Wedding Photography

Dorset Wedding Photograper – A small camera big on image quality – Panasonic GX1

March 31, 2012

Dorset Wedding Photograper – A small camera big on image quality – Panasonic GX1

As a Wedding photographer I am always looking for ways to get better images for my clients, be it new lenses, new and better camera bodies or a different way of working. Now don’t get me wrong. It’s not all about the equipment you use. I can get great images with whatever camera, if you look at when I started photographing weddings over 8 years ago now and look at the equipment available then and the equipment available now, then technologically the equipment available today is leaps and bounds ahead of where we were. In terms of image quality, autofocus, resolution, handling, image security to name but a few of the areas in which cameras and lens technology has progressed. Recently it had been brought to my attention that the Panasonic GX1 was a camera worthy of a look at.

For those of you unfamiliar with this camera, it’s a tiny little thing compared to the professional dSLR that I normally carry around. This camera still produces a 16 megapixel image which is more than sufficient for wedding albums and prints up to A3+ so I was interested to see if it had a place in my bag alongside my more traditional wedding equipment.

As you may have seen previously I love being a second photographer at a wedding as it gives me freedom to try out a few things I wouldn’t get time to try when I am the main wedding photographer. As luck would have it I was second photographer for three different weddings with three different photographers Alex of ABS Photography, Tim of Tim Churchill Photography and Matt Fryer of Matt Fryer Photography at three different venues Mirimar Hotel in Bournemouth, Lytchett Parish Church & Canford Magna Golf Course and The Tunnels in Ilfracoombe, Devon). I took along the Panasonic GX1 and the only lens I have for it the Panasonic 25/1.4 (equivalent of 50/1.4 on a full frame camera for those tech-heads out there).

In order to get the best from this camera I thought i’d see how it handled and how the images from it came out. So first I used my usual cameras to get the shots i’d normally get (this was important as I still wanted to make sure my colleagues got their images if it turned out the GX1 wasn’t up to the job) then I did some different photographs using the GX1 as a candid camera to see how it did in this role. I also made some images of the bride and groom to see how suitable it was for this kind of portraiture. Finally I also made some indoor images of details and guests to see how it would handle low light in both focusing and image noise and sharpness. The first dance photo for example was taken at ISO6400 1/60 @ 1.4 which is pretty dark and focussing was brilliant.

So without further waffle here are some of the images, would love to hear your thoughts on taking a GX1 or other small camera to a wedding either as a replacement for or as a supplement to a dSLR and how you think it would/wouldn’t work.

$ilfracoombe tunnels devon wedding photography detail gx1$ $ilfracoombe tunnels devon wedding photography candid portrait gx1$

by greg

Nikon D800 – First impressions of a Dorset wedding photographer

March 30, 2012

This is going to be a bit of a geeky post, so apologies if you’re wanting to see some wedding photos 🙂 I’ve been shooting both canon and nikon systems for a while now, but recently with the new cameras announced from both manufactures it was clear that neither offered my wedding clients the clear advantage that it did at the time I chose to take a canon and a nikon to weddings to help me photograph them and get the best wedding photographs for my clients.
Ahead of this weekends weddings I put my new Nikon D800 through it’s paces round the mean* streets of blandford forum, dorset (A place with no cities, motorways – or even petrol this last couple of days!) *may not be mean streets at all.

The Nikon D800 is a new full frame professional dSLR with an unbelievable 36 million pixels! so it’s almost as good as the latest phones! Awesomeness!

I’m loving the feel of this camera, feels very solid in the hand, the AF is super snappy too! I love that it has dual card slots – a real bonus for wedding photography as it means you can backup to the second card!

So i wanted to see how it handled focusing and how the image quality stood up to my existing cameras (Nikon D3S and canon 1DS mark 3).

Here we have tigger and the D800 with nikkor 24-70/2.8 lens

I took a photo in the studio to show how it looks at lower ISOs in the studio with my friend tigger again. Great detail – going to be great for the studio!

Here we have an image of people enjoying the sunshine (is it really march?)
This was shot at ISO100 @ f/8 and 1/250 (I used auto iso with bias towards faster shutter speeds)

The dynamic range looks great.

Next up we have a shot of some lovely flowers in the market place of blandford at ISO1600.. looks pretty good to me, no blown reds. nice job nikon!

Here i’m pushing the iso up a bit, shooting at ISO1600, there’s enough dynamic range to get the bus in the shadows and the sky blue, so it’s not blown the sky, again nice, especially at ISO1600 where you typically see less DR)

of course that is reduced for web viewing. Next we have a Nikon D800 image cropped to 900 pixels (not quite a 1:1 crop but you can see the detail and how well the noise is controlled, this will make great prints!)

So far so good – now to give it a proper wedding photography workout, dorset style!

Come back early next week to see how it did at a wedding and bridal photoshoots.

by greg

Hampshire Wedding Photographer – Gregg School – Engagement Shoot – Sneak Peek – Jack and Kat

March 27, 2012

Wow what weather we’re having, as a wedding photographer this makes me happy! People often ask me if i prefer it cloudy? I normally say for the group photographs yes, for everything else no! Sun is great, makes people smile and lets me play with the light a lot more 🙂 So sun for every wedding for me this year please 🙂

I met up with Jack and Kat ahead of their wedding later this year at the Gregg School… we decided to meet at the Gregg School to have a look around and work out the best locations. And WOW! Glad I did there are so many different places we’re going to need to be fast getting all the locations in on the wedding day! Though we might well split this into two parts and get a nice sunset too 🙂

Here’s a sneak peek from the photoshoot.. more coming soon 🙂

Although this engagement photography shoot took place in Hampshire I’m actually a Dorset Based Wedding Photographer. If you’re interested in have me photograph your wedding then take a look at my wedding collections and find out more about me.

by greg

Wedding Photography – Canon 5D3 vs Nikon D3S – High ISO comparison

March 23, 2012

I’ve been shooting weddings in Hampshire, Dorset for about 8 years now and in that time I’ve used a lot of different cameras, both film cameras (Canon) and digital (Canon and Nikon).

I started off shooting canon digital exclusively.. more of this in an upcoming post. The last few years I’ve been shooting both Canon and Nikon dSLRs. This started with the frankly amazing Nikon D3 which was unsurpassed at the time in terms of image quality and build/AF performance giving me some really beautiful images, then Nikon released their D3s which after trialing one on load from Nikon UK I then upgraded to and sold my Nikon D3.
During this time I was shooting a Canon 1DS mark3 alongside it, a 21mpx full frame digital body with superb image quality and brilliant Autofocus too. The nikon still had the slight edge as an overall camera, but, shooting both allowed me to offer my clients the best of both systems (again i’ll go into this in more detail in another blog post coming up about whats in my bag).

Anyway a good friend of mine Rich Meston of Reikan Photography recently got a Canon 5D mark 3 – this is a very interesting beast, it has the same AF module (pretty much bar a couple of features) as canons brand new flagship EOS 1DX, but at half the cost. It comes with dual card slots for backup and boasts a much improved high ISO image quality… at least these are the specifications and it’s what a lot of Canon 5D mark 2 shooters had been asking for (myself included). So real kudos to canon for basically selling a mini-1DX and I’m sure a lot of people will be dying to get their hands on one (well if it wasn’t for the UK £3,000 price tag!)

Anyway – the purpose of this short blog post is to see how the canon 5d mark 3 compares to the Nikon D3S.. specifically when it comes to High ISO image quality which as a wedding photographer means that the images are of better quality for my clients… (i’ll be posting some other thoughts and impressions on AF and handling later when I get chance)

So the conditions for this test are as follows:

I met up with Rich and Bob (Whetton) at an unnamed car-park in an unnamed location, here we proceeded to take some test shots and evaluate each camera.
We came up with setting the cameras on a tripod and us all standing against a wall, the light levels were such that we were getting ISO12,800 @ f/2.8 and 1/80th so we wanted to make sure we weren’t at the mercy of the camera shake (one less variable in sharpness).
The Canon 5D mark 3 had the amazing 35/1.4L mounted and the Nikon D3S had the 35/2 lens which is also a great performer.
These shots were both brought into Photoshop CS5 with the latest ACR beta plugin which allows 5D3 files to be read. I white balanced both using the WB tool against the wall to give both the same look, then did a similar crop of 900px on the long side (this is the longest my blog allows) to allow for comparison.

Here are my conclusions.
Both the Nikon D3S and the Canon 5D mark 3 produce brilliant files considering the light levels here (we’re in a car park at night!). Both had no trouble focussing. The files are both very close, to me on my screen the D3S has a slight edge in detail on Rich Mestons jumper, the fabric seems to retain more detail whereas the 5D3 seems to lose a bit here, but, it’s marginal and could be too long staring at my monitor…

Let me know what you think in the comments section below:

by greg

E – shoot Sneak peek – Lulworth Castle – Nicky and Lofty + neices

March 19, 2012

This weekend I met up with Nicky and Lofty at the Studio for an eshoot at Blandford Studios.
Nicky and Lofty are getting married at Lulworth Castle later this year (not that much later though :))

I can’t wait to shoot their wedding it’s going to be awesome!

Anyway we had 2 special guests for the day in the shape of 2 neices 🙂 Love this little sneak peek of violet 🙂

And here we have Nicky and Lofty(in the background) 🙂

by greg