Hi Ruby,

Don't worry too much..... When you arrive in a venue just adjust your camera settings and put your flash in TTL mode. In the situation you describe i assume you probably use on-camera bounce flash. Leave your camera settings and ride the FEV. And make sure you shoot in RAW. This gives you more latitude in post processing.
In this way you can concentrate on your subject and don't have to pay to much attention on your equipment.

check:
http://neilvn.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/8-flash-exposure-comp/

Hope this helps,
Jeroen

Thanks for that, I'm fine inside. All of the weddings I have shot so far have been out doors, nothing to bounce off. The next three are outside too, I try to move around a fair bit getting different angles crowd shots etc. Will AV do in this situation, with sometimes a bit of fill. Cheers Ruby.

Hi Ruby,

Sorry, i made a wrong assumption....but: even outdoor manual mode would be my first choice. Check this:
http://neilvn.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/6-flash-outdoors/

You can use Av or Tv and leave it to the camera. BUT...the camera does what it deems right and you have to check that one way or the other. When you use manual mode you have full control and you know that the exposures are consistent.

A situation i can think of when it becomes very difficult too shoot in a hurry is when light levels are changing all the time very rapidly.....open shade to fully sun lit ect. I find this kinds of circumstances very challenging but Av or Tv won't help me with that.

In tis kind of situation i switch to spot metering, concentrate on the subject and the rest of the image falls in place.

Can you describe what you expect and which challenges you think to encounter with this weddings?

regards, Jeroen

Thanks Jeroen, I had the chance to practice at a small wedding the other day. I went all M mode. We were outside the day was hot and very bright so the Bride decided to be under a tree with her back to the sun. No bad sun on them so in open shade. I took some exposure readings 1/30 @f5.6 iso 200 flash -2. I wanted to just use a little fill flash. This exposure was looking good for the dress etc, but I don't have any shutter speed so camera shake will trouble me.( I not that steady) I don't like to go over iso 200 on the 7d and I wanted f5.6. I noticed with Neils shots his shutter speed is 1/250 What are my options here? Cheers Ruby

Ruby,

Just a question as to why you don't want to go over 200 ISO on the 7D, it's a great camera and will easily handle 1600+. I would have no hesitation using that to get the shutter speeds up.

Check out the very last image bottom right, download from under the "Sample RAW Images" shot at 1/80th, f5.6 ISO 3200 on 18-135mm @ 57mm lens. Beautiful.
Obviously shot in very low light conditions.
http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/canon_eos_7d_review/sample_images/

As to how to handle fluid changing lighting, like Jeroen, I still stick to manual personally, and am so used to my camera I can change via the rear dial the aperture quickly the 2-3 stops I may encounter, since I am already at f11-13 95% of the time outdoors in sun anyway, so a few quick clicks to drop to f5.6 or f4, while looking thru viewfinder at the meter to judge quickly.

Advantage of shooting in RAW of course, you can be 'out' and still easily fix. Obviously with shooting in mixed lighting, it's so more complicated with the dynamic range limits imposed.

But if I am chasing the Bride/Groom and they walk into a patch of sunlight, regardless of what the rest of the image is doing I immediately dial to sunlight aperture of around f11 and just keep shooting, & vice-versa.

Jeroen said: A situation i can think of when it becomes very difficult too shoot in a hurry is when light levels are changing all the time very rapidly.....open shade to fully sun lit ect. I find this kinds of circumstances very challenging but Av or Tv won't help me with that.

That is so true, you have to be in control.

Trev.

I don't like the noise on the 7d, so I try to shoot under 200 iso most of the time. I must try hi iso's and see if I can improve on it. Is there any 7d setting in camera that will help with noise. I shoot in RAW and use light room 3. Cheers

Ruby .. this is odd. I have played with the Canon 7D, and I found the 1600 ISO setting to be quite usable. I wouldn't have hesitated in using that high an ISO for my wedding work, if I had used the 7D.

Ruby,

Ditto Neil's comments, I have 2 friends who shoot with 7D's and both absolutely love it.
1 shoots a lot of night time scenes, streets, cars, buildings and regularly uses 1600 and her prints are gorgeous.

The other guy uses his for macro/wildlife, close-up, and often is around the 800+ ISO shooting in rain forests, darkish places with bugs/fungi, etc, and he wins awards all over Australia with 16x20 & above prints.

Go for it! Did you download any of those RAW samples, check them out.

I have attached 2 images, shot at ISO 400, from that site, the first is the original file [resized] and the 2nd is my edited version, keeping the sky, but opening up the badly underexposed background, and if there ever was a test for ISO above 200 plus badly underexposed, [which is the worst for noise] this is it.

It's sized to 8x12, save the adjusted version, print it, and see how it goes.
I sized that to 8x12 and only saved it @ jpeg Level 7, but I bet it will print perfectly.

Did I use a Noise removal program, nope, not even in ACR. Actually I even reduced exposure again by -.3 to retain sky, and took off the contrast, opened in Photoshop, ran my super action set, and got this result.

Trev.

But back to Ruby's original question .... I rarely shoot in another mode than Manual exposure mode.

The few times where I will switch over to Program, is where I am swinging the camera between sunlit areas and shaded areas. But other than that, the Auto modes just complicate my life.