Some advice

mercurial

mercurial

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Okay, I think the man upstairs might be sending me a message :p
I've been asked by two people to do shoots. One is for a valentine's day evening event at a prominent Cape Town high school and another friend of mine asked me to do a photo shoot at a wedding. Now, what additional items should I be adding to my list? I know I will need to get that nifty fifty and perhaps a flash as well. I'm thinking perhaps a spare battery and another or bigger memory card as well. What else? TIA.
 
Think you covered most of it - I use a battery grip to help balance out the flash but that might be overkill.

Practice with the flash as much as you can and carry plenty of batteries and memory cards.
 
+1 for the Flash. And +100 for learning to use it - you don't want the bride to see you looking way confused when the Flash start doing funky stuff.
 
ldmelsa said:
know how to organize people
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Yeah, that's the part that scares me the most. I have been asked to do a wedding some time towards the end of the year, and I'm still not sure if I should do it. Aside from having to replace the most expensive parts of my kit (rental companies here charge a deposit that's usually close to, if not as much as the purchase price, so I might as well buy and get it over with), I'm not good with people. Oh, and the bride is a photographer. A very experienced one. A very good one. No pressure...
 
koffiejunkie said:
Yeah, that's the part that scares me the most. I have been asked to do a wedding some time towards the end of the year, and I'm still not sure if I should do it. Aside from having to replace the most expensive parts of my kit (rental companies here charge a deposit that's usually close to, if not as much as the purchase price, so I might as well buy and get it over with), I'm not good with people. Oh, and the bride is a photographer. A very experienced one. A very good one. No pressure...
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Well you've got a few months to get over that ;)
 
bwana said:
Well you've got a few months to get over that ;)
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I'm going to have to start crashing weddings! I've only been to a handful in my life, and only on the last one (last year March) did I pay any attention to what the photographer was doing.
 
bwana said:
Think you covered most of it - I use a battery grip to help balance out the flash but that might be overkill.

Practice with the flash as much as you can and carry plenty of batteries and memory cards.
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koffiejunkie said:
+1 for the Flash. And +100 for learning to use it - you don't want the bride to see you looking way confused when the Flash start doing funky stuff.
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Cool. I might look into the battery grip and flash in the coming months. I ordered the nifty fifty yesterday. SACam had the last two :D
WRT the flash, I intend to practice quite a lot, as you suggested, because I want to make sure I know what I'm doing by the time I take the photos.

Wynsam said:
Do you have a tripod?
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Nope.
 
Get a tripod. It will make your group shot work so much easier.
 
koffiejunkie said:
I'm going to have to start crashing weddings! I've only been to a handful in my life, and only on the last one (last year March) did I pay any attention to what the photographer was doing.
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Take it from me (I've been married twice :eek:) its a lot more involved than just the ceremony and the reception. There's the whole morning with the bridal party to deal with. That plus the wedding party shots that are usually done away from the guests.

Maybe there is a local photographer that will let you shadow him/her?

I've heard that in the states they offer insurance in case the photographer messes things up on the big day simply because its one event that cant easily be re-shot :o
 
mercurial said:
Any recommendations on tripods?
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I recently picked up a very nice SLIK at a good price. I remember Bwana saying that he picked up a National Geographic branded one( think they are actually made by Manfrotto) -- I have heard those are good for the money too so see if you can pick up something like that.
 
Wynsam said:
I recently picked up a very nice SLIK at a good price. I remember Bwana saying that he picked up a National Geographic branded one( think they are actually made by Manfrotto) -- I have heard those are good for the money too so see if you can pick up something like that.
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Thanks. Can you send me some links if you don't mind?
 
Wynsam said:
I recently picked up a very nice SLIK at a good price. I remember Bwana saying that he picked up a National Geographic branded one( think they are actually made by Manfrotto) -- I have heard those are good for the money too so see if you can pick up something like that.
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I did indeed - nice lightweight tripod - awesome for travelling. Simple ball head but it might struggle to support some of the heavier lenses esp with a large flash.

@ mercurial - besides the 50mm what glass are you using?
 
mercurial said:
I've only got the 18-55mm and the 70-200mm. I figure that the 50mm I would probably be using the most.
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You might want to dial that kit lens in to 50mm and then lock the ring with some tape just to get comfortable with it because you're going to have to get people pretty close together esp if space is limited (that's another reason why I got that fast wide lens).
 
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