Thursday, October 4, 2012

All The Wedding Photography Lenses You Require To Catch The Right Moment - Part 1

By Dan Feildman




There're generally four types of photography lenses that every wedding photographer must have in his or her gig bag:

* Wide-Angle Zoom

* Wide-to-Telephoto Zoom

* Image-Stabilized Telephoto Zoom

* Prime/Portrait Lenses

Wide-Angle Zoom: Wide-Angle zoom lenses are one of the most vital photography lenses that every wedding photographer should have, normally 17mm to 35mm in length with a fixed aperture of f/2.8. They offer a large depth of field, making it simple to have foreground and background in focus. They are an indispensable wedding photography tools that allows versatility in confined areas like a small banquet room or crowded party area. While shorter photography lenses permit you to capture more details, wide-angle zoom lenses allow you to catch more reactions and atmosphere to tell a better story.

To explain further, wide-angle zoom photography lenses allow you to shoot a wider perspective of moments happening around the main subject, therefore offering a greater picture of the whole event. For example, wide-angle pictures have the ability to tell "stories within a story", enabling you to uncover more of the story behind the shot. This is essential for a good photojournalistic wedding photography. As events around weddings are so time sensitive, excellent photography lenses will enable you to capture as many actions or emotions in the quickest time as possible.

When used in a venue like the ballroom or church, wide-angle zoom photography lenses also magnify the grandeur and spaciousness of the area, which encapsulates the creative feel for a photojournalistic wedding photography.

But, you have to be selective of the scenes or actions using wide-angle photography lenses, as a caveat to shooting wide is that it creates some body distortion, particularly when a subject is photographed close-up. Usually, people often look heavier and shorter on the edges, while arms may look large. The last thing you want is to have the bride cursing you for making her seem she has put on ten pounds! To go around this issue, you should as far as possible avoid putting the bride and groom at the edges of the wide angle distortion. In addition, wide-angle photography lenses may also introduce distracting or undesired elements into the frame, which could otherwise spoil a picture perfect moment.

Wide to Telephoto Zoom: Wide to Telephoto lenses are the most crucial photography lenses that a wedding photographer cannot do without. They should ideally be lenses which cover somewhere around the 20-70 mm focal length range with an aperture of f/2.8. This ideal range permits you to get wide enough to take a group photograph and close enough to capture facial emotions in your candid shots or a three quarter portrait of a couple without the unwanted effects of wide angle perspective distortion. They also double as good lenses for portraits. Given just this lens, you'd be able to capture the majority of the shots required for a wedding decently well.

Image Stabilized Telephoto Zoom: Image Stabilized telephoto zoom lenses are also crucial components of your wedding photography tools checklist. The 70-200 mm focal length is a vital range for wedding ceremony pictures. It enables you to give your subjects more space in situations where you don't want to obstruct. As you'll sometimes be photographing down the aisle from the back of the church, image stabilized telephoto zoom lenses will come in really useful. 200 mm is long enough to be able to take 3/4 length pictures of the bride and groom exchanging their vows while staying at a fair distance from the action and 70 mm is wide enough to take in the bridesmaids or groomsmen as a group without switching photography lenses.

A good thing to note is that when using such photography lenses, great blurred background can be achieved with maximum wide apertures of f/2.8 and long focal lengths of 200 mm or 300 mm, whether you're using a full-frame or a small sensor body. This allows you to isolate the subject from its background, and to focus attention on the picture as the primary subject you desire to portray. This sort of photography lenses are particularly useful for shots where you are unable to get in close and for intimate and private moments, where you want to be an unobserved stranger at a distance. Some examples include a mischievous grin, a kiss, a stolen glance - the details which are effectively presented by the emotions. Image-Stabilized telephoto zoom photography lenses hence play an important role in catching this kind of moments.



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