No of course I’m not going to talk about penis sizes and happy marriages that would be inappropriate! This article will look at photography equipment and what’s necessary to be a successful wedding photographer in Sheffield.

Back in the dark room ages when everything was slower, darker, more difficult but in many ways more exciting I used to use real cameras with real lenses and real photographic film. Alas the march of progress plods on like a well-trained Roman army crushing all that stands in the way. Actually spending all your time underground with a red light on surrounded by chemicals probably isn’t wise so maybe I’m better off sitting in front of the screen with the mouse instead.

There was something lovely about all that equipment though. The Nikon FM 2′s we had at university with a fixed 50mm lens were so clear and so simple. Well-made hardy pieces of kit built to last and did. They were the preferred photojournalists camera and so were proven to be pretty much bullet proof. Then there was the Hassleblad Sheffield Hallam Universities photography department’s pride and joy and much guarded and coveted piece of bling. If you were one of the select few to be allowed to borrow it and even take it out then you were obviously sleeping with the right technician! Probably the best piece of engineering in the world this camera was a beauty. The simplicity of the Hassleblad was amazing. The noise it made when the shutters opened and closed was probably as satisfying as breaking the seal on a new jar of coffee. So legend has it these cameras travelled with the American space exploration of the moon and were left there, might even be worth going up there and getting them and then sticking them on E-bay.

The trouble was that you were shooting film, bracketing exposures on a roll film with 12 shots on. So that’s four shots per film with the possibility of it all going horribly wrong. I can’t quite imagine being a wedding photographer having to deal with that amount of uncertainty. As I was discussing with someone the other day maybe that’s why there was more money in photography back in those days as the pressure was much greater, the stakes were higher. Admittedly there are still gremlins within today’s digital era but generally they can be sorted out a little easier and the results are so much more immediate.

I do have a slightly tragic story from the first wedding shoot I did for a friend’s brother in Harrogate. The wedding photography had gone well and it seemed like it was in the bag but the next day whilst nursing a slight hangover as I was a guest as well as photographer (business and pleasure don’t mix and all that) I was on the way home looking at the shots on my laptop when the computer decided to give me the wheel of death. I had no choice do the force shut down by holding down the power button then try to restart. All I got was a question mark on the screen and a sickening noise from within. So, bear in mind that this day is also my 30th birthday and now I’ve got the biggest crisis of my life on my hands. On arriving back in Sheffield I get on to Mac and head off to their shop in Meadowhall. Second bear in mind is that I can’t stand shopping centres. I think this stemmed from when I was young and my mum and my sister used to drag me round Milton Keynes shopping centre. So, enter the Mac shop go to the counter to speak to the man, explain the problem and get a noise a bit like the noise a car mechanic makes when you go in and try and get a quote. There’s me expectantly expecting him to come up with some sort of easy but obviously expensive solution but instead he said “computer says no.” AAAAAAAhhhh!

I went to London that same day as I had a job down there and took the computer to a disc doctor. Again not overly enthusiastic about the hope of saving my computer, and with it my life and career as a wedding photographer. After a month of waiting they came back with a no can do. This did save me £1000 which was more than I’d charged for the entire job. Where were the photos, well, unfortunately because I was starting out I had only a few small capacity memory cards and no external hard drives. I had shot on the cards moved the photos to the computer and then formatted the cards to keep on using them (never do this!) fortunately by the grace of God or whoever graces such catastrophes when you format a CF card the information is still there and until it is overwritten with new information you can retrieve it with computer software. So by the grace of Grace the cards with all of the money shots on, i.e. the ceremony, had not been overwritten and all I had lost were incidental shots. I had still lost almost half of all I’d shot but at least I could give the couple a decent selection of shots, which thankfully they were happy with. The moral to the story is back up, back up, back up. Make sure you have a lot of 4GB memory cards, your computer and at least one external hard drive. You can shoot a few cards then import to your computer and then export to the external hard drive. Keep the shots on the CF card and carry on. This way you have the data in three places, which is just about safe enough. I used to work for a photographer who sent me home with an external hard drive in case his house burnt down. Safety first! Paranoia second! Well I learned the hard way but came out Ok and am still shooting weddings to this day. I do have graying hair though.

I have slightly digressed from the topic I set out to talk about which was camera kit. These days I have gone fully digital. My armory includes a Canon ID body, a Canon 24mm – 70mm f2.8 USM lens, a canon 580 EX flash unit, a MacBook computer, Lacie Rugged external hard drives, and I have two Systems Imaging LTD monolights. Normally I don’t use the studio lights for wedding photography as they take a long time to set up and can cause health and safety issues. Occasionally if there is an area to leave them then it can be nice to have a set ready for group shots.

The usual tactic is to use the mounted camera flash and bounce it off ceilings to give a soft light. The great advantage of all this modern kit is that with the superiority of the modern sensor and the chips the cameras can shoot in very low lighting conditions (all churches) using no flash and produce great clarity and detail. The modern lenses are good, I don’t think as well made as there forefathers but they do have great clarity when pin sharp. The 28 – 70 that I use is beautiful when it’s bang on but does struggle with movement which really winds me up as I like to introduce movement in my shots and because a wedding day is a fluid action packed event.

My set up is BIG which leads back to the title of this piece. In fact after a day of photographing with it your forearm feels the strain. It’s not exactly subtle and so makes it hard to use for those lovely reportage shots when the subject is caught unawares. These days there are some brilliant compact cameras on the market which would come in handy here and which I would like to get soon. The thing is size does count at a wedding. There will always be a few “other photographers” at the event, keen amateurs if you will who will have a bit of money and probably a pretty good digital SLR. Now imagine being the hired professional wedding photographer and turning up with a smaller lens and lesser camera than these guests. How embarrassing and a point of conversation as to what the couple are spending the hundreds on?

In conclusion as the professional wedding photographer you need a bigger lens than anyone else at the wedding and you need to know what you’re doing with it too. A well cut suit won’t go amiss either!