Sudbury Wedding June 18 2005

[BLINN]

Here are a few pictures from a wedding that I shot in Saturday, please tell me what you think and don't be afraid to give it to me rough. Also does any one know where I can find a program plug-in for PSCS to fix noise if photo's were shot at the wrong ISO. Amature mistake, but not to bad. Thanks




Mike from
MBCL Photography
Your Eye's the Limit

[BLINN]

Yet another one of my favs'

[pdrow]

www.imagenomic.com has noise reduction software. I have been veryhappy with it. You can purchase the plug in our download the community version for free.

Now for the photos. I think in number one, I would play with the levels a little bit. Did you shoot raw? If so, you can make some changes there. If not, you can play with the levels. It just looks gray - not really the feeling you want to see on your wedding day. Here's what I did. Adjusted in shadow/highlight then levels. This got her dress much whiter. Next, I selected the sky and the water, feathered by 3, and adjusted the blues in color balance. Then I selected just her head, vail and her left shoulder (it had come out very dark) and used shadow highlight again.

Number 2 is very nice. You might try a much tighter crop. I cropped with bride and groom in upper two thirds, flowers, lower third. I cropped the left side just to the right of the post. A little tweaking in levels, might make it pop. I like the way mine looks, but it may not be what you were looking for.

On mumber three, I think just a little tweak in levels to make it really stand out.

Want to hear my big mess up on the first wedding I shot digitally? I left the white balance on flourescent for the first few shots. No, I was not shooting RAW. Had to do major post pprocessing as her wedding dress was a lovely shade of blue.

You did a nice job with these.
pam

[BLINN]

These images are not shot in RAW format, however they are RAW (straight) from the camera preprocessed. Thanks for you advice Pam. I will post more processed pictures at a later date.

Mike

[606photo]

I'm not a photo critique by any means, but I agree they are a bit gray. I see you probably had the weather against you Saturday and most likely that is your biggest obstacle. I don't know if you are into mixing BW with Color, but it could be a good idea for the shot with the flowers and the bride and groom kissing in the background. I hope you don't mind me making a rough example of what I am talking about.

I added a little soft lens filter effect as well. I think it makes the shot a little more powerful and since the flowers are really the only color in the shot it makes sense.

[Andrew B]

Hi
I'm help a friend out in a couple of weeks with her wedding picture. I haven't go a lot of good equipment so can someone give me some pointers and what to use. I have done wedding before but only on Film
10D + grip,
Sigma 135-400mm APO
Sigma 17-50mm DG
Sigma 55-200mm DG
Canon 28-135mm IS
Sigma 550 Flash
Tripod Venbon 450n Sherpa

[BLINN]

Andrew B If the equipment you have listed below is the equipment you have then you have me beat. I have a canon 300D with a Canon 18-55mm, Canon 75-300mm, Canon speedlite 420 and a trypod (really crapy). it is not the equipment you need it is how you use it. The above pictures are pre-processed straight off the CF card. By the way 606photo that was always my intension. I will be posting these three shots along with somemore of the best shots in a few weeks for photoshoping comments. However Andrew, as amatures we will always make mistakes. If you look closely at these shots they are all grainy. Why?? because I was shooting at 1600 iso, why is that??? because I am a moron. The church had no window, therefore no natural light and the interior was panited dark brown. Any photographers worst nightmare. I had to use 1600iso in the chruch just to get halfass shots with a flash. Rule number 1, always try to use 100iso, if you have to increase for indoor pictures remember to change back when you go outside.

For best pictures without a studio take them outdoors. Natural light is the best light, overcast is even better and always use a fill flash, just to fill in the shadows you get in the eyes and under the chin. Rule number 2 surf the web for ideas and write them down with a breif explaination of how the picture of people are to be posed. My personal opinon is that candid shots are the better and very natural. Try making all candids B&W for that sureal effect. If you can shot RAW do it if not shot at the highest quality JPEG so that you get the best bang for your buck. This wedding was not my first however it was with this digital camera I was with the bride all day 8:00am until 12:30am the following day I shot 850+ photos and used more or less 6 512CF cards. (it was cheaper to buy to 512 then a 1G) If you have any other questions Andrew I will be checking this post regularly and I hope to have so new post processed pictures up with in the week.

MBCL Photography
Your Eye's the Limit
Mike Blinn

[jimtfoto]

A lot of people use Noise Ninja for noise reduction (http://www.picturecode.com/).
Photoshop CS2 will have 'advanced noise reduction' (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/newfeatures.html#nf7)

cheers,
jim

[Andrew B]

Many thanks for the tips Mike....I just have this unsure feeling about using digital over film for something like this. The location for the wedding is walled garden with lots of green scrubs and a little work inside. You seem to have the same idea about the CF Cards, I carry 4 x 512mb.
What you thoughts on shooting in RAW??

Andrew B

[BLINN]

Andrew, Shooting is raw is great if you are only doing posed shots and the client or friend is only looking for say 60 to 100 pics or so, great for fixing F-up like mine. Just be reminded that image quality is only going to noticeabel at say......20x24 and larger. The pro lab that I use only want JPG sent to them so that they can complete the order in a timely manner. Remember that a raw image is huge and you will only beable to fit like 20-30 images on a 512M CF. For example you can not reshoot the exchanging of the vows or the bride walking down the isle with her father, these are the candid shots that all brides and brides mothers want and love, and if the bride is a bridezilla and you don't have a half decent shot of this then you are in big trouble. Just to let you know, the pictures above are only three out of 853 that were taken that day. This bride should have an album of roughly 300 pictures when I am done that touch ups. Oh yeah, remember that you can usually fix any f-ups that you make shooting digital and you can not always fix the same mistakes with film. Hope this helps and good luck with the Wedding the greenery should make for a nice background. I hope you are going to post pics when you have them.

Mike

[Andrew B]

Mike
I've never used RAW so I think i'll stick to Large/Fine. I usually find this is fine for what I do (aviation - hobby only) and I have what I feel is a good printer (Canon Pixma IP4000). I'm doing these for a friend and she has seen some of my other works and she was ok.

Andrew B

[ayotnoms]

RAW is the only way to go especially if you have only one shot of an important scene. If you mess up the exposure/WB in a JPG you're hosed and PS will only allow you to recover to a point. If it's RAW, you'll have a excellent chance of recovering a quality image.

You buy good equipment to gain control over your images, why leave the most critical aspects of the image (white balance, tonal range, color saturation, contrast, etc) for the camera to decide what image data to keep and what data to throw away...forever! Once image data is tossed away, it can never be recovered. Not making use of all the data your sensor records is like throwing away the film negatives and trading only in prints.

If you need more space, spring for the larger card and shoot RAW. You won't be sorry.

BTW, I'm not familiar with any RAW processors that do not have as its final step in the workflow process image conversion to JPG, TIFF, or some other format for printing. Shooting RAW will not be impediment to getting images to a lab for printing.

[BLINN]

Ayotnoms,

I take it you have never shot a wedding before, or you only shoot posed shots. In my style of wedding photography I shoot many candids and customers can look forward to receiveing up to 1000 photos of their special day. This can not be done in raw inless you wish to be changing flash cards every 5 mins. However you a correct in saying that a RAW image can be change back to the point that it was taken. However at the 11 X 14 or 16X 20 inch size photos there is little to no quality loss when using large fine JPEG capture format.

Also when shooting a wedding to miss something the father of the bride crying as he walks he little girl the isale or the kiss after the vows because you had to change a card is just unexeptable when charging for your coverage. And we all know that the coverage is what the client wants. If you were to go to a client/customer and tell them that you only had 50 shots of their wedding but they were in RAW format and you charged $1500.00+ for all day coverage I can asure you that they will be taking you to court or asking for their money back. So the biggest question any photographer must ask is this, What do the client/customer want?? and, How can I achieve this in the most pratical manner???

I am using a 6.3 meg camera and 16 X 20 in. photos look great, if you are shooting with a high meg camera then you will have no problems with larger prints form High quality JPEG images off your camera. I have yet to meet a couple who wants a wedding photo larger then 11 X 16. After you matte and frame the print you can be looking a total size larger then 24 X 36 inch space for this picture on the wall.

Why would I buy a 4GB card for $400.00 and get only 120 RAW images for an all day wedding shoot, when you can buy 4 512MB cards and get 800 High quality jpeg images which to even the most trained human eye can not tell the differance once printed/developed. Once again Ayo's theroy works if you are only shooting a few shots for a posed situation, but when shooting candids the trick is to shoot lots. The more you shoot the easier it is to find the shot that you love.

Blinn