Travel Photo Tips: What is metering, and how does it affect my pictures?

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LB, I'm not exactly an amateur and I'm scared to death about doing weddings too. In fact, my main regret when it comes to photography is not apprenticing as a wedding shooter years ago, since I've subsequently missed out on tens of thousands of bucks shooting friends' weddings in the past several years after refusing to "ruin their big day." ;)

If you're inside a church, the light is likely gonna suck. Without flash you'll need to crank the ISO (800-3200), and but you really shouldn't go higher than 800 or maybe 1600 unless you have a newer camera body that handles high ISOs well. A Canon Mark IV, 5D Mark II or 7D, or Nikon D3, D3s, or D700 would be the current bodies out there that could comfortably handle ISOs higher than 800 or 1600 IMO. And it goes without saying that you'll probably need to open your f/stop as wide as possible to let in more light.

If you want to use flash, keep in mind that your in-camera shutter speed will not be able to exceed 1/200th or 1/250th of a second (depending on your body). However, the flash basically provides a faster shutter speed for you, so you can realistically drop your ISO to 400 or perhaps less and get away with it.

Though you mention you hate it, I think you may have to play around with bouncing or using a diffuser. If it's a large church bouncing may not work well anyway.

Best advice is to show up early (or on another day prior to the wedding) with a date/guinea pig and have them pose for you as you run the camera/flash through its paces to familiarize yourself with the settings that will and won't work.

Max

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