For the last three or four weddings I've been to, I've been the official photographer and rather than spend the time relaxing and helping friends celebrate their big day I've been working hard to capture the day for the happy couple. It is no easy job being a wedding photographer that's for sure! There are constant time pressures on you throughout the day, you need good diplomacy skills when dealing with vicars / priests / registrars about what they will and won't let you do during the service and all the time you have to realise that you generally only have that one chance to get 'the shot'.
So, after those previous few weddings, it was a refreshing change to attend a wedding of some good friends of ours a few weeks ago as a guest. No major stresses to worry about - save for our 2 year old being the flower girl and me having to get her dressed and ready, whilst my wife who was bridesmaid, was looking after the bride!
The day gave me a chance to leave behind the heavy backpack containing my D-SLR camera, assortment of lenses and flashes and all the other gear that I take with me to a commissioned job. Instead I was able to take my relatively new
Panasonic Lumix G3 micro four thirds compact system camera in a light shoulder bag (a
Crumpler Muffin Top 2500). Accompanying that in the bag was just the 14-42mm kit lens and
Panasonic 20mm f1.7 pancake lens (for any low light shots where I didn't want to use flash).
I find I am using the G3 more and more these days when I'm out and about and want to travel light. It gives fantastic results and has the full manual control I'm after. I'm certainly finding it a great substitute to my D-SLR when so inclined. I have been meaning to try it out on a studio shoot sometime but that will be another post when it happens.
With our two year old sorted, dressed and back with her mum to accompany the bride, I could relax a bit and put the G3 to work. I was able to get a few minutes with the bride and groom to get some intimate couple shots of just the two of them (for some reason the 'official' photographer hadn't got got round to doing any of these).
Here are a selection - straight out of the camera with no manipulation, just a conversion to black and white in some cases. The G3 shoots in RAW + Jpeg if selected and these are just resized version of the Jpegs. The lens used for these particular shots was the 20mm f1.7 pancake lens (it was gone 8pm and starting to get dark when these were taken all at ISO 160 and either f1.7 or f2.0 with no flash).
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Lumix G3 with Panasonic 20mm f1.7 ISO160 |
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Lumix G3 with Panasonic 20mm f1.7 ISO160 |
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Lumix G3 with Panasonic 20mm f1.7 ISO160 |
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Lumix G3 with Panasonic 20mm f1.7 ISO160 |
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Lumix G3 with Panasonic 20mm f1.7 ISO160 |
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Lumix G3 with Panasonic 20mm f1.7 ISO160 |
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Lumix G3 with Panasonic 20mm f1.7 ISO160 |
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Lumix G3 with Panasonic 20mm f1.7 ISO160 |
So there you have it. Even though I wasn't the official photographer, I was able to get these images for our friends that otherwise wouldn't have been captured. They're really pleased with them which is the main thing for me.