Two Questions about the Sun and Outdoor Ceremonies

I had an outdoor ceremony this weekend and the sun was pretty intense.

1. Despite ISO100 and a pretty narrow aperature, I was still working at a very fast shutter speeed. Given the distance I was working from coupled with the fast shutter speed, fill flash didn't seem like a reasonable solution so I'm just dealing with it in PP. But I'm curious to know what others would do to improve on this situation in-camera.

2. The other problem is that some of the area for the ceremony was in the shade. Indeed, much of the time, the groom's upper body and head were in bright, harsh, full sun, and much of the rest of the scene including the bride were in full shade. Challenging enough to deal with this from an exposure perspective, but I also had two vastly different white balance needs. Thoughts on what an effective approach might have been?

Thanks.

You've done what I would have done in a very difficult scenario. Unfortunately we can't control or adjust ,in camera, for every situation and pp seems like the only solution. Depth of field suffers, squinty eyes, shinny foreheads...ugh!
In the other scenario with the harsh shadows and bright sunlight is a nemesis of mine at one particular facility in South Jersey. It's a gazebo scene and on a bright day the shadows cut in a diagonal across the bride and groom, so their upper bodies are shaded and the bottom half in bright sunlight. A bear to deal with. I usually expose for their upper bodies and adjust the bottom halves with pp. It's so bad that when I hear that a B&G are doing an outside ceremony at that facility, I show them some images and suggest that their time of ceremony might change. And, yes, I have had some of those couples tell me that I'm not a photographer if I can't accommodate tough scenes. I know your frustration!!

Spotty sun levels are a nightmare.

I have an outdoor wedding next Friday at 2pm in a park (Oh joy). I'm actually hoping the ceremony will take place under full sunlight so the lighting is at least even but I doubt it.

Probably under a dead tree with a dozen streaks of sunlight across their faces.

?????
Exposure for the highlights and fill flash. HSS if necessary.
What am I missing here?

Hate mottled light, photographic death.
Use strong flash to even out the light, use fill flash and bright exposures to even out the light a bit and not get the harsh flash light.
Use natural light, expose for the the bride and grooms face and blow out the rest.

If you are going to shoot outdoor weddings this is lighting 101 as most outdoor ceremonies will present you with this scenario to varying degrees.

matonanjin wrote in post #10303224
?????
Exposure for the highlights and fill flash. HSS if necessary.
What am I missing here?

With the brightness of the scene, a 1/1000 of a second shutter speed and a distance of 20+ feet, I suspect fill flash would not have carried the day.

Peacefield wrote in post #10303688
With the brightness of the scene, a 1/1000 of a second shutter speed and a distance of 20+ feet, I suspect fill flash would not have carried the day.

Most likely. It would help if you posted a sample so everybody knows exactly what you're talking about. In the spirit of "learning", I think this is a great topic.

Okey doke.

Here's one of the couple during the ceremony. I'm exposed for the highlights (the groom's face) but the rest is in deep shade. Of course, I'll be getting this to look decent with the help of LR, but would be curious to hear how others would approach this situation. I'm shooting at 140mm so am pretty far away. ISO100, f3.2, 1/1600 sec. I could've tossed my narrow DOF and gone with a smaller aperature here to get my shutter speed down and give hss and fill flash a chance, but by this stage I had already decided to forgo flash all together:

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Don't you just like the way ceremonies are sometimes set up with no regard to the light. What makes your situation more challenging here is the shadow cutting right through the B&G. Almost an impossible task. I do shoot in strong sun regularly and have found that fill flash on a 580ex manual usually at 1/2 full power or even at full power can do the trick. I usually have to take few photos to get the exposure right. It's a delicate balance but once you've got it exposed well enough just keep that setting and adjust in small increments as the light changes. Here is a photo I have taken recently shooting almost into the sun. F22 and 1/2 power on manual flash setting. I hope this is of some help.

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I know all the venues in my area, so I warn people about this in advance. If I have to shoot in that situation I try for ISO100 1/250th Fanything so I can use the full power of my flash, or sometimes two flashes. Studio lights would be nice but are probably a bit impractical. Fill flash at 1/1000th is probably better than nothing. Either way you'll want a battery pack.

But no matter what you do the photos aren't going to be great, no matter how good you are, IMHO.

I'm inking about getting a few alien bees, but like tim said, probably impractical. I think i would try to set them up though if i had them, do a little of both.

You guys would actually set up AB's in this situation? The couple would go blind (and nuts) while you chimp.

Even at 20 feet away, simple direct fill would have brought some of the bride out. But with no flash, I'm curious why you didn't expose for the darker subject? I'd rather deal with overexposure in post rather than trying to raise the darks.

As it stands now though, the photos are quite manageable in LR using a few exposure gradients.

Thanks for sharing Robert.

RT McAllister wrote in post #10305867
As it stands now though, the photos are quite manageable in LR using a few exposure gradients.

And that's what I did. This sent isn't coming out horrible, but it's not coming out beautiful either. And all I can do from a color balance perspectrive is find something a little in the middle for those wider shots.

eeesh.

Thanks, everyone.

Peacefield wrote in post #10306962
And all I can do from a color balance perspectrive is find something a little in the middle for those wider shots.

Not sure how much time you want to put into this but "technically", you could use dual layers in photoshop and WB each one independently.

Just apply different WB to the sections of each layer needing it, set them to 50% opacity (or whatever) and blend the two.

I say, "just" loosely.

With those photos, I'd be throwing LR gradients on the dark area or the bright area and noticing a significant improvement. Then I would try to make the fact that it was altered as subtle as possible.

As a general rule, I would like to use powerful strobes off-camera facing the opposite direction of the sun in order to light the dark face. I have done this once at a country club that had the ceremony out on the back patio with a nearby power outlet, but I would need a vagabond unit to do it elsewhere and I don't have that. Alternately, I have occasionally used off-camera bare flash facing opposite the sun, and now that I have two 580EXs with battery packs, I can pump those shots at a fair pace. It won't compare in output to my alienbees B1600, but it will make some difference.

A pair of them gave me this at about 15-20 feet from the subjects:

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