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Home >> Learning >> e-Book on Wedding Photography Table of Contents Wedding Photography e-Book - Equipment Considerations
Just as professional photographers in other sectors of the industry can utilize a wide range of equipment to create their photos, so too do wedding photographers. The advent of digital as a high quality format onto its own will be discussed later on, as for now, I’ll discuss film cameras. While wedding professionals of old utilized large format cameras, I have never seen one in my local area using a large format camera. I think it would be interesting to utilize a 4x5 for some formal group shots, but the time required to setup, compose and expose does not lend itself well to many weddings days with limited time resources available. Medium format systems are as slow as one would want to get for photographing a wedding and many photographers just go straight 35mm format all the way. Both systems have their advantages and disadvantages, such that many photographers utilize both systems in their wedding day coverage and workflow. Medium Format The format that straddles the extreme of large format on one side and 35mm small format on the other, medium format has been a wedding photography workhorse system for probably half a century with the square format 6x6 Hasselblad being the king of the heap. Of course there are other medium format sizes of 6x4.5 and 6x7 (centimeters) that are also popular with the 645 the current darling of the medium format world because that is where all the technological evolution of the venerable system is occurring.
645 offer auto focus (comparable to late 1980s 35mm for speed and accuracy), evaluative metering and a host of other electronic conveniences that are taken for granted on even entry level 35mm cameras. Indeed, if one reviews the specifications of current topnotch 645 AF cameras, one would find them to be nearly identical to mid-level 35mm cameras. Such things as:
Additionally, because of the professional orientation of 645 AF systems, these cameras also offer:
These 645 AF systems aren’t cheap and they cost as much if not more than top notch 35mm equipment and you don’t have as many AF lenses available to you; however, Mamiya and Pentax do make their AF bodies compatible with their older manual focus lenses. Contax has no previous history with 645 medium format, so only AF lenses are available (the 120mm macro being an exception) for it. While it is the newest entry in the market, the Hasselblad H1 promises an adapter to mate the manual focus 6x6 format Zeiss lenses, making it probably the most comprehensive lens lineup in medium format 645 AF systems are an intriguing choice because while they offer many conveniences appreciated by photographers, these systems easily straddle the old world of film with the new world of digital rather than mating digital as an afterthought, as is the case with older cameras and impossible with others. One has to be a pretty high-end wedding photographer to be able to afford the astronomically high cost of the digital backs though. 6x7
Most would also picture a 6x7 system as being large and unwieldy and indeed when one sees a Mamiya RZ67 for the first time, the back seems to become instantly herniated at the prospects of carrying this beast for any length of time. However, the RB and RZ67 feature a wonderful convenience of a rotating film back that allows the camera to remain upright all the time with just the back rotating as required for a portrait or landscape mode photo. But if you thought the Mamiya’s are big, you should check out the Fuji 680 system, which is massive. It is this rotating back that makes the RB and RZ so big, since the camera is essentially a 7x7 cm system. The now discontinued Bronica GS-1 system had the distinction of being the most compact 6x7 SLR system on the market, but the caveat was that the whole camera had to be rotated to facilitate a portrait mode photo. Same for the granddaddy of 6x7 systems, the Pentax 67, unless a custom L bracket could be made or bought to prevent a precarious and sharpness killing flopping of the camera to one side of the tripod head. Since most photographers use tripods with their medium format rigs, size and weight is not a terrible concern and if you can afford an assistant to mule the bags and cases, so much the better, but then if you’re an amateur or part timer, probably not. Now while 645 offers a meaningful upgrade from 35mm format, 6x7 is a significant step up and would be the appropriate choice for poster-sized enlargements of the subjects. 35mm photographers like to console (and compensate) themselves with the knowledge that 35mm lenses are sharper than medium format lenses because the film size is so small that it requires such exquisite quality to obtain quality. While this may be technically true, the larger film surface of medium format provides such an increase in tonality and granularity that to my eyes, I can see the superiority in "most" 4x5 proof size prints let alone a wall size enlargement of 30x40 inches or larger. You can take my comments with a generous amount of salt, but I take such amounts myself whenever I read comments by 35mm shooters claiming zero difference in 8x10 or 11x14 enlargements between 35mm and medium format. Maybe in comparing machine made prints, but not when you have custom enlargements made and compared. If you want to maximize the quality of your wedding photos in an accessible and popular system, it is hard to argue against the Mamiya RZ67 as an excellent system with a wide assortment of top-notch lenses. For me though, with a limited budget and a desire for a system that could be handheld when desired but offers maximum convenience in film size format, I chose 6x6. 6x6 6x6 is obviously square, but it’s pretty hip with me. It is true enough that once 6x6 has been cropped, it is no more than 645; however, one does not need to be concerned with landscape or portrait at the time of shooting. Photograph now and crop later is the advantage to 6x6 and there is a certain beauty for the square format that one comes to appreciate when using it and how so many situations just work as a square print instead of having to be cropped to a rectangle.
The classic 6x6 system offered by Hasselblad in their V system (500 series) and the Bronica SQ-Ai knockoff (what I own) offer fast 1/500 flash sync speed, something also offered in Mamiya’s RZ67 system and Bronica’s 645 ETRSi system. The older Mamiya and Pentax 645 series cameras offer only 1/60 flash sync speed although both offer a limited selection of leaf-shutter lenses that can sync at faster speeds. The auto focus 645 systems offer no more than 1/125 flash sync speed due to the use of a focal plane shutter in the camera instead of leaf-shuttered lenses.
The leaf shutter can sync at higher speeds because the circular opening and closing of the shutter exposes the entire frame at once compared to focal plane shutters that exposes the frame in a top/down or right/left sequence that exposes in a partial fashion over the course of the shutter speed being used. There is a mechanical limit that manufacturers have not been able to push beyond 1/300 in the Nikon F5 and Minolta Maxxum 9 cameras.
To sum up, medium format offers:
Medium format disadvantages:
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Correspondence & About this website Copyright © 1998-2008 Edwin Leong |
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Photography
is obviously very equipment oriented. I, as well as others, can speak
out until we’re blue in the face that the equipment is merely a means
to an end and that end is a fine photograph that you, as the photographer,
must consciously be involved in producing. The camera, lens, filter,
tripod, etc., are all just the tools utilized to achieve that end result
just as a painter utilizes various brushes, paints and surfaces to create
his or her art. However, without the tools, there are no photographs,
so we must give more than a passing thought to equipment choices.
The
size and weight of these 645 AF systems from Mamiya, Contax and Pentax
are comparable to full-sized, professional 35mm bodies with pro-caliber,
constant f2.8 lenses, so it isn’t difficult to move from one system
to another. While these systems aren’t going to be of much use in high
paced sports arenas, for the much slower moving events of a wedding
day, they can certainly work well. (Actually Sports Illustrated still
uses radio controlled Hasselblads for some courtside basketball photos).
645
is the smallest of the triumvirate of popular medium format sizes with
6x7 the largest of the three. Although there have been a few different
camera systems based on 6x7, the one that most will think of and would
consider as a wedding solution is the Mamiya RB or RZ67; the RB being
an older system with less electronics and the RZ being more modern.
Leaf
shutter lenses are more expensive than lenses meant for focal plane
shutter cameras because of the inclusion of the shutter mechanism in
the lens itself to control the timing of the exposure. This adds more
parts and complexity and thus higher cost, but it provides the ability
to use larger apertures in bright daylight conditions, so that you can
obtain a pleasing blur in the background instead of having to stop down
the aperture to such a small setting that everything from the tip of
the bride’s nose to the hotdog stand in the background comes out sharply
in focus.
