5700 - advice for use with a wedding please!

[stater]

I've been asked to take pictures at a family member's wedding. It will be at 2:00 P.M. in Jan. Mostly indoors, of course.

I was wondering if ya'll can give me adivce on what settings would work the best.

How much memory & batteries I would need.

Thanks to all!

[koruvs]

Here are a few basic questions;

How long will the wedding last? The stock batteries last about 70 to 90min depending on use. The MB-E5700 holds 6 AA batteries and last about 3 hours.
Will you be using an external flash? Having extra batteries for that is a good idea too.

Memory depends, will you be shooting using RAW or JPG? As an example 31 RAW images fit on a 256MB card and using JPG @ 2560x1920 you'll be able to get 109 images.

As for 'other' camera settings, its a tough call. How long have you used the camera? Are you comfortable enough to use specific settings for certain situations that might arise? It's really hard to tell you what to use as indoor lighting is always different.

Hope some of the above helps.

-=-

[marokero]

I would suggest the vertical grip plus a few sets of high capacity NiMH AA's. As for memory, if you shoot at the best quality possible, perhaps 512MB should suffice. I shoot weddings for a living and use a 1GB CF, plus shoot a few rolls of film - yeah, they are still in use and in high demand An external flash is a must, as the internal one just won't recycle as fast as a dedicated external one with its own batteries. And as for settings indoors, if it's day time you could leave it in P mode, flash WB, and try to bounce the flash off the ceiling if possible, gives a less harsh and more natural looking lighting. If outdoor light doesn't come through windows indoors, then I switch to M mode (manual) and set the camera to f/4 and 1/60s, ISO 400 (you may use a lesser setting on the 5700 if noise is of concern to you) and flash white balance. You may even leave the camera on P as well, it might free you to worry less about over exposing closer shots and be more creative Oh, and do ask the priest, or whoever will do the ceremony, regarding the ground rules for photos during the ceremony (flash allowed or not, "any" picture taking allowed or not, where you can shoot from, how close you can get, etc). As a photographer you may not get to enjoy the reception as much as you'd like. But since you seem to be family, it don't matter Good luck with the wedding!

[eric s]

If you are close to the relative getting married, then this might not apply. But I mention it any ways as I read it on a forum dedicated to wedding photography and it made sense to me!

Go to the rehearsal and ask whom you "have" to get pictures of. You might even get candids of them now so you remember what they look like. Some people are clear (and you know them, family members) but the college roommate that "saved them" in school might not be so obvious.

You'll also want to arrange a place to take specific pictures of the bride/groom (this is sometimes done right after the ceremony.) You might consider getting a separate off-camera flash and flash stand (or get a clip to attach it to something) that you can trigger off the flash on the camera. That should help with flash shadows.

I saw this over on dpreview.com, and filed it away in my memory. They called it a "Wedding photo checklist." Even if you don't get all of these, it's a good list to look at and think about:
http://my.bridestuff.com/checklist/photo_checklist.asp

Get you thinking about what you might want to get ahead of time (so you'll have less on you mind when you're shooting.)

Eric