Wedding lens and flash.. please help!

lol yea it was done last weekend lol, ok i will try saving, then doing the sharpness in photoshop. ill try and get some uploaded tomorrow. i know something that is good with photoshop, that said if i wanted him to edit a few pics, he would for me. so i might get my sister to pick out ones she wants to get framed and get him to do it

ok so i got into photoshop but there but when i sharpen it, it doesn't look as good as it does in my cannon raw program. so what should i do here?

Wow .. I now feel like family ..

Hmmm.... not sure why that would be Gurry; usually it's the other way around. Perhaps you are oversharpenning everything too much? Here's a little sharpenning chart I put together a couple of weeks ago. It's not the end all/be all to sharpenning, but it provides a nice starting point for experimentation:

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=473056

These are good general settings. As you will see by the comments some prefer these while others have developed their own.

Gurry wrote in post #5450180
ok so i got into photoshop but there but when i sharpen it, it doesn't look as good as it does in my cannon raw program. so what should i do here?

lol im dumb, i forgot at home i have a huge photoshop book, i guess when i go home tomorrow i have some reading to do!!

Gurry, it's not a matter of being dumb... I am sure that you're better than you give yourself credit for. This is complex stuff and I know people who have spent years mastering it and feel they've only gotten into about half of it. It takes a lot of experimentation, trial and error, learning, and more experimentation. It's probably just some simple little thing you overlooked .

Gurry wrote in post #5450363
lol im dumb, i forgot at home i have a huge photoshop book, i guess when i go home tomorrow i have some reading to do!!

well tomorrow, i will try to get up a few photos, even if they are not edited

Mainly I am using 85L & 35L prime lens.

not edited, just thought i would throw some up, let me know what you think. i really need to start getting on editing soon!!

Thanks for sharing Gurry - these aren't bad for a start. You obviously were working hard to do a good job.

I'm trying to remember what gear you said you were using.... but that first looks like your big zoom? Obviously no fill flash, but I like the side lighting like that. Once you crop it down it will enhance the composition.

Balcony Shot - not stunning, but a good shot.... one of those expected shots that gives a good overall record of the ceremony. But it's still pleasant and you'll be able to bring up the shadow detail in PP a little bit.

On the Stairs - nice surprised look. Here's also where fill flash can help out to "even out" the exposure a bit and get rid of the hot spot on his face. For the final editing you may want to consider a vertical crop, removing the camera girl. She doesn't really add much.

Trio Shot - please don't take this the wrong way, but this is not an attractive shot. It looks like flash was used, but is was either onboard, or flash in hotshoe and not on a bracket. I can see the reflection in his glasses, and a bracket would usually eliminate this. The venue is not good either. I know attractive backgrounds are sometimes hard to find, but perhaps there was something better....

The Couple Gazing - It's fair. I would have come in closer, moved them closer together, perhaps had them gazing at each other, large aperture to throw the background out of focus, concentrate on them.

The Dance Floor - In unattractive halls I try to get close in to the couple, cropping out much of the background. I would get them from waist up, or a 3/4 length shot, having them face the camera, each other, and maybe cheek to cheek. Here the hall detracts from the handsome couple. Here is also where flash can help out too, even though there WAS enough light for the shot. The QUALITY of the available light is poor; it is flat and lacks contrast and leaves unattractive shadows on their faces. It is not an awful shot, but it could have been better with flash use.

I'm going to put my money where my mouth is now Gurry. When I spoke of improving the dance floor shot, here is what I hand in mind.

This is the 3/4 length shot to which I referred. Had I been in less of a hurry it would have been centered better, and made for a better balanced shot. But I wanted to get her fleeting expression with his and only had a moment. There would have been enough light to have gotten a shot at ISO 1600, but the quality would have been awful - flat, with horrible eye shadows. That's why I use a flash on a Newton Camera Rotator bracket for most of my dance floor shots.

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yea on the dance floor, flash was used, bounced off the ceiling, um, i still have to crop a lot of the photos still, just threw them up so you guys weren't waiting around for to long, i didn't put up the best photos, just a few i picked, i found it really hard to get exposure right, and when i look back, i know some stuff i would have done better, but again, first time, was hard to think of things on the spot, but overall i think i did alright. thanks for the help.

Hey, it's a decent first effort Gurry - we were all pluggin' for you . You don't see MY duds, but believe me, there are clinkers in every job that I do; I just make sure the customer doesn't see them. I think that some of my stuff is pretty decent, and it makes the clients happy..... but the shots I post here took 35+ years to make. It is possible to have luck on your side, but most of the craft doesn't get honed in a couple of weeks.

I think you said you bought the 430ex Gurry? I don't believe that model has the little white plastic pull-out card that is in the 580.

Next time rubber band a 3x5 white index card to the flash head to kick some of that light forward to brighten things up a bit and add contrast. PJ's have been using that technique since the 1960's. That dance shot isn't too far off..... maybe around 1-stop. A little FEC+1 and the card would have helped things.