Wedding Reshoot

egproductions

egproductions

Veteran
unfortunately, my wedding photographer screwed up big time the day of the wedding in a lot of ways, so my wife and I decided to rent a 5D and some lenses and do a re-shoot almost 4 months later when the stress of the wedding had finally dissipated. It was a tiring day running back and forth to the camera in the pictures we were both in, in order to press the shutter but the pictures were worth it.

We rented the 24-70 2.8L, 70-200 IS 2.8L and the 50 1.0L. They were all amazing lenses very sharp etc. However my only complaints are that the zoom lenses needed to be stopped down more then f3.2 to see defined shutter blades in the out of focus highlights and the 50mm was so incredibly shallow and hard to focus (wasn't too thrilled about the bokeh on it in general) The 5D was great. Easy transition from using a Rebel Xt but I found the analog control to move around the image during review to be hard to use.

Below is a sample of one of the pictures we shot. Only corrections done were done in Camera Raw.

http://eden.rutgers.edu/~egabor/Wedding/pages/_MG_0855.html
 
those are some beautiful shots. real good idea to round up a top notch kit and have her put the dress on again. im especially impressed that you made few corrections. but i have photophobia. im afraid i wont get the shot so i take the same picture about a billion times. those are some real classy shots. good thing you were competing with another wedding party that day. :)

i cant tell which shots were the 24-70mm lens but I have my guesses and I love 'em. every time i see a shot with that lens my jaw drops. ive got to get it.

thanks for sharing.
 
Thanks, We shot 410 pictures total and was able to extract 112 perfectly usable ones even though most of the others werent bad at all.

If you want to see the specs of the shots I left the metadata embedded.
 
really nice shots. But I gotta ask, how did the photog screw up? Can we see? :D

Just curious because I know one day, I may get the one person that isn't happy with my stuff. This will help me do what NOT to do lol.
 
unless you try, you won't mess up as bad as my photographer. I requested from the photography company that I have two photographers with 5Ds. The photographer I was speaking to really wanted to shoot the wedding (In retrospect I believe it's because he wanted to add an orthodox wedding to his portfolio but that's not important) He normally shoots on a mamiya medium format and I was fairly happy with his composition and work in general. He said he would shoot on a 5d for me since that's what I wanted. He then later called me saying that he had bought a medium format digital back for his mamiya and asked if that would be alright to use. Of course I had no complaints with someone shooting with a 33mp medium format CCD so I agreed. Here were the problems:


Technical problems

-he asked me a week before the wedding to buy him memory since he didn't have enough and wasn't willing to pay for it himself (in my last minute scramble I decided to just say ok and bought 2 16gb cards.

-he never formatted the cards with his camera so he was only able to shoot 4GB worth on each card so he had to shoot compressed during parts of the wedding

- he told me about this problem during the wedding and I told him to just shoot the formal portraits uncompressed, he of course did the opposite.

-He never tested out his camera properly and as a result he was only able to shoot 1 frame every 15 seconds or so (the back is supposed to shoot 1.1fps ongoing)


Other problems:

The biggest problem we had with him was that we asked for indirect flash. No head on flash from the camera. Rather to put up flashes in the corner of the reception hall etc. Nothing but head on flash was used and as a result our faces were exposed properly but everything in the background was dark to an unrecognizable point.

As you saw from the pictures the wedding hall is a beautiful place outdoors. He didn't take any portraits of me or my wife other than in front of a traditional looking fireplace indoors during mid summer. We both asked him at separate points before the wedding started if we could go around and take photos and he actual refused and said he would do it later. He of course did not.

All of our formal portraits together were done after the wedding when we were all sweaty and tired.

We gave him a relatively small list of things we wanted photographed such as the table centerpieces and basic immediate family sequences for formal portraits. He did maybe 9 out of the 18 listed variations. (he never looked at the sheet we gave him)

So many more little issues, of which I wouldn't even complain about if he had just used indirect flash as we discussed and was written in the contract.

Sorry about the ranting. I would actually rather not think about the horrible experience with him which is why I needed to take my own photos. I gotta tell you it feels a lot better now. I am actually eager to look at my wedding photos now and not dreading it.


Tips for wedding photographers:

Tip #1 - LISTEN to the bride and the groom

Tip #2 - Don't experiment your new equipement out on a client

Tip #3 - Formal protraits before the recpetion

Tip #4 - Don't be lazy and work quickly

Tip #5 - Just don't use head on flash, get a fast lens and bring a lighting person if you can.


Tips for people looking for a photographer:

Tip #1 - Don't let someone who is new to digital shoot digital

Tip #2 - Medium isn't worth it for digital. The DOF is comprable to fast 35mm lenses and I was actually able to uprez my 5D photos to 33MP and they are still cleaner than the noisy Leaf digital back. Canon makes such clean CCDS and sharp lenses that unless they get into to the medium format industry it isn't worth it.

Tip #3 - ask your photographer to have a session for practicing possing and smiling before the wedding. This will benefit both you and the photographer.

Tip #4 - Look for a photographer that has the equipment you want, whos photographs you love, and one that is recommended by friends or family. Each one of these requirments aren't good enough on their own.
 
Man - did you get your money back? A lot of respect for going back and re-doing it. Most people would not want to face it again and in-turn have a sour feeling everytime they talked about their wedding. Well done.
 
Wow - you took those yourself?
Looked like you were in pretty much every single one.
:thumbsup:

Hats off to you...and congratulations - both for the job on the photos, and the marriage.
 
Ha ha Luis !

Still, somethings missing. Ah ! I got it.

That bright eyes Newleywed Glow is gone; now it has the 'Crap' look' going on
 
BWyldeck said:
Man - did you get your money back? A lot of respect for going back and re-doing it. Most people would not want to face it again and in-turn have a sour feeling everytime they talked about their wedding. Well done.
Click to expand...

We got the amount for the rental back. That doesn't include makeup and hair again.
 
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