Wedding photography...lights?

[miro]

Ok, I need some adivce. I'll be shooting my brother's wedding in a month. It's going to be later in the evening (6-ish) and I'm worried about lighting. I have 550ex with Lumiquest pocket bouncer and the cord for off camera flash, but I'm worried that won't be enough. Can someone with more experience shed some light on this ? I really appreciate all the help I can get :)

[donrask]

Several options available to you...if you have off camera lighting and a radio slave, that will help light up everything, espcially in the hall. Another choice is to drag the shutter to pick up ambient light and use the rear curtain sync to fire the flash. I would recommend practicing this technique first. Keep in mind the bouce/diffuser cuts output by 2 full stops or more. You might try using the pop up reflector built in the 550. Works really nice. My problem w/ the 550 is that ETTL doesnt work consistently with my D30 enough to use it regularly.

I hope this isn't your first wedding (or your brothers)...they are very stressful days.

If you need more advice, feel free to ask

[miro]

Can you please explain the second option? Whot does 'dragging the flash' mean?

Cheers,
-Miro




Another choice is to drag the shutter to pick up ambient light and use the rear curtain sync to fire the flash.

[donrask]

Dragg ing the shutter is simply using a slower shutter speed (1/4, 1/8, 1/15, 1/30th of a second) along with a flash (who's duration is about 1/4000th) so that background light gets picked up. By using the second curtain sync you can get "trails" behind moving subjects, while the flash "freezes" them at the last instant.