A relative of mine is getting married soon and has asked me to take some pictures of the wedding,(I have no idea why they don't hire a professional - don't ask, I don't even want to go there!)

The wedding will be indoors, I'll be using an Auto-focus Nikon N50 and I have a flash attachment, a 28-80 f/3.5-5.6 zoom and a 50 /f1.8 lens. I'll probably take some outside shots as well.

Any recommendations on what print film to use, (speed/brand) and any ideas on poses or what type of shots to capture. Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.

eof

-- Kevin Lowman (kevin.lowman@prodigy.net), October 22, 1999

Answers

Go to photo.net, Original Q&A and read all of the Wedding threads (at the bottom of the page).

If you can't get out of taking photos, make sure the bride understands that you are a wedding photography beginner and shouldn't expect much. Then if you do well she will be pleasantly surprised.

Regards - Greg

-- Greg Erker (erker@sask.trlabs.ca), October 22, 1999.

Kevin,

Basically you already got the right lens. With this lens you can shoot almost anything that can come up in the ceremony. Take some snap shots of the entourage as they wait outside setting themselves up and after the ceremony. Use ASA 400 films like Kodak and Fuji. When I do wedding I use a slower speed as much as I can to capture the ambient light, say 15th/sec or 30th/sec but be sure to be extra still other wise you end up having a lightful of blurred images. I hope this won't come late. Good luck!

Alvin

-- Alvin S. Granada (granada666@yahoo.com), November 15, 1999.

Be sure to put a fresh battery in your camera!!

At my wedding I asked two brothers-in-law to take the wedding photos.

One brother-in-law (to-be) used his own camera - I gave him plenty of professional film - and everything came out black because his camera battery was bad. A week after the wedding the wife and I put on our wedding clothes and he took a few pictures of us with my camera - all were out of focus. He turned out to be a very goofy incompetent brother in law in most things. I suppose some people can play around with a quality camera for a decade and still can't even focus.

The second brother in law used my camera and the 50mm 1.8 lens. He wouldn't use the vivitar 28mm/2.8 nor the cpc 80-200/f4zoom lenses. (I've since replaced these lenses with Canon made prime lenses). He was smart to not use the zoom - it's just not very sharp. Every photograph he took was excellent. All in perfect focus, very sharp, well framed - some imaginatively framed. He had to run around a bit.

Tell your relative of my experience. Recommend more than one amateur photographer - or else they may end up with "oops - zero pictures came out for this wedding".

-- Howard Z (howard@howardz.com), February 19, 2001.