Which wedding lens?

[Mitch]

Hi out there!
Just bought two 10D's. Can anyone suggest two or three good lenses to use for shooting weddings that you have used yourself? I have a budget of $2,000 for lenses at this time. I want to avoid having to change lenses at a wedding as much as is possible and I will have both 10D's at my side. Can you indicate which lens to use for specific uses? for example, which lens for shots during the ceremony in a church? for shooting the posed shots of bride and groom before ceremony? posed shots of B&G after ceremony? shooting at the reception in general?
Thank you.

[CyberDyneSystems]

17-40mm f/4 and 24-70mm f/2.8. 24-70mm will cover most of your shots including bride and groom etc. The 17-40mm for wider angle work and group shots.

This leaves you no long lens,. but for a wedding it is hardly neccesary,. and the 70mm will "crop like" 112mm.

[Belmondo]

CyberDyneSystems wrote:This leaves you no long lens,. but for a wedding it is hardly neccesary,. and the 70mm will "crop like" 112mm.

Unless, of course, the wedding or reception are outdoors. In that case, there MIGHT be an opportunity to take some songer shots. Generally, though, I agree with CDS's suggestions.

[robertwgross]

I know this may sound like heresy in a Canon digital group. A friend and I shoot weddings. He shoots a Mamiya 645 medium format film camera. I shoot my D60 alongside him.

For some strange reason, everybody seems to think that is such an excellent idea to back up one system with another.

Nearly all the time, I leave my Canon 28-200mm zoom on, since that is a broad range. I can get in the back of the church or else get in their face. Then I'll have my 20-35mm zoom handy, in case the family shots have too many heads in them.

I was at a different wedding where some guy set up his tripod way at the back of a big church, and he was shooting all the way up to the front with a very long lens. I just could not figure out what he was trying to do. One wide shot from the back of the church would have been good as an "establishing shot", but trying to use the big Canon cannon to reach the front seemed odd.

---Bob Gross---

[mwinog2777]

I like to have at leasrt one long lens at a wedding. Some of my best shots have been with these. Bride & groom dancing ffrom a distance, no knowing they're being shot; almost candids of wedding party sitting at head table, oblivious to the more distant photographer. Be sure to have on fast and long lens!

[dgoodfellow]

I'm surprised no one has suggested a good low light lens. Every wedding I've been too there have been dark churches and dark halls that a nice wide open lens would have been a great addition to the bag. 50mm 1.4 or 1.8 can get you out of trouble. Especially when your told the church doesn't allow flash photography during the ceremony.

[HeatherJL]

I've done a few small weddings for friends, and I struggle with this question as well.

I agree with mwinog2777 about a long lens, especially if your client likes more of the photojournalistic approach to weddings. I love to capture emotions, without my subjects aware of my presence... and that requires a long lens. I like to use my 50mm f/1.4 for portraits, but I've often wondered if it wouldn't be handy to have the 70-200mm f/2.8 L. Just not sure that I can justify the cost at the moment.

[rdenney]

Mitch wrote:
Hi out there!
Just bought two 10D's. Can anyone suggest two or three good lenses to use for shooting weddings that you have used yourself? I have a budget of $2,000 for lenses at this time. I want to avoid having to change lenses at a wedding as much as is possible and I will have both 10D's at my side. Can you indicate which lens to use for specific uses? for example, which lens for shots during the ceremony in a church? for shooting the posed shots of bride and groom before ceremony? posed shots of B&G after ceremony? shooting at the reception in general?
Thank you.

I think it depends on your style.

I have shot many weddings using only a normal lens, with excellent results. But they were the traditional formals--not the photojournalistic style. Now, I would use medium format and use a 65mm lens, a 120mm or 135mm lens, and perhaps a full-frame fisheye for special effects. The 65 works very similarly to a 35 in the 24x36 format, and to match it you'd need a 20 on the 10D, or thereabouts. The longer lens lines up with a 50 pretty well. Thus, I would walk in at the very least with a 20 and a 50.

But not having to change lenses often is a good thing, and with medium format zooms are only useful to those who are independently wealthy and have native bearers to carry the thing around. Thus, I would suggest the 24-70 f/2.8L. The 70 end should be long enough for any wedding application unless you are into the photojournalist stealth-mode style, which I'm not.

Personally, I think f/2.8 is fast enough. The 10D allows you to crank up the sensitivity frame by frame, and it is virtually noise-free at ISO 400 and still usable at ISO 800. This might keep you from needing a fast 50. Most traditional wedding photographers have had no lenses faster than 2.8 for decades, and still gotten great results, even with slower films than would be popular now.

For nearly all my work, my motto has been speak softly and carry a big flash, so my tendency is to use slower film and give everyone a nice tan with a good-size flash. Thus, were I you I'd get just the 24-70L and save the rest of your budget for a potato-masher flash like the big Metz (or pro-level cobra-head flashes like the Quantum), with the Canon E-TTL module. Even the Canon 550EX is powerful enough, considering the ability to adjust ISO settings on the fly, but I'd get the remote cord and put it on a frame to get it farther up off the camera.

If you like the idea of a special-effects fisheye, the Russian Zenitar is a manual lens, available in EOS mount, that costs only $150 or so and performs excellently. The smaller format crops off the wilder parts of the fisheye image, and I find that if I avoid compositions with straight lines in them, the fisheye rendering is actually quite natural looking. In fact, I can usually compose nearly any scene so that you can't even see the barrel distortion.

Another special effects lens I'd consider is the 135mm soft-focus lens from Canon. It's not expensive, and the soft-focus can be adjusted (or even turned off), but the working distance will be longish (it's like a 215 on a full-frame camera). For the long shot of the bride and groom against candles, taken from the back of the church, it's just about right, and the effect is nice if a bit gimmicky (of course, gimmicky shots often sell, so I'm no purist in such situations).

But the 24-70 should be a good workhorse lens for 98% of your shots.

Let's see:

24-70 f/2.8L -- $1350
550EX with cord and bracket -- $500
Zenitar fisheye -- $150

There's your two grand. I found a used 135 soft-focus for under $200, so that isn't much extra.

(I'm assuming you've already bought battery grips and BIG memory cards for both bodies.)

Rick "who uses a 28-70 f/2.8 and has to bring a 20-35 to get a little wider on occasion" Denney