Weddings are all about telling compelling stories, and wedding photography is one of the ways to document a wedding's fleeting moments. In a wedding photographer's quest to capture these moments, he faces one critical challenge: to make his photography gear work as fast and as accurate as his eyes do.
This is where mastery of camera equipment comes in. A wedding photographer needs to work very hard to master his camera and its accessories so they all work together efficiently to come up with stunning and meaningful photographs. For the budding wedding photographer, here are several of the most important things about your gear that you must master. Always remember that with consistent practise, you would soon take your photography to even higher levels.
White Balance: your camera's white balance would dictate the accuracy of colours' appearance in your photos. Once the whites come out accurately, every other colour follows suit. Using the Auto White Balance setting will often help, although if you want to know how different lighting conditions influence your photo, tweak via Kelvin. The lower the value (around 3,350), the colder the photo looks. If you increase the number (such as 5,260), the warmer the photo gets. Play around the numbers until you get the best one.
Sharpness: work to come up with tack-sharp photos unless you want to purposely blur to indicate action or movement. Using a tripod would help stabilise your camera, but this has the tendency to blur people's movement at the same time. Should you want to freeze action, increase your ISO or lower your lens' aperture.
RAW or JPEG: basically, images captured in RAW format contain more data and are therefore better for image processing. Since you are most probably printing these wedding pictures, you must use RAW for maximum versatility.
Flash: most of the time, weddings are held in low-light spaces. When boosting the ISO or widening your aperture won't do it, use an external flash unit instead to catch up on the lack of light. Moreover, bounce flash is preferred over direct flash since the latter produces harsh shadows and unbalanced lighting. Purchase a good flash unit and a few reliable rechargeable batteries to make your shooting more efficient. You could also browse through work of seasoned wedding photographers as well as studios to further enhance your very own craft.
This is where mastery of camera equipment comes in. A wedding photographer needs to work very hard to master his camera and its accessories so they all work together efficiently to come up with stunning and meaningful photographs. For the budding wedding photographer, here are several of the most important things about your gear that you must master. Always remember that with consistent practise, you would soon take your photography to even higher levels.
White Balance: your camera's white balance would dictate the accuracy of colours' appearance in your photos. Once the whites come out accurately, every other colour follows suit. Using the Auto White Balance setting will often help, although if you want to know how different lighting conditions influence your photo, tweak via Kelvin. The lower the value (around 3,350), the colder the photo looks. If you increase the number (such as 5,260), the warmer the photo gets. Play around the numbers until you get the best one.
Sharpness: work to come up with tack-sharp photos unless you want to purposely blur to indicate action or movement. Using a tripod would help stabilise your camera, but this has the tendency to blur people's movement at the same time. Should you want to freeze action, increase your ISO or lower your lens' aperture.
RAW or JPEG: basically, images captured in RAW format contain more data and are therefore better for image processing. Since you are most probably printing these wedding pictures, you must use RAW for maximum versatility.
Flash: most of the time, weddings are held in low-light spaces. When boosting the ISO or widening your aperture won't do it, use an external flash unit instead to catch up on the lack of light. Moreover, bounce flash is preferred over direct flash since the latter produces harsh shadows and unbalanced lighting. Purchase a good flash unit and a few reliable rechargeable batteries to make your shooting more efficient. You could also browse through work of seasoned wedding photographers as well as studios to further enhance your very own craft.
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