500 Wedding Ideas

What settings should I use for my Nikon f100 with b&w iso400 Ilford film to take nice wedding photos?

I'm gonna take some photos on my sis wedding as well as outside photo shoot with my Nikon, b&w Ilford film and 50mm 1.4 and 17-35mm 3.5-4? lenses. What kind of metering and program should I use? Any hints welcome. Thanks. D

Public Comments

1. Lighting is the key to photography.. Sunny day, I would probably shoot at 125-250 shutter speed with 12-20 apeture overcast or cloudy I would shoot 60-125 with 8-16 aperture. this is also going to depend on how much detail you want in the background of your photos. the higher the number on aperature the more details you pick up in the background.
2. How long have you had this fine camera? You are missing an important focal length ... some kind of portrait lens like a 85 mm or 105 mm lens The 50 mm is just too short and peoples faces will be somewhat distorted when you shoot head and shoulder shots of them ... worse if you use the 17-35 mm lens (an amazing lens by the way, but not one for shooting candid portraits at a wedding or any other event for that matter). The 17-35 is an excellent lens for shooting "groups" or establishing shots of the wedding as a whole. You can use the "center weighted" metering on your fine camera and be successful in making exposures most of the time, but it is up to you as the photographer to know when to adjust the exposure manually when shooting in back-lit situations or when shooting white or dark clothing (the whole world is not 18% gray) You may want to follow a wedding photographer around before your sisters wedding to see what shots they shoot and the lenses they use. If you were using a digital DSLR like the D100, the 50 mm lens would be just fine for shooting head and shoulder shots, but you are using a 35 mm SLR and don't have the 1.5x focal length multiplier making all your lenses 1.5x longer that you would if you were using one of the Nikon DSLR's (other than the full frame D700, D3 or D3x bodies) Most lenses are sharpest, two stops or so down from their largest aperture. If you keep the aperture at f/8 or larger, the images will be sharper over all. See link: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/50-comparison/f-stops.htm