Margie28 wrote:Hi everyone,
I had a hard time shooting in low light at the ceremony and I had to use the fill flash and lower the ISO to 200 and sometimes to 400.
Do you have the same experience?
Thanks for your input
I would not consider a macro lens to be of the most use at a wedding, unless one wanted to take close ups of the bouquet etc., in which case a zoom lens with macro would work.
The conventional use for a proper macro lens is set for exposure and magnification with the whole camera then being moved along the camera to subject axis to focus. To be sure such as the Minolta 100mm Macro D f/2.8-32, and doubtless the Sigma 50mm example, can be used to get that wider f/2.8 aperture and focused at any distance but many pro’ wedding photographers tend to use a limited number of wide maximum aperture prime lenses and perhaps a single zoom.
I know this is the set up that the photographer (Shootinghip) at my son’s recent wedding (see Verity & Carl Langrish House if you look it up at
http://www.shootinghip.com/weddings.asp) used on his Canons, primes being preferred for this type of work he did not use flash indoors. This photographer, who remarked, tongue in cheek, ‘Not often I am outgunned by the groom’s father’, professed to be an ex-Minolta user who changed when tired of waiting for a DSLR. I wonder if Minolta would still be around if they had been quicker off the blocks with one such. Maybe not, some signs were already there that the market was skewed.
I wished that I had the Minolta HS AF 80-200mm APO G at the time of that wedding, but there were occasions when a wide field, in close was required and my 14mm Sigma EX f/2.8-f/22 came in handy there.
I have a Sigma 70-300mm APO Macro with a proper macro facility but only up to 1:2. The macro works by operating a mechanical interlock slider when the focal length is set at 300mm, the focus ring can then be used to extend the barrel which is graduated 1:3.5, 1:3, 1:2.5, 1:2. This Sigma, even at 1:3.5, focuses closer than the Minolta AF zoom 75-300mm 1:4.5 (32) – 5.6 D but then the Sigma’s barrel extends for a considerable distance which gives it a better claim to having a macro facility.
I am still evaluating the Sigma, a SH purchase, which could make a handy addition to a minimalist bag – my physical health is no longer able to cope with too much load for even a moderate duration (I just love it when some insist you must always use a tripod
).
Your remarks about upping the ISO to 400 makes me smile. I recall trying to catch Phantom aircraft as they caught a wire on Ark Royal in the early 1970s (I was an airframes/engine technician, artificer in the RN, on the Phantom squadron) using manual focus, exposure and wind-on with Kodachrome II transparency film of 25ASA (as the film sensitivity scale was then known outside of Germany), on a Minolta of course.
Kodachrome II has proved the longest lived emulsion of the four that I tried at that time, Kodachrome II of 25ASA, Agfa CT-18 of 50ASA, Fujichrome (from 1971) of 100 ASA (thought this was fast at the time) and Ektachrome which had an ASA rating of greater than 100, 160 I think, but I cannot recall exactly, there was also a variant with 64ASA.