Wedding Shoot AKA I Fell in Love With a Full-Frame

I shot a wedding on the weekend, and boy was it the most challenging wedding shoot yet, but I’m not going to talk about that. I’m gonna share a few of my favourite photos and wax lyrical about how awesome it was to shoot with a full-frame sensor camera.

I take this wedding photography business seriously, and I’m really enjoying it these days, despite the elevated stress levels. Something I did this time to lower the stress was to borrow a friend’s 5D so that I had two cameras to shoot with, in case one died. I can tell you now, it was love at first click.

By the way, if you like these photos, live near Melbourne, Australia, and have a wedding coming up, I’m available for wedding bookings! You can read more on my site here: http://neil.creek.name/weddings (Excuse the plug ;) )

I love shooting with my 50mm f1.8 lens. If you don’t have one of these, you’ve got to get one. It’s tack-sharp, great in low light, and perfect for portraits with silky smooth bokeh. On my 350D, which has a 1.6x crop factor, however, it can be a problem with field of view. To fit a subject in nicely, I have to take a few steps back, which isn’t always an option. On the full frame sensor of the 5D however, the 50mm feels just right. The image above was taken in the bride’s back yard before heading off to the ceremony. I stood on a garden chair for the flattering high angle, and the composition just worked, without having to move the chair back too far.

I love the photo above, and I feel I’ve succeeded in taking a type of photo I’ve not mastered yet: photo journalistic. Still shooting with the 50mm in the very dull, naturally lit living room, I was able to capture some natural candid moments before we left. A full-frame sensor enhances the effect and appearance of a shallow depth of field. I was shooting here at f1.8, resulting in a narrow depth of field, which allowed me to minimise the background clutter, and include the element of the girl in the background without drawing attention away from the bride.

I don’t know if it’s a feature of full frame cameras in general, or the 5D in particular, but the light sensitivity seemed to me to be one to two stops greater than my 350D. Seen above, the bride is standing well back from a tree-shaded window on an overcast day. It was positively dim in the room, yet I was still able to capture a perfectly acceptable image at 1/100sec, f5.6 ISO400! The image was somewhat noisy in processing, but not offensively so, and which was handily dealt with by Lightroom.

Due to the poor weather, the ceremony was held indoors, and our post-ceremony images were drastically limited, but despite these problems, I was able to salvage some decent images.

The extra-wide field of view afforded by a full-frame sensor was an absolute joy. I’m a lover of wide angle photography, and never have I been able to get as wide as this with my Tamron 24-135 on my 350D. After the rains had eased, we were treated to some spectacular skies. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to get out the flash and add some strobist juice. The groom’s sister was my cheerful and helpful assistant, holding the flash.

Lighting info:
Canon 5D
1/100sec @ f/20, ISO100
Tamron 24-135mm @ 24mm
Canon 580EX @ 1/4 power

This photo ended up being my favourite for the day, and I knew it was so as soon as I saw it on the back of the camera.

I mentioned it earlier, but the low-light performance of the 5D, coupled with the 50mm f1.8 allowed me to capture images that just wouldn’t have been possible with the 350D. Not only was the chip giving me greater sensitivity, the expanded ISO to 3200 increased my shooting range, and the trade-off was sensor noise, which in my opinion was less offensive in quality than that on the 350D.

Even my favourite lens, the Sigma 8mm f4 fisheye was supercharged by the 5D. No longer was I shooting a cropped circle, but a full 360 by 180 degree hemisphere of the world. The spherical image may not be to everyone’s taste, but with the higher resolution sensor on the 5D, you still have plenty of room to crop. If you do crop down, you’ll probably end up with a similar resolution to what I get on the 350D. However, if you want to get the full 360 degree circle with an 8mm lens, only a full-frame sensor will do.

With my appetite whet to the luxury of full frame DSLRs, I cannot wait to get my hands on a 5D MkII. I suspect everything I loved about the 5D will be there, but better :) I’m giggling like a schoolgirl at the thought of it!