures, out in the open somewhere with natural lighting and try to find the best type of backdrop in that month, if a lake would be too much,

and yes i wouldnt be having her do these if she was a total photagraphy noob,
her cameras are all film and we would be going through too much film lol.

i like digital it can be manipulated how ya like it, this way its cheaper to give out more copys to the family etc.

ive called around everywhere trying to find a good photagrapher at a good price with enough photos, but i know there good and $$,, just dont have the money for it.


of course we would like to do ALOT of testing, not just wait till the day and start shooting... get white outfits etc, go to a bunch of spots an take a bunch of test shots
and work from there.

How much film and development are you talking? If your friend has a good SLR with a flash unit I wouldn’t consider using anything else. I think it is around five bucks extra to get a CD with the development of 36 photos so you can view them on the computer and TV.

If you absolutely want to use the S9100 go buy a flash attachment if you don’t already have one. You can get a decent automatic bounce flash for $30 and you will take better flash photos for the rest of the time you own the camera. For a little more money you can get better power. Ask what people are using on the Fuji forums.

Make sure she has the flash for the practice shots. Automatic flash units are easy enough to use once they are set up. But not really automatic like a TTL dedicated unit.

You can take beautiful outdoor shots in sunshine as long as you don’t have the subjects squinting into the sun and use fill flash. Even the built-in flash on the camera will work for that within range.

You want pictures of everything. Especially the ceremony regardless of how simple.

Go through some of these and get some ideas: http://search.pbase.com/search?q=wedding&c=sp Or do a search for professional sites and see what they are doing.

I got a diffuser for my flash attachment for when I didn’t have a low white ceiling to bounce from. I think it was in the $20 range and makes flash portraits look nicer. You don’t need it, but you will like the photos a lot better with a flash attachment on your camera regardless of whether it has a diffuser.

insanefirewall wrote: Absolutely. Do a dry run, and not just the rehersal the day before. Pose in the chapel and have her go around to different places, take lots of shots, and all of you figure out where you want her to be on the big day.

Generally, the reception is easy, but reherse the posed shots with the background you choose. And use your alternate too. The weather might be bad, or there might be a big ugly freighter on the lake. Who knows.

And if she's doing this on the cheap and calling in favors, don't waste her time.

developing is not on the cheap, she made that clear to us, and it will be our gift from her.

those bounce flash's, those must be the ones that the flash aims somewhat upwards, like u said, to boounce off the ceiling, that sounds exellent.

oh yes practice shots will be a good month before. an inside backup spot maybe, yes the lake shots are hard since there are freighters and the ferry going back and forth.
but it is a butiful spot. Would liek to do something out of the ordinary, not just the basic church shots.

when u talk about 'Fill Flash' , is this a different type of flash or how does that work?
i know not to face the subjects into the sun, unless fill flash is when they are kinda shadowed in front to lighten them up a bit since the sun if any would be behind them or around them.

the reception yes take all the shots she wants, we will have others with digital cameras of course liek all weddings.

just wondering on other peoples wedding & reception experiences just being there watching or whatnot, if been to abunch but never really paid attention untill now that I amk actually going to be one of main subjects.

i really do appreciate everyones advice on this matter, since it does help alot, me personally i am not as picky as her, I just want it to be the best i can do for her at the price we can afford.
thanks

If you use the internal flash from the Fuji you just turn it on. It isn’t usually too harsh for outdoor shots and most cameras seem to get it right. For an external flash unit you normally set it for a lower power without turning the auto mode on.

I rarely take outdoor portraits in the sun without flash. I do like to use the diffuser for all people shots, but that camera has TTL metering and a dedicated flash, so it is a little easier than messing with an auto unit.

Look through some of the albums in that link. You will get a lot of good ideas. Hitting ‘Next” under the individual photos also takes you to more galleries.

Ive been to that link, alot of very very nice shots, postioning, lighting, and some effects ( photoshoped a bit ). I found a diffiser, just trying to find an external bounce flash for the s9100, Dont want a slave flash, something that goes on top.

Ive found a few other different professional sites also, that some did an outstanding job, some very nice locations next to the lakes, in the woods are also nice shots if ya can get the lighting down right. Ive been messing around with auto mode and trying out different settings. My monitor is a Dell, about 2 yrs old, from what ive read, alot of monitors cant display the images as good as the printer will print it out. of course we have just a $200 Lexmark, but it doesnt to a too bad of a job for basic portraits.

Some people say to take wedding pictures in RAW mode. I guess i wll leave that up to her.
I need to learn alot more about photoshop than i thought. These pro pics i see are just outstanding!

Thanks guys

Raw will give you better results if you know how to use it. But at 18Mb/shot you will limit your photos unless you have a laptop to dump the photos in or lots of memory. The S9000 is very slow to cycle raw shots. If the S9100 is the same way it wouldn’t be useful in anything but posed situations. My old Minolta was about that slow cycling raw and I could use it only for static shots.

I think what you might have read is that many monitors will not display the same as the printer. Read up on color management if you are planning to print yourself. You want the colors the same on the monitor and the print, which doesn’t always happen automatically.

I would make a folder and download the photos you really like. Your friend could probably get an idea of what you want more easily from photos.