10. June 2002
A Wedding Job

A friend of mine asked me a few month ago if I would photograph his wedding or to be more precise, take portraits of him and his wife on their wedding day.
I gave it a little bit of thought and said yes, because it sounded like a funny challenge.
I've only photographed two weddings till then, so I'm a total novice on the matter.


Nikon F90x, 35-105mm, Kodak T400

I was told, that we had about an hour or so to do the job - not much if you get just a little bit ambitious, which I did....
I scanned the web for some info about wedding photography - I've found some help here and there and some examples of good (and not so good) wedding portraits.
But still I needed to find out what equipment to bring and what kind of films to use.

Equipment
Since I wanted it to be fun for me also, I decided to use both medium format equipment as well as a 35mm SLR.
If you are a regular reader of my site (and isn't tired yet about me not updating for a month!), you will know, that I use the Rolleiflex TLR's for medium format photography. Mostly the Rolleiflex GX. So I brought that along with my Nikon F90x and a 35-105mm Nikkor zoom lens.
I wanted to try to make some fill flash pictures so I brought a flash as well.

Films
I'm getting pretty familiar with the Fujicolor Provia film, so it seemed obvious to me to use another Fujichrome film, namely the Astia which should be better for portraits.
I bought a package to try it out and it did seem to produce nice skin tones, but the Astia is by the way very different from Provia so I could probably have chosen any other film that can produce good skin tones?
I was only going to use the slide film for medium format, and decided to go for negative films for the 35mm SLR. In this way, I would get a number of pictures that I could scan and enlarge myself (the Astia 120 films) and a number of films that could be developed and enlarged in any 1 hour lab.

I wasn't quite sure what the weather was going to be like, so I got a Fujicolor Reala 100 ISO (which is a low contrast film, good for portraits, I was told) and some Fujicolor Superia 200 ISO films. Both of these are very normal consumer films that can be bought almost anywhere (well, at least the Superia is to my knowledge). Black and white pictures also seems a pretty good idea for wedding photography. Perhaps because they produce this very timeless look? Standing in a frame in your living room B&W pictures sometimes also looks a bit more "professional". Anyway, I didn't want to bother getting B&W films developed and enlarged, so I simply tried the Kodak T400 film which is a panchromatic C-41 film. This means that it is a B&W film that can be developed and enlarged together with the color negatives.

Nikon F90x, 35-105mm, Kodak T400

I was going to shot a group-picture of the wedding couple together with the guests as well. I remember to have read somewhere that slide films aren't the best for group pictures, one should use a negative film instead (because of the bigger exposure latitude I assume) so I brought a Kodak Portra 160 ISO (120 film) along for this purpose.

Preparations
I had time one day to drive to the place at which we where going to make the "photo session" and I selected some nice looking spots in the area (a park actually) - a small bridge, some high grass and a little pond etc.
I also made a list of ideas about how to place the couple mostly based on photos from the web, a few things to remember about the equipment etc.

Action!
I brought my list of ideas and three umbrellas - neither was used!
One hour simply isn't very much time and the guests were beginning to arrive!
The weather cleared up and I got some 180 pictures or so.


Nikon F90x, 35-105mm, Fuji Superia

When we where ready to do the group picture I ended up loading the Rolleiflex GX with an Astia film instead of the Portra film that I brought along for the purpose. Why I did that? Courage suddenly failed me to begin shooting with a negative film, or perhaps I was momentarily insane?

Conclusion
I made a gallery called the Wedding Gallery in which you can see the medium format pictures I shot. Then you can judge them for yourself.
The Kodak T400 film turned out quite brown and not very pleasing. I cheated with the above pictures to make theme look more pleasing and neutral in tone. They were easy to scan and correct though and surprisingly fine grained. I have a setting on the Epon 1290 Photo printer that produces fairly neutral B&W pictures. Here is what they looked like coming right from the scanner (with a greenish/brownish color cast):

Nikon F90x, 35-105mm, Kodak T400

The negatives turned out pretty well, however it was overcast when I used the Reala 100 film and the sun was coming out when I used the Superia 200 films - should have been the other way around!
The group picture turned out quite well, but would have been better on a negative film I'm sure. I shot a few group pictures on the Fuji Superia 35mm film and they are actually better (except for the smaller size course).
Oh, yes and the fill flash idea was maybe good, but I didn't succeed in making any of them, simply because I didn't knew the equipment well enough!
Next time I will be less ambitious and perhaps only bring one camera and fewer types of films.
But it was a fun job and I'll probably do it again if I get a chance!