This was my first wedding to use a 50mm lens almost exclusively. I pulled out the 75-300mm zoom lens once to do some close-up shots of some of the decor. The 50mm performed admirably. I had to be more active though and it forced me to re-think some angles. I think that made for a better variety of shots.

The ceremony, being indoors, required a bit more setup than I’ve done in the past. The lens helps to a degree. I can’t always shoot with a wide aperture because it limits the depth of field too much. Because of the angles I was at, I needed to make sure that enough people were in focus to make the shot usable.

Fozia and Mike gave me a lot of room to work with and were very accommodating. I was able to set up my lighting system in a way that lit up the room so that wherever I was, there was enough light to get the shot.

I used two umbrella strobes set in slave mode so that my any on-camera flash would trigger it. There’s an automatic setting for the flash that gives beautiful exposures if you do a pre-flash to lock the exposure. A wedding ceremony is too fast to be constantly locking the exposure for each shot. I set the flash manually and lowered the flash output on the camera (so I don’t waste battery), and just took pictures without worrying about the lighting anymore.

Slave strobes are a funny thing. They have an eye that detects a flash from any camera. They were pretty busy with other guests taking pictures also. I would hope that it improved their shots too, but I can’t be certain. When a strobe fires, there’s a tremendous energy release. It has to re-build the energy for the next shot. The time it takes to rebuild the energy is called the recycle time. Cameras with built-in flash use a battery, so sometimes the recycle time can be a few seconds long. With everyone else triggering the strobes, it can make a battery powered strobe be unavailable when you need it. The strobes I have are AC powered, so I never worried about recycle times. They were always ready.

We went to Lake Chaparral, in SW Calgary for the formals. The fall colours are an amazing feature for any shot. The lake offered a couple of waterfalls to work with, as well as many bridges, rock features, ponds, flower gardens, and a simple gazebo. The trees are significantly mature enough to offer a more forested feeling. My only complaint is that we spent too much time wanting to shoot something at each new feature. But I loved the gangster theme!