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[OM] Re: thoughts on shooting wedding

Subject: [OM] Re: thoughts on shooting wedding
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2005 22:51:26 -0500
Wayne said:
Here is a picture of the bride and Bismark, who is a permanent resident
at the Inn.
http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3175402
Again, shot on the C5050, and as it came from the camera, excepted
resized. I also shot the same pose with the OM2s and Kodak Portra 400NC.
As you can see, the bride's white dress is about right, at least to my
eyes, but Bismark is almost blacked out. There is almost no detail in
his coat at all, and the walls behind him are as dark as his coat,
although they were wall-papered in a much lighter color. The candle
lighting can again be seen in the background. Of course it can be
lightened up, to show detail in Bismark's coat, and the papered wall,
but then the bride is washed out.
In contrast to this, the Kodak Portra film rendered the bride and her
dress perfectly, as well as amazing detail in the various shades of
Bismark's coat, and even shows clearly the pattern on the wallpaper and
wallpaper border behind.
---------------------------------------------

I don't think you should make your judgement of film vs. digital based
on this photo done with the C5050.  First, the C5050 with its tiny
sensor (5.3x7.2mm) doesn't have the dynamic range of a DSLR.  For
example, the Canon 300D's sensor is 15.1x22.7mm.  Second, I'm sure you
used a different flash with the 2s and Portra and so the lighting is
probably better with the 2s.  Third, while the dress can't be brightened
(the blue channel is about to saturate), even in this image there is a
lot of shadow detail that can be brought out in an image editor or by a
professional digital printing service vs the

-----------------------------------------------
Wayne continued:
Besides this, the Portra film rendered the skin colors perfectly, not
with reddish-pinkish hues as the C5050 did. For darker skinned people,
perhaps this is not a problem.
I realize all this can perhaps be manipulated in PS, but my question
might be, what pro wedding photographer would want to spend their time
manipulating 300+ photos in PS, when it is so much easier to just use
Kodak Portra?
As to color balance and the developers, I use a local Kodak Image center
that is about 12 kms from where I live. I know the people, and the few
weddings I've done, I am sure to stress to them that these are wedding
pics, so I don't want a one hour lab job done, nor am I interested in
saving a couple dollars. They printed each of these photos one to a
time, taking special care to blow dust off each neg, etc., you get the
idea. But still they got them to me the same day, quite amazing. Again,
I just can't imagine a wedding pro not using a service like this, as it
is so cheap in comparison. You'd have to work in PS with your digital
pics for 50 cents an hour to compete.
-------------------------------------------------

I'll not complain about Portra.  When I shoot film that's usually what's
in the camera exactly because of skin tones.  However, pro wedding
photographers using digital don't have to spend hours and hours with
Photoshop if they don't care to.  Many of the same pro processing shops
that handle film also handle digital printing.  See, for example:
<http://www.millerslab.com/>  These folks do digital printing (including
color adjustment) just like they do with film.  In fact, I doubt there
is any real difference to the operators since any film that's getting
processed is first scanned to a digital image.  Miller's, in particular,
caters to wedding and portrait photographers and their operators judge
prints on skin tone.

If there are 100 wedding shots selected for an album most will get
little if any processing in PhotoShop if they're to be printed as 4x6.
5x7's will probably get a little touchup and larger ones will get a lot
of touchup.  But, if they're going to the lab and the exposure is
reasonable they won't be futher worked on in Photoshop.  Final exposure
and color balance is what we're paying the lab for just as in film.

If the particular C5050 image you showed had been selected for an album
I would do some Photoshop work by brightening the background while
masking the bride and her dress so it doesn't get blown out.  Once you
are experienced at this sort of thing it should take no more than a few
minutes.  If the shot had been taken in raw mode there might be even
more that could be done for getting improving the exposure.

But a few minutes each times 300 photos is not a good place to be.
Better yet, whether film or digital, is to try for a better exposure in
the first place by using more lights.  When covering events we try to
shoot with a main light at about f/8 but place slave lights in the room
such that the background is lit as well as possible at about f/5.6 or
one stop down.  This prevents the room from going black in the
background while not being so bright as to detract from the foreground
subject.  With an assistant available you can, of course, do even better
by using a main and fill light on the subject as well as the background
lighting for the room.

Chuck Norcutt



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