Wedding party invite

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Elaine66

Senior Member
I'm going to a friends wedding party on Saturday night and i am taking my camera D5100 with a 50mm F1.8 lens on. I dont want mess around too much but I do want to take some nice pictures. do i take my speedlight? will this lens be enough? whats the best settings on my camera to capture good party images?
thanks in advance. :tennis::tennis::tennis:
 
Horoscope Fish

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
Elaine66 said:
I'm going to a friends wedding party on Saturday night and i am taking my camera D5100 with a 50mm F1.8 lens on. I dont want mess around too much but I do want to take some nice pictures. do i take my speedlight? will this lens be enough? whats the best settings on my camera to capture good party images?
thanks in advance. :tennis::tennis::tennis:
Click to expand...
The 50mm f/1.8 is a fine, general purpose sort of lens, but it won't get you close to what's going on so you're going to have to be willing to get close using your feet. I can't really say if that lens alone will "be enough"; that would depend on you, not the lens. I would take a flash, personally, if I thought it would helpful and it most likely would be (they so often are). However, there are no secret recipes for camera settings to get consistently good shots, with or without a flash; you need to understand aperture, ISO and shutter speed and have some idea of how to compose a shot.

That being said, I would probably suggest shooting in "A"perture Priority mode, or "P"rogram mode. I'd suggest, generally speaking, using an aperture of, say, f/4 to f/5.6 and a shutter speed of 1/125 or faster. I suggest you let the ISO goes as high as it needs in order to maintain that range (see the Auto-ISO menu to set min/max ISO and a minimum shutter speed). Those settings are no guarantee they're a suggested starting point. Every shooting situation is different and you really need to learn what the individual tools do, so you can apply them to varying conditions successfully.

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§am

Senior Member
It will depend on the kind of shots you want too.
Group shots and you'll have to be a few metres back to get even 3-4 people in with a 50mm.
Close up shots in low light will be easier with the f/1.8, but take a flash anyway, no harm in doing so.

If you want the bokeh rich pictures then yes stop down to f/1.8 but if you're after group shots, then you might even get away with as low as f/2.8 (but safer at f/4) - of course to get these you'd have to use Aperture priority mode.

For those candid dance shots then you probably want to be in Shutter priority mode.

The rest, same advice as Horoscope :)
 
P

Pretzel

Senior Member
I 2nd shot an inside wedding with the 50mm 1.8G once, D3100 without a flash, and got a lot of darn fine pics. The church was VERY well lit for the shots I was taking, though... As almost everything was personal, no groups, I shot mostly at f2.8, bumping to f4 occasionally. Other settings, from what I can remember, was auto ISO up to 800 (remember, D3100), minimum shutter speed of 1/60... and I think center weighted metering, but can't be sure on that.

If ya know your camera and the venue, you'll do just fine. I showed up a little early, while the main photog was shooting some group pics, and got a feel for the areas where I would be shooting, and that's all it took. Since you've described this as a "party", I'd imagine the lighting might be a bit more challenging, though, so for the flash, only you'll know for sure. have it along, just in case, and if there are going to be action shots (i.e. dancing, etc.) think about boosting that minimum shutter speed a bit!

Good luck!!
 
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