There’re generally four kinds of photography lenses that each and every wedding photographer should have in his/her gig bag:
* Wide-Angle Zoom
* Wide to Telephoto Zoom
* Image-Stabilized Telephoto Zoom
* Prime/Portrait Lenses
Wide-Angle Zoom: Wide Angle zoom lenses are among the most critical photography lenses that every wedding photographer should have, usually 17mm to 35mm in length with a fixed aperture of f/2.8. They offer a large depth of field, making it simple to have foreground and background in focus. They are a vital wedding photography equipment that allows flexibility in confined areas such as a small banquet room or crowded dance floor. While shorter photography lenses permit you to capture more details, wide angle zoom lenses permit you to capture more reactions and atmosphere to tell a better story.
To elaborate further, wide angle zoom photography lenses allow you to shoot a wider perspective of moments happening around the main subject, hence providing a greater picture of the whole event. For instance, wide-angle photos have the capability to tell “stories inside a story”, letting you uncover more of the story behind the shot. This is essential for a good photojournalistic wedding photography. As events around weddings are so time sensitive, good photography lenses will permit you to catch as many actions or emotions in the quickest time as possible.
When used in a place like the ballroom or church, wide-angle zoom photography lenses also magnify the grandeur and space of the area, which encapsulates the artistic feel for a photojournalistic wedding photography.
However, you have to be selective of the scenes or actions using wide angle photography lenses, as a caveat to shooting wide is that it creates some body distortion, specially when a subject is photographed close-up. Normally, people tend to look heavier and shorter on the edges, while arms can look large. The last thing you want is to have the bride cursing you for making her seem she has put on ten pounds! To get around this issue, you need to as far as possible avoid putting the bride and groom at the edges of the wide-angle distortion. Also, wide angle photography lenses might also introduce distracting or unwanted elements into the frame, which would otherwise ruin a picture-perfect moment.
Wide to Telephoto Zoom: Wide to Telephoto lenses are the single most important photography lenses that a wedding photographer cannot do without. They should ideally be lenses which cover somewhere around the 20-70 mm focal length range with an aperture of f/2.8. This ideal range lets you get wide enough to take a group photograph and close enough to capture facial emotions in your candid shots or a three quarter portrait of a couple without the unwanted effects of wide-angle perspective distortion. Additionally they double as good lenses for portraits. Given this lens, you would be able to capture the majority of the shots essential for a wedding decently well.
Image-Stabilized Telephoto Zoom: Image Stabilized telephoto zoom lenses are also important items in your wedding photography equipment checklist. The 70-200 mm focal length is a significant range for wedding ceremony pictures. It lets you give your subjects more space in situations where you don’t want to get in the way. Since you will sometimes be photographing down the aisle from the back of the church, image-stabilized telephoto zoom lenses will come in really handy. 200 mm is good enough to be able to take 3/4 length photos of the wedding couple exchanging their vows while staying at a fair distance away from the action and 70 mm is wide enough to take in the groomsmen or bridesmaids as a group without switching photography lenses.
A good point to note is that while using such photography lenses, wonderful blurred background can be attained with maximum wide apertures of f/2.8 and long focal lengths of 200 mm or 300 mm, whether you are using a full-frame or a small sensor body. This allows you to isolate the subject from its background, and to focus attention on the picture as the main subject you wish to portray. This sort of photography lenses are specifically useful for shots where you are unable to get in close and for personal and private moments, where you want to be an unobserved stranger at a distance. A few examples include a stolen glance, a mischievous grin, a kiss – the details which are effectively conveyed by the emotions. Image Stabilized telephoto zoom photography lenses hence play an important role in capturing this kind of moments.
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