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It has been my goal for some time now to attend a wedding as the main photographer, a goal I completed over the weekend down in Christchurch, New Zealand - a two hour flight from home.

Overall I found the whole process rather relaxed. My flight arrived in Christchurch the afternoon before the wedding, and I popped into the chapel before heading to my accommodation for the night to check out the lighting, and scout locations for the formal shots.

The morning of the wedding was super relaxed, however I found myself running between two houses shooting the preparation shots from both the groom and the brides sides. I must have swapped lenses dozens of times in the two hour period of shooting preparation shots, though I found myself primarily shooting with the Canon EF 135 f/2L and the Canon EF 50 f/1.4 under the harsh lighting conditions. The primes kept me thinking about composition and created a very ’smooth’ depth of field when shot at low apertures.

The chapel where the ceremony was held was very small, I used the Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L for shots of the wedding party arriving, along with the bride walking down the aisle. In saying this, the Canon EF 135 f/2L was a perfect focal length for most of the ceremony, and was attached the the camera for 90% of the time. I feel this could be a different story under different conditions (size of chapel/church), so a little extra focal length might come in handy in the future. One of the upsides of the 135L is its immense sharpness, so cropping is possible if more detail is needed to be pulled from images.

The most invaluable lens of the day was hands down the Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L. The versatility when it came to shooting portraits was invaluable. I enjoyed the ability to go from full-body shots to head-shots within a twist of the zoom. The only other way to provide similar versatility would be to have two camera bodies, one with a wide angle lens and another with a medium length telephoto.

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If I was shooting another wedding down the line in the future, there are a few extra tools I’d like to pick up.

Canon Speedlite Flash

I didn’t think I’d be needing to use flash anywhere near as much as I did. I thought with my two super-fast primes, I could make use of available light. Although true, I found I used the flash for over 75% of the portraits as fill light to eliminate shadows on faces.

A Canon 430EX purchase looms in the very near future.

Wider Prime Lens

I shot the Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L at two focal lengths the entire day, 24 & 70. When shooting outdoor formals the lens was glued to the wide end - I found myself often wanting to shoot wider.

The Canon EF 14 f/2.8L looks very attractive for this use, bar the hefty price tag it carries. Of course the Canon EF 16-35 f/2.8L must be considered, but I could see myself using the lens glued to the 16mm end - hence the want for the prime.

Extra Camera Body

While a different camera body mightn’t have created better images, it’d have made it a whole lot easier to capture the ones I did. Shooting with an aging Canon 350D wasn’t the easiest thing to do, especially when trying to capture focus for candid portraits when the action was moving very quickly.

Ideally, I’d like something which has a more accurate AF system, better performance above ISO 400, and something with two card slots for redundancy. The last thing any wedding photographer wants is lost images.

Overall, I was extremely happy with the images I managed to capture with the gear I had with me - I’m very excited with the results from the day, and I’m looking forward to the next wedding, whenever & wherever that may be.

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The Final Figures

1419 frames fired using one camera body, two Sandisk 4GB compact flash cards, three Canon lenses, and 11.19GB of hard-drive space.

1066 Images - Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8L
250 Images - Canon EF 135 f/2L
103 Images - Canon EF 50 f/1.4