Wedding Session Afterthoughts: RICOH GRIIIx Edition.
First things first. Congratulations to the Clarks. It was an honor to be asked to capture images of their special day.
My hero camera on this day.
But first…
Four weddings in I feel I am getting the hang of this wedding photography thing. As I stated in an earlier post:
- This is four more weddings than I ever expected to do.
And I have a fifth booked for later this year.
Oftentimes, wedding photography talk centers around gear.
Makes sense.
Of all of the types of photography I have pursued, no other has such a wide and conflicting grouping of requirements.
Detail pics.
Candid.
Low Light.
Fast AF.
Portraits.
Flash.
And anything else that comes up that you could never predict.
What I used for the first wedding…
…was a common setup.
Good light.
- A body and a short to long tele lens.
- A body and a wide-ish to short tele lens.
Meh light/Cave light.
- A body and a fast normal prime.
- A body and a fast portrait prime.
Since then, newer zoom lens types…
…have allowed for a much more simplified approach.
- One camera and one zoom lens.
Did I bring more stuff?
Yes.
Did I use other stuff?
Yes.
But that was a personal choice, not a need. Tamron did an amazing thing here. Created a new category of lens. Evidently, other companies agreed. Rokinon/Samyang basically copied off of Tamron’s homework and Sony is trying to upstage them with their own take on one lens for most purposes.
For this wedding I ran into a first time challenge for me.
Diabolical lighting.
Every wedding so far has been straightforward.
Wedding ceremony: Outside.
Reception: Inside.
Easy. Lighting was the only challenge to deal with.
The only lighting challenge involved so far was an afternoon wedding in December where we lost the sun between the ceremony and the reception. So it is still the amount of light, not the color of the light.
But this time was different.
Both the wedding and reception took place in the same location. I say first… A wonderful venue. Wonderful folks that were a pleasure to work with… But it had all the lighting.
And mixed lighting is of the devil. Sun on entry to the venue through the garage doors. Heavily backlit inside. Not sure for sure but LED and/or fluorescent inside and a near constant mix of all throughout, depending on the subject’s position and mine. And precious memories do not care about your preferred position.
This required some fiddling with the settings. Largely setting exposure to subject rather than scene, and understanding that white balance for the background will often be at odds with the subject. Thankfully courtesy of RAW file flexibility post editing was a thing. Necessary here, not a luxury.
On to the topic of this post.
I brought it for detail pics teamed with a pocket LED like the ring detail pic above (When I had the OG RICOH GR.). And to start us off that is exactly what I used it for.
Easy work with the GRIIIx macro mode. The camera was also great for other quick grabs like this one.
But what about the hero statement above? Welp. I had a bit of a self own event.
I had extra batteries on my person. And I used them. Extra SD cards however? I left them in my camera bag. The bag was neatly tucked away in backroom of the venue. Then I lost track of my image burn rate on my two main bodies.
Ran out of card space first on my do everything body.
No big. Went to my portrait/back up body.
Then soon after I ran out of card space on that… Just after the bride/groom fist dance and just as the groom/mother dance was to begin… Whee!
No big. Reached into my cargo pants pocket and started up with my RICOH GRIIIx.
I must have been a confusing sight to any photography people in the room. Two big honking cameras hanging off my left and right courtesy my wonderful Coiro dual camera harness…
…and holding up a tiny little point and shoot as I spun around the subjects behind the videographer to stay out of his shot.
The result? Success.
The main difference was the hit rate. Not as high as the Sony, which was no surprise, but plenty came through just fine. While appreciated for the groom/mother dance…
…it really did the thing while the bride/father reenacted the Kid and Play House Part dance.
It also came in handy for another purpose. This was my family so when a cousin group shot came up I was made to give up a camera so I could get into the shot. The GRIIIx was perfect to hand over. Easy to use and conveniently not double hooked to a harness.
So. A great result.
Happy capturing.
-ELW
Eric L. Woods 