10/06/2012

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

By Dan Feildman




There're typically four types of photography lenses that every wedding photographer should 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 essential photography lenses that every wedding photographer should have, typically 17 mm to 35 mm in length with a fixed aperture of f/2.8. They provide a large depth of field, making it simple to have foreground and background in focus. They may be 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 surroundings to tell a richer story.

To elaborate more, wide angle zoom photography lenses permit you to shoot a wider perspective of moments happening around the major subject, therefore providing a bigger picture of the whole event. For example, wide angle images have the ability to tell "stories within a story", allowing you to reveal more of the story behind the shot. This is essential for a good photojournalistic wedding photography. As events surrounding weddings are so time sensitive, excellent photography lenses will permit you to capture as many actions or emotions in the fastest time as possible.

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

However, you need to be selective of the scenes or actions using wide angle photography lenses, as a caveat to shooting wide is that it makes some body distortion, especially when a subject is photographed close-up. Normally, people tend to look heavier and shorter on the edges, while arms can look huge. The last thing you want is to have the bride cursing you for making her look like she has put on ten pounds! To get around this problem, you should as far as possible avoid putting the bride and groom at the edges of the wide-angle distortion. Furthermore, wide-angle photography lenses may also introduce distracting or undesirable elements into the frame, which could otherwise spoil a picture perfect moment.

Wide-to-Telephoto Zoom: Wide to Telephoto lenses are the single most important photography lenses that a wedding photographer can't 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 picture 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. Additionally they double as excellent lenses for portraits. Given this lens, you'd be able to capture the majority of the shots necessary for a wedding nicely.

Image Stabilized Telephoto Zoom: Image Stabilized telephoto zoom lenses are also crucial items in your wedding photography tools checklist. The 70-200mm focal length is a vital range for wedding ceremony photographs. It enables you to give your subjects more room in conditions where you don't want to get in the way. Since you will often be photographing down the aisle from the back of the church, image stabilized telephoto zoom lenses will come in very handy. 200mm is good enough to be able to take 3/4 length photos of the bride and groom exchanging their vows while staying at a fair distance away from the action and 70mm is wide enough to take in the groomsmen or bridesmaids as a group without switching photography lenses.

A good point to note is that while using this kind of photography lenses, nice blurred background could be achieved with maximum wide apertures of f/2.8 and long focal lengths of 200mm or 300mm, 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 image as the primary subject you wish to portray. Such photography lenses are particularly useful for shots where you're unable to get in close and for personal and private moments, where you want to be an unobserved stranger at a distance. A few examples include a stolen glance, a mischievous grin, a kiss - the details that are effectively conveyed by the emotions. Image Stabilized telephoto zoom photography lenses therefore play an important role in capturing this sort of moments.




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