How to take a Wedding Party shot......

[xmacvicar]

Ok, this is coming from a wedding noob here, but I would love to hear some feedback from some wedding shooters.....

Lets say I have a standard wedding picture - a bride/groom and a few others, all men wearing black and women wearing white. I know these colors (the b lack and white) will fool the camera to under or overexposing the shot, depending on where you metered or focus.....

So i ask you people, how or WHERE do u meter off of to make the shot turn out correctly?

**I know shooting in RAW would help me down the line, but I would way prefer learning to get it right in camera first**

Do u meter off the background? Do u overexpose for the white dress? Do u underexpose for the black tux's? I am unsure the exact 'workflow' of a wedding shot, to make it expose properly....

Please help a noobie out, I would greatly appreciate it!

Dave

[xmacvicar]

anyone wanna tackle this for me?

[tim]

Meter their face in partial metering with exposure compensation +1. Or do what I do and use a hand held light meter.

[xmacvicar]

Ok cool, thanks Tim...

any recommendations on a good light meter I can buy for the weddings I will eventually shoot?

[Big Mike]

You could get an ambient only light meter, or one that also meters for flash. The flash meter will cost more but if you venture into flash photography...it will come in extremely handy. Check out the Sekonic L-308S (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=903&A=details&Q=&sku=368226&is=REG&addedTroughType=categoryNavigation)

[xmacvicar]

Damn...looks good......crappy thing is, I dont even know how to use one of these....

is it as simple as reading the light off of their face? What does the meter tell you? The exact shutter/aperture to expose the face properly?

So i read a face and it tells me to shoot at f/5.6 at 1/100 sec.? I guess I could change the aperture on the light meter?

[Big Mike]

You could read the face with the meter in your camera...one advantage of a hand held meter is that you can take incident readings rather than reflected.

The meter in your camera is a reflected light meter...meaning that it meters the light that is reflecting off of the subjects to the camera. The problem with this, is that these reading will depend on the reflectivity of the subject...and the meter is calibrated to give you an '18% grey' exposure. That's why we have to compensate for the meter reading as mentioned above. (meter off of the face and add one stop). The point is that anything that isn't 18% grey will 'fool the meter'.

If you have an incident light meter (hand held), you can measure the light falling on the subject. You just walk up to where the subject it and take a reading. Because you are measuring the light...we take the reflectivity of the subject out of the equation.

I'm not sure how that particular meter works...but typically you will match the shutter speed and ISO on both the camera and meter...then the meter reading will give you the aperture to use.

[EOS mE]

good info Mike!

Dave, are you shooting indoors or outdoor?

[Dans_D60]

Hello Dave:

I wish we had the luxury of time when shooting weddings for exposure meter readings, white balance, etc. This is typically not the case. In the studio we can take whatever time needed to get exposures spot on. Example studio two-week baby family session from last week: http://www.danpettusimages.com/dobron/

Weddings take on a life of their own. I just posted (for fun) a wedding we did last week where the B&G wanted all their family shots in the church. Sentimental reasons as the church was built with the help of grandparents in 1929 where they got married and wanted to mimic the same wedding day events. Unfortunately we had all of 30 minutes before the next church event and it truly was a hard-stop. And to make it more a challenge the church was dimly lighted with no ability for proper depth-of-field. Could of used the standard 580EX onboard flash would look like cheap snapshots because no ability to bounce in such a large area. So in 30 minutes we setup two remote strobes on stands that were “jammed” into the seating area, on batteries, PocketWizard remote trigger, setup up umbrellas to spread the lighting, got the family members together (not as easy as said) and shot away. In 20 minutes we setup about a dozen different family groups. Camera set to manual and just “guessed” at the initial settings. I know we need decent depth-of-field because of the large groups but must keep in X-Sync (1/60) external flash. Settled in on f7.1 and we got it. Next we had do dismantle the equipment in 5 minutes and race on to the reception and in-limousine images.

Just another day in the life of wedding photography!

I have this link posted as “1950’s style” wedding. Here it is again: http://www.danpettusimages.com/bottini/ notice the in church groups images. Less then 30 minutes from start to finish…..

Dan

http://www.danpettusphoto.com

[mmahoney]

You can make metering as hard or as easy as you want ... a simple approach is to use martix metering (which hopefully will balance all the whites & blacks) and then check yor histogram and make any required exposure adjustments.
Mike