Wedding Session Afterthoughts: Tamron 20-40mm f/2.8 Di III VXD.
First things first. Congratulations to the Clarks. It was an honor to be asked to capture images of their special day.
This will be a relatively short one. My wide lens solution for 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.
A lens so good it displaced both a favorite wide lens and a Sony prime.
I brought it for wide angle pics. I do not take many at a wedding but I do take them, so it is a must have for me.
And this wedding was no different. I used it to capture images of the remembrance display,…
…a couple of interior venue pics,…
…but most notably when I was called on to take a pic of the groom and groomsmen in a tight space.
This is most often my “I can’t back up anymore” lens. With a wall right behind me there was no way I could have captured this scene (The 35mm of my wunder zoom lens would have cropped off each side.) other than taking out my phone and using its wide angle lens. While that would be fine outside this scene was so dimly lit that flash was called for, not post edit trickery. Other may say differently. Personal preference. Could make a phone work… but that is what I have this set up for.
Worth it to me.
I did not call out the camera because this lens would do just fine on any Sony body from the A7III…
…forward. I also read a rumor that this lens may soon be available for Nikon also. Good times.
That wraps up the also rans. My next two posts will be about the stars of the gear assembled that day.
Happy capturing.
-ELW
Eric L. Woods 
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