Best products from r/WeddingPhotography

Fuji is awesome but in your case I think Sony could be more cost effective while still retaining FF advantages (and disadvantages).

If you ahve an EDU email, you can buy an Sony a7iii for $1,800 at BH.You can also buy Sony a7riii's for $2300-2400 brand new on green toe. The a7iii is the best low-light stills camera at the moment due to it's FF 24mp BSI sensor and great AF system, and it's dynamic range is top notch.

If you want a super light weight setup with good low light capabilities, and good AF in any light then I suggest:

Sony FE 28 f2
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1126139-REG/sony_sel28f20_fe_28mm_f_2_lens.html


Sony FE Zeiss 55 1.8
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1008124-REG/sony_sel55f18z_sonnar_t_fe_55mm.html

Sony FE 85 1.8
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1317562-REG/sony_sel85f18_fe_85mm_f_1_8_lens.html

Buy used or on ebay for cheaper new prices. All these lenses are super sharp with fast and accurate AF in low-light when paired with an A7III or A7rIII. I've used them all and can attest to it.

The beauty of the Sony system is you can get AF and eye-af with Canon lenses! The 135L f2 actually works pretty good adapted. The 100L adapted is kinda finicky, but can still be used for detail shots. Another benefit of FF over crop is you can use CROP MODE custom keyed on Sony cameras while retaining a decent amount of detail with aps-c FOV/DOF. That means with primes you can get extra reach at a push of a single button. I use it ALL the time durign ceremonies or in other various situations that calls for extra reach. With the a7iii it's 10mp crop, but it's still very good for prints. A7riii will yeild about 20mp in crop mode. I use an a7iii & a7riii as my 2 bodies for weddings.

Sigma MC-11 Mount Converter
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1234034-REG/sigma_89e965_mc_11_mount_adapter_for.html/mode/edu

Another thing to consider if you want to save money and do NOT care about TTL, you can use all your flashes and flash triggers on the Sony system. I still use my Canon flashes and triggers from time to time. You only lose TTL functions on your flash.

If you want to make things even lighter, get a mirrorless flash. These are reliable and use lithium batteries, which will give you hundreds of shots. They can act as a wireless trigger and be triggered wireless. Really great flash system!

https://www.amazon.com/Godox-Rechargeable-2000mAh-Battery-ILCE600L/dp/B07BC8739F/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1537129386&sr=1-3&keywords=Godox+V350s

Additional thoughts: Fuji XT3 is an amazing camera, but it's still aps-c and the battery life is FAR worse than the a7iii. You may need a battery grip which is more cost and bulk/weight. The a7iii has industry standard leading battery life for mirrorless. I usual use 1 battery for an entire day, but sometimes I have to switch near the end of the day for a total of 2 batteries. With Fuji, you're looking at bringing and switching between 4-6 batteries a typical full wedding day. Another consideration is, at least with the a7iii, your canon presets will work closely the same from my experience.


I have used or use all the equipment suggested above, including the Canon L lenses you listed. If you have any other questions about the Sony system feel free to ask.

As the other commenters mentioned, it should really depend on the situation and you should be making these kinds of decisions on a case-by-case basis. 4 speedlights in the corners could potentially work, but it would depend on the room. Additionally, you want to think about the type of light you are creating - do you want to point everything at the ceiling and have light everywhere, or do you want to have a kicker or two to shoot into to create some depth to the images?

If you only have one speedlight, on-camera bounce can provide decent results. However, if you're going to add additional off-camera units, my advice would be to invest in flashes with triggers/tranceivers built into them, such as the Yongnuo YN-560 IV line. They're incredibly cheap, reliable, and work perfectly for this sort of application. By doing this, you'll be able to trigger the flashes remotely (and reliably), with the additional benefit of being able to balance your output with the ambient light in the room, so as not to completely overwhelm it. Your batteries might have to be replaced once every 2-3 hours, depending on how bright your flash is set to. Buy some rechargeable batteries. You'll save hundreds.

My personal preference is to use a master flash on the top of my camera to light my subjects, and use it to control other off-camera radio slave units for additional fill or edge lighting (kickers) as the need arises. You get the flexibility of on-camera bounce with the look of multiple off-camera lights. It's the best of both worlds, I think.

Also, to your question about the light temperature, bare flash will show up as blue light in an image where the white balance is set to match most ambient indoor lighting, which is far warmer (usually tungsten). This will definitely create some weird-looking shots. You can easily get around this by gelling the flashes to the ambient light in the room, and I would definitely recommend it, no matter what lighting setup you go with. Just pick up a couple of gel kits off Amazon that include some CTO (orange) gels, and you'll be golden. In terms of bang for your buck, this will be the most effective way to improve the look of indoor images shot with speedlights.

Good luck with your shoot!

Several approaches:

• All ambient/high ISO: This is the easiest to execute and will preserve the ambiance but will not be good for fast moving dancing other than a couple wide shots of the full scene. I would probably lean on this for the first dances and wide shots to preserve the ambiance.
  
  
• LED panel: will mostly preserve most of the ambiance but give some usable directional light.
  OCF: I dont like this in this scenario for myself because it will destroy the ambiance and create very harsh shadows in an otherwise soft nighttime environment
  
  
• Flash card or direct flash: sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Easy to do but pretty harsh lighting
  
  
• Hand held OCF beauty dish: I am really loving this hand held beauty dish setup that a friend [LukasG] showed me... It is great for chaotic dance floors to produce really dynamic light, outdoor situations, or just on the fly soft artificial. The best part is that this 18" beauty dish style soft box collapses down to 0.25"x5" and just slips into the back pocket of my main bag. I can pop it open and onto a speedlight head in less than a minute for truly on the fly situations with a very small extendable boom handle that I also keep in my bag or even just hand hold the speedlight and I always have it on me without taking up any space at all. The look isnt that dissimilar to a 36" softbox but way more portable and manageable.
  
  
• 18" Roundflash collapsible beauty dish... I actually use the cheap knock off one but they don't sell it on Amazon anymore but you can find ones for $19 on eBay.
  
  
• Collapsible boom pole
  
  
• 1/4" cold shoe clamps if you don't have some laying around already

I agree with the Godox route. Buy the Flashpoint branded ones from Adorama as they come with a warranty. I had one stopped (partially my fault, continuous excessive use of HSS) working and Adorama replaced it, no questions asked. Make sure they have "R2" in the name as that denotes their compatibility with the XPro trigger (which is fantastic by the way).

I had eight of the Yongnuo 600's last August, only two of them are working now and there's no way to get a warranty on them.

The Flashpoint Li-on R2 TTL is the "flagship" speedlight. It has a huge lithium-ion battery that rated for 650 full power pops. They recycle super quickly and don't start misfiring when the battery starts running low. They're also easier to charge and keep track of compared to dozens of Eneloops. When I had the Yongnuos, I would have to replace the OCF's batteries once during the reception, and my main on camera flash about twice. Now I can go 2-3 full weddings on one battery, I never had to replace one during a shoot. These can be used on camera as a master, or as an optical/radio slave. They can also control larger monolights (like the very cool AD200/Evolv 200).

There's also a non TTL version of the same speedlight but still with the benefits of the lithium ion battery.

Start off your investment off right instead of buying sub par equipment just to replace them later.

I also recommend these speedlight mounts. The normal speedlight mounts with the umbrella holder are fine but they're not super secure and you're putting all your trust on the speedlight's feet - I've had plenty of lights break and fall off stands that way. These clamp on to a large surface area of the flash and will keep it safe, it's also very easy to tell if your speedlight is secured on. The front is a bowens mount so you can literally put any bowens mount modifier on it. And if you get a bigger light like an AD200 or an AD360, these fit beautifully on it.

I've never heard of the light stands you mentioned, but the Amazon reviews look good and plentiful so you should be fine.

Two things to think about. Those stands will be great for a lot of things, but they're light and bendy, which means they're useless in ANY wind, and they're not going to like any modifiers heavier than those umbrellas. That's not saying DON'T get them - I have two in the trunk because days when they're sufficient, they're perfect.

If I get out a soft box, or have any wind (or break out my 7' translucent umbrella) I'm very glad I've got something heavier. I carry two of these for those moments - https://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Stainless-centimeters-Monolight-Photographic/dp/B074NY47J6/

And... make sure you really want umbrellas. To be honest, the difference in actual light quality that comes out of different modifiers of the same size is negligible enough to be ignored. See them side by side and you might know which is an umbrella and which is a softbox... MAYBE... but just see one or the other and all you'll care about is whether there was enough light and the source was big enough. BUT... softboxes have one big advantage - the fact that they're less obnoxious to people standing BEHIND them. If you think you'll throw them up around a dance floor or ceremony ever... it can be nice to direct the light where you want it and not send the rest flying off other directions. A couple of these would be fine - https://www.amazon.com/Godox-Umbrella-Reflector-Carrying-Speedlight/dp/B0132I34K4/

THe kit you've got listed is perfectly adequate! I'm not saying anything's wrong with it and I started with essentially the same, but those are the two things I'm most glad I've added going forward - heavier stands and softboxes!

I shot a whole bunch of rainy weddings in 2018 (a very wet wedding season for Pennsylvania). My second to last wedding for the year was in the low 40s with a consistent heavy rain. With that said, here some things I've learned...

-Change of clothes, including shoes and socks. Hopefully it won't be cold for you, but being wet for the reception sucks.

-Good protection for your camera. I used these: https://www.amazon.com/OP-TECH-USA-9001132-Rainsleeve/dp/B000PTFDYO/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=camera+rain+sleeve&qid=1549636833&sr=8-5 because they are cheap, but they are hardly convenient. I'd recommend practicing with them, because they change your access to controls, lens zoom, etc. I can't comment on other rain sleeves, hopefully they are much easier/nicer to use!

-Ditto on backlit umbrella shots. Those are tons of fun! You'll probably want an umbrella with white interior and black exterior for those shots. An all white umbrella works, but you'll see the couples shadow I inside. An all black umbrella would be too dark. You can also shoot backlit without any umbrella: https://www.instagram.com/p/BsWLRb2HMD7/

-Having nice umbrellas to hand to the couple is a thoughtful gesture. I like all-white umbrellas or there are nice clear umbrellas, too: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bra5x9znYST/

-Be ready for the couple to not want to be outside for anything besides the ceremony. It stinks, but it's their day. Have some indoor posing ideas ready.

• Oil blotting paper! Makes a HUGE difference in reducing "shine"- I tend to pass them out before the formal photographs or especially if I'm pulling the B&G from sweaty dance floor to nighttime portraits with flash/videolight. Saves a LOT of time in post. I use these ones
  
  
• Flashes with built-in rechargeable lithium batteries and wireless receiver. Simplified a LOT for me, from prep time to setup. I love my Godox v850ii flashes!! (and because Godox is making all their stuff 100% compatible, I added a AD200 and AD600BM- both with built-in receivers- to my kit and thy all work perfectly together with one trigger on camera. Boom!)
  
  
• Manfrotto nano stands. I love my big honkin' Cheetahstands, but sometimes it's hard to fit them in a getting ready room or small venue- or take to an engagement session where we're hiking a long ways. So in those cases, I bring my fold-up Manfrotto mini stands. Perfect for holding a speedlight I intend to bounce.. and the "footprint" can be as small as 1ft! I put it right up against a corner or a table and it's out of any foot traffic.

Well... honestly, in this situation, one of the best things I've found to get reasonably even / soft light - is to use one of these Ostrich Egg diffusers:
https://www.amazon.com/Fotodiox-Flash-Diffuser-Dome-Speedlight/dp/B00DBB7W74

Looks funny but really does a very nice job.

Notable quote from one of the reviews:

> I also own the Gary Fong and this is far better.

And, for $15, if you don't like it, you're not out a whole lot if it doesn't do what you want. If you have a speedlight, pretty much anything with the rectangular head (Canon 680, YongNuo etc,) this should fit just fine.

Not a solution for carrying gear while shooting but the best purchase I ever made when shooting weddings was a fold-able wagon like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Sports-Collapsible-Folding-Outdoor-Utility/dp/B00BUUUIGK


No more lugging my heavy bags around all day and wagon folds up to fit nicely in the truck of my car.

Here's the one I use:

https://www.amazon.com/Case-Logic-SLRC-206-15-4-Inch-Backpack/dp/B002DW99H8/ref=sr_1_8?crid=36JCS5KZY9Y5Z&keywords=case+logic+backpack+dslr&qid=1572112517&sprefix=case+lo%2Caps%2C249&sr=8-8

​

Its a bit bulky (like using a school backpack crammed with books), but it is AWESOME! The internal foam dividers are thick and sturdy. I really recommend it but even if you go with something else, make sure the foam dividers inside are sturdy, most backpacks come with really flimsy ones and then you got lenses and bodies bouncing around.

If it's an indoor location with no windows, you might be hard pressed to get nice images without a flash. The ISO performance on the d5300 isn't fantastic. I would look into possibly getting video lights, or a flash to light your images, you can pick up both from yongnuo pretty cheap.

The best moments to pick up here would be if she had family or friends she's interacting with, you can only take so many pictures of her getting her hair done before it gets boring. Look for laughs and interactions, good luck!

Roberto has another book on poses, Picture Perfect Posing: Practicing the Art of Posing for Photographers and Models, but I haven't read it yet, so I can't really say if it's helpful or not.

Judging from the aforementioned Picture perfect practice though, I'd bet it really is ;) .

Also check out Joe McNally's tutorials and books, they are really mind-blowing about the concept of light and flashes!

This is the computer I have and it works fine. I edit my Olympus OMD E-M1ii 20 megapixel files just fine. My computer does run a little slower because my external hard drive is NTFS that is a Microsoft hard drive file system. Macs can read NTFS hard drives out of the box just fine but they can't write to NTFS without going into the kernel and changing a setting. I run a third party program that let's my Mac write to NTFS. Seagate offers a free program. Here is

Paragon NTFS for Mac 15

https://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/ntfs-driver-for-mac-os-master-dl/

If you format a external hard drive to Mac format it will run faster. I just did not do this because for a few reasons. One I already had a lot of files on this hard drive when the drive was hooked up to my Dell. Also I have Windows 10 installed on this Mac as a second OS for a few other programs that are not on Mac and Windows. There are a few ways for Windows to read Mac and Mac to read Windows out of the box. If a drive is FAT 32 or EXFAT these are open file systems that Microsoft made open to everyone. There is FAT16 and I think even something lower then FAT16 but no one uses those anymore unless for really old PC computers for some retro stuff.

Also I recommend you getting a slip cover for you Mac keyboard. This brand is very good and this is what I use.

UPPERCASE GhostCover Premium Ultra Thin Keyboard Protector for MacBook Pro with Touch Bar 13" and 15" (2016 2017 2018 2019, Apple Model Number A1706, A1707, A1989, A1990, A2159)

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MRKLH27/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017)

Processor 2.9 GHz Intel Core i7

Memory 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3

Startup Disk Macintosh HD

Graphics Radeon Pro 560 4 GB

Intel HD Graphics 630 1536 MB

A few that I would point out that I have read, loved, and learned a lot from:

• Picture Perfect Posing by Roberto Valenzuela
  
• Picture Perfect Practice by Roberto Valenzuela
  
• More Brides by Mark Condon
  
• The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris

Those are great suggestions, thank you so much!! I will absolutely be looking into those youtube channels! I'm located in the DC/Northern Virginia area!

Would this be the flash you'd recommend I start off with?

https://www.amazon.com/Flashpoint-Zoom-R2-Integrated-Transceiver/dp/B01FRPZ6X8/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1519027730&sr=1-1&keywords=Flashpoint+TTL+nikon

https://www.amazon.com/Performance-HP-Dual-Core-Processor-Bluetooth/dp/B07BS2B8DY/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=laptop+1tb&qid=1565932991&s=gateway&sr=8-5

​

Cheap laptop with 1tb. Not an SSD but you would have the benefit of seeing that your files are all stored safely by opening a few up after the transfer.

For a wedding I had last Fall, I got a waterproof sleeve off Amazon - and a super fashionable headband-umbrella. I looked ridiculous but the guests got a kick out of it and the photos looked great all things considered!

Link to the sleeve I got: OP/TECH USA 9001132 Rainsleeve -... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000PTFDYO?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

Thanks for your great input. So I actually purchased this portable godox. Does this still require the Bowen's mount ring? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0132I34K4/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

If I were to give you an honest ranking I'd say you're "Below Average" quality.

My biggest critique for you is that all of your photos feel like snap shots. They're all taken from the same angle, they're all kind of flat lighting and editing wise, they're all posed or of nothing of any real importance. The compositions are also very weak - Specifically your backgrounds.

Almost all of the photos look like you just pointed a camera and said "Hell yea" and clicked the button. It doesn't appear like there's a whole lot of thought that went into any thing and the same thought process carried over into your post work.

Your photos are competent (In a technical manner) they just lack any real artistry or intention. One thing I would suggest you do is check out this book which is fucking rock solid for learning some compositional tricks and helping teach yourself to see them on the fly, and work on your post processing technique so that your images stand out a little more.

If you were to ask me what to charge for your wedding photos now, I would say if the middle ground of local photographers is charging ~$2k-2.5k you should be around $1250 for a full day. Maybe after you get a few under your belt around $1500. If you're asking what you should get as a second shooter that depends on who you work for, they usually have set rates for their seconds. I pay $200-300 depending on how much experience they have.

I got these on a tip from /u/evanrphoto and they are awesome!

I love these. They hold the flash in a much more sturdy manner than the umbrella brackets.

http://www.amazon.com/Godox-Bracket-Speedlite-Softbox-Honeycomb/dp/B00JS3MINC/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1457722832&sr=8-4&keywords=bowens+softbox+mount

Here's a good, cheap LED panel you could use https://www.amazon.com/YN300-III-Adjustable-Temperature-3200K-5500K/dp/B00T3W0KDS/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1510248303&sr=1-3&keywords=yongnuo+yn-300