My learnings from shooting my first (very tiny) wedding as a solo official photographer.

L0n3Gr3yW0lf

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Location
Somerset, UK
Name
Ovi
Hello. So this Friday I shot a friend's wedding, it was a very short event with only 8 and 1/2 people (their 2-year-old daughter was with them) at the local registry. There was no church or main event. Unfortunately, the couple was giving me low expectations and organization on what they wanted or how to proceed (which I know it's always a red flag). So I "plan" was to try to be adaptable because there might not be much cooperation on the day. So I learned (or remembered why) I don't do well with pressure, and responsibility and still have anxiety around people. I will definitely now do this as a profession or even a side gig (only for friends and once they understand what they are asking and what they should expect.)

The gear, in trying to keep things simple I did not take a lot with me and it was good that I did not because the groom was not interested in having many pictures being taken, I had little time for lens swapping:
*Sony a7R II + 3 spar (fully charged) batteries
*2 SD cards
*Tamron 28-75mm f 2.8 Di III VXD G2
*Samyang AF 35mm f 1.8 FE
*Tokina atx-m 85mm f 1.8 FE
*Crumpler Quick Escape 800
*A small towel, a small lens cloth and a lens brush

The gear frustrations. This can be attributed to my lack of experience and usage of the system in events and portrait situations. The anxiety of being rushed did not make it easy as I had a few panic moments when I realised I should have used different settings for the situation. Luckily there are not many moments lost due to this but it sure did not make things better/easier.

*Autofocus. (I am sure there will be those who will start with *Back in my day we didn't have such a thing, etc* and I don't want to debate the difference between how much time one can put into learning a skill, vs how much money can buy you shortcuts by easier/better features and performances.) The Sony a7R II has frustrated me in the past with its autofocus performance, be it AF-S or AF-C, but it got me into a new level of anxiety when I lock onto someone's face and it drifts after 2 shots to an object or someone closer to the camera. I have tried using Lock On AF-C with the smallest AF point and I still had issues where the camera would focus on glasses (of drinks) or bouquets of flowers in front of the subject even though the objects were on the 2/3rds part of the frame in the composition. The lack of an AF joystick also frustrated me immensely because I could get the AF point to the right place fast enough. But I was not tempted to Manual Focus instead not one little bit because I would not be able to do a better job.
On the good side of things, I haven't seen much of any focus hunting with either of the 3 lenses I had with me, and in low light, the Tamron 28-75mm f 2.8 G2 did incredibly well with only one moment of a hiccup where I was shooting at f 13 to get enough DoF and decent sharpness for everyone in the room (unfortunately the way the room was set up all the family and friends were sitting on the left and right side of the newly weeds and there were about 5 meters from the farthest person to the bride and groom).

*Sharpness/Shutter Speed/Low Light. Indoors it was a struggle, though it was a decently bright day with a few clouds here and there, and the room had large-ish stained glass, I tried to keep 1/125th of a second minimum shutter speed. I did feel like I wish I could have gone one more above but there wasn't a lot of motion so all the images were sharp enough (if AF wasn't getting in the way). With f 2.8 I haven't had many issues but for the difficulty of having enough DoF for at least 2 people in the frame, there were moments where I had to go down to f 5.6, f 8 or even f 13 to gain more DoF. I do not own or particularly enjoy using Flash so I had to leave ISO to be the deciding factor in the exposure. While I did have -0.7 EV Exposure Compensation always on indoors to keep the Highlights from blowing because the groom had a white suit and the bride had a pretty bright pink dress, the ISO was pretty bouncy for the indoors, from 640 when they were right under the big ceiling lamps to ISO 6.400 from the black wood beams, dark brown bottom half wall frames and the big tables. It was frustrating to edit the pictures to keep the noise level under control.

*IQ from the lenses and the camera. First, the Sony a7R II, still manages to impress me with how much you can get from the 42 MP sensor and I can understand why some people may find it difficult to go for less. I have given myself a bit of leeway when it comes to compositions by shooting wider than what I framed in my mind because I did not know what to expect (I have never been to a "British style" wedding and it's different than Romanian ones) but I had enough MP and details to crop in while keeping the images that I wanted in the end. The ISO noise can get intrusive at ISO 3.200 and a bit more frustrating at ISO 6.400 because it limits the amount of flexibility you have with the exposure manipulation. I had a few images where shadow noise was limited to 33% of what I could push safely and the highlights would get blocked into grey at more than 75% reduction. I have tried to shoot with Electronic Shutter for a few images because my shutter was getting noticeable for some of the people in the room but I got banding on the walls so fast I stopped after about 5 pictures and stuck with the mechanical shutter the entire time.
The lens quality was a bit of a mixed bag:
1) Tamron 28-75mm f 2.8 G2, I am consistently amazed by how good the lens is for its price and size. (While I have never used a lens more "expensive" than this I can not attest to any "better" lenses) The lens is very sharp no matter what focal length I put it to, the sharpness is very good for at least 80% of the entire frame and the drop-off in the last 20% is only at f 2.8 and once you stop down to f 4 or f 5.6 it improves. There is a bit of distortion at 28mm at the very edge but it's better than what 24mm would do to your subjects in the same area. I have found myself not needing to correct for Chromatic Aberrations nearly as much as my other 2 lenses and it's limited to only the highest contrasty areas in the frame (typically around light sources). Vignetting is manageable but if you are shooting at ISO higher than 3.200 the corners can get excessive noise so it's better to reduce the vignetting correction instead and accept darker corners. The bokeh is just wonderful for this lens, it's not prime level but it's better than all the zooms I have tried. I don't think I will ever sell this lens and I would rather duplicate the range with other lenses instead because of the versatility of this lens.
2) Samyang AF 35mm f 1.8 FE. I am liking the lens and this was the first time putting it to the portrait test. The AF is fast and accurate. After editing the images there are a few things that are annoying, first is the Chromatic Aberrations, they can get a bit out of hand in high-contrast areas. Where they frustrated me was on the foliage around the subject and on sharp/metallic objects. The Lens Profile correction does nothing to fix them, the Eye-Dropper does reduce them by about 50% but I need to use a Brush with +100 Defringe to actually get rid of them. And they can be intrusive with more than 5 pixels deep, pink and purple are very noticeable. The green fringing is more reasonable and it can give character to the bokeh and the image so I tend to leave that alone most of the time. The sharpness of the lens is VERY GOOD, at the centre, it looks sharper than my Tamron and at the edges, it looks A LOT sharper than my Tamron. This lens is definitely a keeper if I can get used to shooting with a fixed 35mm focal length. In some of my recent uploads of street photography, I have cropped so much from 35mm that it looked like a 100mm lens and it was still sharp and clear.
3) Tokina atx-m 85mm f 1.8 FE. At first, I was not sure about this lens because of the autofocus, on fast-moving subjects, it can struggle a lot (especially with Sony a7R II's Lock On drifting away very quickly) but on static subjects, it's really accurate. Some of my favourite and best images from the wedding were made with this lens (I wouldn't say it's surprising because it's the shallowest DoF lens I have ever owned and used so there's definitely a first-time romance going on between us). The lens is very sharp at the centre (it can catch pores on the skin better than most women's facial skin care products :p ), and the lens is very contrasty as well, I love the colour rendition. The bokeh is just beautiful, very round and smooth, with very beautiful transitions. The only downside I have found with this lens is the Chromatic Aberrations, they are worse than Samyang and very bad compared to Tamron. I have spent time trying to correct them the most out of all the images from the wedding because it has 5-10 pixel wide purple fringing, blue fringing and green fringing. The fringing is also Longitudinal as it is shown in the foreground as purple and in the background as green. The high-contrast areas bloom a bit and have colour fringing that can mix if you shoot very close to your subject. 1/3rd of my day of editing the pictures was just trying to get the fringing in control so it's not so noticeable but given that it was a wedding with very strong contrasty clothes it's not something I could ignore.
Lens Profile Correction does nothing for this lens like Samyang's so I had to remove them manually. I can see why professionals would pay more for better-corrected lenses if it saves them time having to deal with it in post. (I might as well if I had the money). I still love this lens so far and I can't wait to try it more.

*Practical learnings: I need to have a sit down with the people I am photographing and get a better boundary of what they want and what they need to do to get those shots. I don't want to have to "herd" people around and get them annoyed if they prefer doing something else. I never had people skills and I don't know if I can manage it, one of the reasons why this is not a prospect of income or enjoyment for me. But since I'm "only" 34 I expect I will have at least a handful of "Please photograph my wedding" before I can tell them "I'm getting too old for this ?$*^". Money doesn't buy you skills but also time costs money too, and with the way the UK (and the world) is going right now with inflation I don't know if I can sacrifice the time to learn the skills (faster) or sacrifice the money to get better gear. The one thing I really want to do next year is get the Sony a7 Mark IV for the AF and the speed improvement, I might trade in my Sony a7R II if I must make it happen.
 
I have received permission to share 2 pictures from a friend of the family's wedding to share and use them in my portfolio:

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After the wedding, we headed home for a barbeque one of the friends wanted a picture and I was allowed to make a few, snapped a handful as I was intrigued to see how the Tokina atx-m 85mm f 1.8 FE does. I am quite pleased with how the picture came out image quality-wise.

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She is also very happy with the two pictures.
 
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