First wedding - lessons learned

great thread Tim- lots of helpful info here (im getting ready to shoot my first wedding). Thanks for the book recommendations too, I was looking at The Best of Wedding Photojournalism at the book store the other day and it looks promising.

Maureen, which body are you using?

Some great stuff here Tim.

I'm doing my first wedding for my brother this weekend. They asked me to do it and they know that's its my first wedding shoot. As usual they don't want to pay top dollar for a photographer.

But I'll treat it like a professional job.

I guess another point is that you want to pay attention on making sure your subjects have nice smiles etc, so they look good. I suspect this is the hardest part of the job.

Do you use much fill flash for your outdoor shots?

Every single outdoors shot I take has fill flash, with a 580EX mounted on a bracket with a small soft box at FEC-1 1/3 or so. Inside I don't use flash all that much unless the lighting is very harsh.

I usually leave the in the bag flash about 99% of the time until i get to the reception i/e dancefloor grand entrance.

You might want to rearrange your words a little kawter, they don't read quite right to me. I think you mean you leave the flash in the bag until the reception/dancefloor. I do exactly the opposite! Well not quite exactly, but not far off.

For my wedding last Sat it was REALLY sunny with sun directly on peoples faces for the group shots, without fill flash half the faces would've been so dark they'd be almost invisible.

hah sorry, it should read...

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I usually leave the flash in the bag about 99% of the time until i get to the reception i/e dancefloor grand entrance.
>>

But, sometimes there is no option when the sun is busting down and you cant controll the shadows

What lens did you use for this shot?

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Hi Tim,

I'm new to this forum (just signed up and this is my first post) and will be shooting my first wedding of a friend later this month, so your advice is warmly welcomed.

Tim, I have an omnibounce instead of the softbox that you have.

Is it fair to say that the omni bounce at 45 deg, is fine for a fill flash outdoors?

Why would you use an omnibounce at 45 degrees outside? What are you trying to achieve with it?

The omnibounce is only useful if you're bouncing the flash. By putting it at 45 degrees you're decreasing the size of the light source. Personally i'd rather use bare flash straight on, but I don't use an omnibounce at all any more. Get yourself a diffuser that will make the light seem larger, a small soft box is my pick, but it doesn't really matter what you use.

Something like this?

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Yeah, I use a smaller version of that. For fill I don't always use a diffuser, I think an Omnibounce at 45 degrees could be worse than plain flash (though I haven't tested it so i'm not 100% sure).

There are people around here that are way more qualified to answer questions than me, but i'm happy to share what I have learned with people.

I would use it as a fill flash. To reduce shadows when required.

From what I understand, the Omnibounce will diffuse the flash light and gives a more even spread of light. cuts down on the hard shadows. I get great results in doors.

Hopefully, someone who uses the Omnibounce can give an opinion.

What is your purpose for putting it at 45 degrees? What are you trying to achieve with that? Leaving it on might provide slightly less harsh light than plain flash.

I've done comparitive test shots with all my diffusers (I have about 6 types), and the OmniBounce just doesn't do it for me.

You don't need opinions from everyone here, you just need to try out the options you have for yourself. That's usually the best way to learn with photography.