For Wedding Pros, What Camera do you use?

While the 5D is far from perfect, I think it's still the best wedding camera going. The AF could be better in dark, low contrast situations, but I can't think of any other practical shortcoming.

The FF viewfinder is bigger and brighter than any crop body, so if you prefer a better view through the viewfinder, the 5D makes a difference. I love shooting FF as it's the most like using a film SLR - shooting two 5D's means my focal lengths are easier to manage as well. When I shot with one FF and one crop body, I always had a gap in coverage because of it and it showed in my work. A 5D with an 85mm is a beautiful portrait combination.

5D files are still hard to beat too. You can do a fair bit of cropping with an image that's 4500 pixels across. I've done 12X12'' albums and 24X36'' prints/canvas that clients have loved Anyhow, I'm rambling......

Canon ETTL flash isn't known for being perfectly consistent. It works more than well enough for me, but you can always just go Manual on the flash too if you're concerned about it.

The 1DsMkIII is serious overkill for weddings and I don't think it allow you to earn more money to make up for the price.

My $.03

~Phil

I agree that the 1DsMkIII is serious overkill for weddings costwise, unless you're right at the very top of the profession in terms of price.

I think though that how much you like your camera depends on what you had before: I loved my Fuji S2 because I went to it from a manual wind & focus Bronica.

I love my 5Ds because I went to them from the Fuji S2 which, whilst having a good sensor, is a third-rate amateur body. I'd probably like my 5Ds less if I used something like a 1DSmk111.

That said, there still isn't a DSLR on the market which can produce much better files than a 5D - slightly better maybe, but not much better.

I didn't read this whole thread, but one comment is that in this forum you'll get comments from a lot of people who've never shot a wedding, or shoot very few weddings. I shot about 30 weddings last year. People also go on about full frame, which I don't find necessary - I like more DOF, full frame has less. That's personal taste.

I currently shoot with two 40D's, which are recent upgrades from a 20D and a 30D. What I would like is more reliability - one stopped working for no reason at a recent wedding, so I switched to a backup 20D. I suspect though that it may have been user error. Other than that they're great cameras and I have no need to upgrade.

One thing to beware of with the film to digital switch is the additional time required. Instead of handing film to the lab you have to do the culling and processing yourself, which is very time intensive. For that reason you should look at film vs digital as a money vs time tradeoff.

I would suggest it is more about the photographer than the camera. I did 15 weddings last year and used 20D's. I was very pleased with the result ---but it was more about how to operate the camera and the lens choices that were attached than the body.
I switched my pricing around a bit---meaning I raised them significantly and wanted to do some major upgrades to my equipment. It is hard to charge tons for a wedding and show up with cameras that are afew years behind---imo. So I upgraded to 40D, 5D, MK3.
I personally am still torn. I really like the speed and IQ with the Mark but it weighs a ton, especially when you put big heavy 70-200 on it or 24-70 -----The camera body I am most impressed with is the 40D. In the month that I have owned it --has allowed me to produce several killer shots which have made me money. I love the weight of the 40D's and its all around upgrades from the 20D.

Nikon D3 and D300

tim wrote in post #4947737
I currently shoot with two 40D's ... What I would like is more reliability - one stopped working for no reason at a recent wedding ... I suspect though that it may have been user error ...

User error? How so? The usual suspects, beyond having a faulty camera, are bad batteries and dirty contacts between the camera/battery or camera/lens.

Philco wrote in post #4946947
...the 5D is far from perfect,...The AF could be better in dark, low contrast situations,...

Thus making the 1D3 perhaps the best choice. I know a pro who travles the country to shoot weddings and he uses two 1D3 with a 1D for backup.

Philco wrote in post #4946947
A 5D with an 85mm is a beautiful portrait combination.

Boy, you got that right. My favorite portrait lens when I was using 35mm film was a Schneider 90mm f2.5.

The 85 1.8 is my favorite portrait lens, used most for senior shots, brides and children. It's so wonderful with or without a flash and fast. I also use it for indoor sports. A must have for my 5D.

jr_senator wrote in post #4949242
Thus making the 1D3 perhaps the best choice. I know a pro who travles the country to shoot weddings and he uses two 1D3 with a 1D for backup.

The MkIII wins in the AF dept, but it's a trade off by giving up FF, which I'm not willing to do, even for a 1.3x crop - which I have a feeling will be phased out sooner rather than later. The issues the mkiii has had made me feel like it's still not a smart bet based on the manufacturing defects friends of mine have experienced with it - so, I'd rather have two 5D's for the money than one MkIII would cost at this point. For weddings, the 5D is still very capable. Two of my friends stopped using their MkIII's in favor of the older 5D's - partly because of the repair cycle, and also because the LCD sucks and the crop factor was a bigger pita than they thought it would be.

I shot for a year with a 20D + 30D and I don't mean to slag those bodies, they do good work. Once I bought a 5D, I felt much more 'at home' with it, so I sold the 20D and kept the 30D, which I tended to use for ceremonies with a long lens, but otherwise I heavily favored the 5D. Now I have two 5D's and it's heaven for me. The O.P. seemed to be concerned about viefinder brightness, especially after migrating from medium format, so I would think a FF body would be the more natural transition - so that's where I was coming from.

Cheers
Phil

we use a couple of 40D's with a 30D backup. I'm looking forward to seeing the 5d replacement, but until then, I'll be plenty content shooting weddings with the 40.
These cameras are making us money, no client has ever judged us by our equipment, we've blown up plenty of shots to 24 x 36 which look awsome , and they've worked flawlessly.
Chris

statsman wrote in post #4949095
User error? How so? The usual suspects, beyond having a faulty camera, are bad batteries and dirty contacts between the camera/battery or camera/lens.

I don't know, I was playing with a bunch of functions and may have disabled AF somehow. It started working later after I reset it and had a play. I hadn't done it since, but I haven't used it much since then.

Hello to everyone who has responded to my original post.

Lots of great input from you all. I was aware that I might get a lot of response from individuals who don’t shoot a lot of weddings per year. Almost all of the coments have been the type of comments I wanted to see. I see that some have comented about the cost of the cameras and profit. I have to say that one of the bad things about digital is the upgrading of equipment. My Hasselblads I use now were purchased almost 10 years ago and have had some work / repairs done to them over the years, but they are work horses. It was a time when you could buy a quality camera, lens and if you took care of them, you did not have to think about cost ratios that much since you would use them for years. You also new exactly what you were going to get with them. As said in the original post, I have been doing digital capture commercially since 1993. Upgrading equipment is now a way of life in this business as well as spending way too much time in front of a computer.

The difference here with the wedding business is the variables involved while shooting job to job while studio work is much more controlled. I use 1Ds and 1Ds MarkII’s in the studio environment which they do work very well. Not as sharp as a MF back with a CCD, but quite well never the less. I would like to say that a Phaseone P39 MF back would be a great back for the Weddings but it really is not practical on the file size or most definetly as far as it’s cost goes. And truthfully, I don’t know how it would do out in the field with a wedding.

I do always gravitate to the largest chip that I could use / purchase by my nature. I was Ok with my 10D, and once the ETTL II came out on the 20D, I could not get rid of the 10D quick enough. When the 30D came out I saw no reason to upgrade at the time. The upgrade to the 40D was not as much about the larger chip but more to due with 14Bit captures and close to 80k captures on the 20D. I never intended to use the 40D for more than candids at wedding and youth sports groups, which the 20d still is in use for also.

Yes I do think I need a bigger file if I’m going to discontinue film use for the weddings. The reason for this is a combination of labs starting to end film processing and the style of the albums I’m designing. Combining film and digital shots together in an album and the differences in color balance is one of the main reasons, in addition to a wider selection of focal lengths with the DSLR. I'm also finally getting away from a client base that also was more formal and traditional. But I still need to get good clean formal shots of the family, BP and couple never the least. Over the last two years I have been making a change in the style and clients I'm working with. (Still need to change the website to represent what I'm doing, but thats another issue to deal with)

I guess the main reason I have not really considered the 5D is due to its 12 bit capture and the AF it uses and possibly the file size. From what I can se here on this site, a majority of people use a 5D. may be I’m wrong about the camera. It is a item that maybe I should look at a little harder and a just over 2K, it would not be that hard to upgrade to another camera if I really find it necessary. The assistant I had today, really loves his.

Thanks again for all the input. Keep the comments coming as I think it’s a good thread for many to see. The starting of a rah rah post of “I just ordered my new camera etc” are not really what a fourm like this is really for, I think. No offence to those who have done so, but I feel it’s kind of like those who leave the window sticker on the car for a few weeks. My 2cents

Thanks again,

Pete

Hey Pete. I don't shoot weddings for money and I'm not a pro photographer. I can give you a bit of empirical feedback as a consumer of wedding photography though. Take this with a grain of salt because it's just my opinion.

My direct family has had 5 weddings within the last 18 months. I did a lot of research on different wedding photographers and I found there was a DEFINITE correlation between equipment and the price that photgraphers charged. The more well-known and higher priced photogs all shot with 5D and higher. There was ONE photographer in the 5K+ group which used 30Ds.

Generally, where I live, I found there are a few ranges of photographers:
- 2K and under. These are the weekend guys....not that great....most told me they shot with 30Ds, 20Ds. I didn't come across one that shot with an XTi, XT, etc. I'm not taking a personal shot at any of these guys, but I personally wouldn't use any one of these guys because low price alone doesn't mean value to me.
- 4K - 5.5K range. These guys are good and they mostly use 5Ds and higher. This is the category where I did not see much of xxDs. A few shot MF.
- >5K. This is the big money and I thought most of these guys were good. They tended to be booked well in advance and had really high-end equipment, shooting a combo of digital and MF.

I helped choose the photographer for every one of these weddings and with the exception of one, the budget was about 5K. We all looked at what we could afford and pretty much worked from there. I'll admit that expensive doesn't always mean good, but it's a good starting point and I'll bed a LOT of wedding customers consider budget as a main factor. Althought I admittedly cared a lot more about equipment than the others, I was surprised at a lot of other family members who also cared. During the weddings, I heard several times, "Wow....did you see his camera stuff? Is that nice?"

Many guys are going to argue that having more expensive equipment is not going to let them charge more....that may be true, but from my experience, people that made the purchasing decision would have been a bit choked if the photog charged 5K and showed up with a Rebel and kit lens with pop-up flash. It matters to some and I do agree with a previous poster that it affects perceptions.

I can't prove cause and effect, but one thing that I am 100% certain of is that almost all of the expensive photogs had nice gear. Almost every trade is like photography - the best in each trade is usually going to have the best gear. This is no surprise to anyone, including the bride or parents that pay the bill.

I know a few great pros that shoot with 20Ds. I've got a couple of 1D bodies and I suck!

Moments wrote in post #4954706
The starting of a rah rah post of “I just ordered my new camera etc” are not really what a fourm like this is really for, I think. No offence to those who have done so, but I feel it’s kind of like those who leave the window sticker on the car for a few weeks. My 2cents

Thanks again,

Pete

Yeah, there's a bit much of it (rah rah) at times but almost everyone has done it to a degree (at least once or twice).