I believe this will be my last wedding for the year (well, we are already in December and I don't have any more appointments or engagements for the rest of the year). It had been very much a high tempo shoot, a tiring but ultimately enjoyable shoot. My arms and my back ache like crazy right now. This came from shooting with 2 bodies (my trusty Nikon D200 with a 70-200 mm lens and a borrowed D70s with my lovely 17-55mm lens). Carrying both cameras for a few hours was indeed an interesting experience. For the first time, I had the set up I have always wanted for doing wedding shoots. No only I found that I had the range I needed, I had an absolute great fun in trying out different things because of the range in comparison to my previous wedding shoots.
Ah, there was one repeated mistake that I have made again. I have never used a D70S before, and trying to figure out how to set certain functions of a rather "strange" camera on the day of an actual shoot was a big big big mistake. Not only I had to constantly "guess" how to change the functions of the camera quickly during the shoot, I wasn't quite sure how to use a less sophisticated camera then my very own even though both cameras are from Nikon and supposedly to be similar. Well, you see, on a D200, I had the luxury of the 11 points focusing feature. Whereas on a D70s, there are only 3 I think. I wasn't game enough to try and shift the focus point. I had it left dead centre and it dramatically slowed down the speed in which I was able to get a focus lock quickly compared to my D200.
I did, however, learn from many of my other past mistakes from my previous wedding shoots. I felt that this was my best shoot for this year. Well, I can only hope I will keep improving.
A few more tips before I end this post:
- It is so important to have a second body. There is absolutely no time for lens swapping during high tempo event photo shoots,
- Remember to have sufficient memory cards and batteries,
- one last thing.... remember to bring some water. Shooting a wedding is like doing a low impact exercise. The water you bring with you will come very handy
[edited: I've corrected my very bad grammar - caused by fatigue... or whatever bad excuses I can come up with... note to self.... I must proof read my own writings before I post anything up in the future.]
3 comments:
Glad you enjoyed the shoot -- I didn't know it was the first time you had shot with two bodies before. No wonder you were so tired!
Seng, thank you for asking me to be your 2nd shooter. I thoroughly enjoyed the shoot, and not to mention, the experience that comes with a shoot like this as well as observing you at work. Thank you.
I hope you have a fun day at the wedding. I wanted to go with you but I couldn't go with you. I wanted to know what you did in the wedding.
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