{"id":1655,"date":"2009-10-06T06:28:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-06T10:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetneil.com\/tangents\/?p=1655"},"modified":"2020-06-13T19:37:50","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T23:37:50","slug":"lighting-wedding-formals-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/lighting-wedding-formals-1\/","title":{"rendered":"lighting the wedding formals (part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"

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lighting and photographing the wedding formals<\/h1>\n

With this, the first in a loose series on lighting and photographing the family formals at weddings, I would like to show that with a simple approach it is possible to get clean results that work every time.<\/p>\n

In lighting the formals, I don’t try to get all Rembrandt, but prefer a fairly flat way of lighting everyone.\u00a0 I keep the lighting static for all the images, whether I am photographing one person or twenty.\u00a0 With time usually being a real constraint during the wedding day, there simply isn’t the opportunity to play around too much with the lighting .. and I find a simple predictable way of lighting works best.<\/p>\n

Before we get to the actual gear I use,\u00a0let’s start off with exposure metering for flash<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Because I work with off-camera lighting, and everyone is static in relation to the lights, it is much much simpler to work with manual flash.\u00a0 With TTL flash there is the chance (or risk, if you will), of exposure varying from image to image.\u00a0 This will slow your post-production workflow down as you now have to correct exposure for individual images.\u00a0 In the end it is just simpler to work with manual flash in this instance.<\/p>\n

You can work with a flash meter, however, I use the histogram<\/strong><\/a> with\u00a0as much accuracy by metering for the brightest relevant tone – the white dress.\u00a0 Since the lighting setup is straight-forward and the lighting pattern quite even, metering for the flash exposure is pretty simple as well.<\/p>\n

The flash exposure is chosen for a specific aperture and ISO – we need enough depth-of-field, and f5.6 is good for a small group of people in line with each other.\u00a0\u00a0 For our ISO setting, we need as low as possible to get the best results – the best color reproduction and contrast, and as little amount of digital noise as we can tolerate .. and on modern D-SLRs an ISO of 400\u00a0gives very good results indeed, and can even be considered a low ISO setting.<\/p>\n

But these settings also need to be chosen in relation to our available light .. and for the image above, here is the available light only shot:<\/p>\n

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With this image you can see how much light there was in the background .. and also that there was a slight amount of available light coming from a window somewhere.\u00a0 So we’ll choose a shutter speed where enough of the background registers, but the amount of light falling on our bride from the window doesn’t cause an uneven lighting pattern on her.<\/p>\n

For the image at the top, the final choice of settings were 1\/100th @ f5.6 @ 400 ISO.<\/p>\n

Normally I would consider 1\/100th of a second shutter speed to be\u00a0fairly low when working with available light.\u00a0 However, the risk of camera shake is nearly eliminated here because the flash completely dominates as the light source.\u00a0 This allows me to comfortably work without a tripod.<\/p>\n

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gelling your flash for Tungsten \/ Incandescent light<\/h2>\n

Since the lighting in churches are predominantly Tungsten, I usually gel my flash either with a full CTS or a 1\/2 CTS as in the example above.\u00a0 This helps bring my flash’s white balance to match the existing light, and not give a discordant color cast. I use these gels that I cut up and\u00a0tape to the top of my speedlight\u2019s head<\/a>. One of these sheets (which aren’t expensive), will give you a lifetime supply of these filters.\u00a0 If you use flash indoors where Tungsten lighting dominates, then these filters are an\u00a0invaluable part of flash photography.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tYou can buy gels through these affiliate links:<\/p>\n