Don: If you volunteer (my suggestion is don't, but let your sister hire a professional) make doubly sure all your equipment WORKS. Once I was the best man and the photographer for a very close friend of mine. I was busier that the entire bride and grooms' families combined. Just try to photograph the wedding party at the altar when you're standing next to the groom, kinda hard to do. We had to pose a few shots rather than shooting quietly from the back of the church or the balcony. The worst horror story I can tell occurred several years later when I was asked to photograph the wedding of one of my wife's bridesmaids in the early 1970s, whose family also lived across the street from my in-laws. At that time I used a Bronica S2A 6x6 (which used some of the best Nikkor optics I have ever seen). Yes, the 2 1/4 by 2 1/4 Bronica used Nikkor optics. I had a 50mm wide angle, 75mm "normal", 200mm telephoto, and a 400mm 4.5 super tele. The 400mm interchanged with Nikon 35mm cameras by changing focusing units. Like I said the optics for using 120 or 220 film were tack sharp. Now the rest of the horror story. I had 2 S2A bodies and unbeknownst to me the X-flash sync on the one I happened to use at that wedding went haywire. I was a nunt about checking and rechecking the X-sync so it wasn't operator error. Anyway out of probably 50 exposures I made as the "official" photographer the only ones that came out were the three or four time exposures I had shot. Needless to say my name was mud in my wife's hometown of 1,500 persons. I was never asked again to be the "official" photographer. To ease the pain to the bride's family I told them to give me the negs from all the "family" (most of which were 110s) cameras and I'd have prints made at my expense. I got the S2A repaired and it worked fine, then Kokak discontinued manufacturing Ektacolor pro negative film and changed to Vericolor. I don't know what Kodak did to the paper backing on its 120 Vericolor, but the film would never wind tight. The film would sometimes leave a 1/32 or so open space on 1 end of the roll. I even wasted several rolls of Vericolor in daylight with the interhcangeable back open trying to get it to wind right, but it never would . I was told by the camera store where I bought most of my film that Vericolor had a thinner paper backing. I even sent my 4 interchangeable 120/220 backs to EPOI (then the Nikon/Bronica USA importer) for repair and paid a bundle for that, it still didn't work. I even wanted to buy a new Bronica 6x6 I think was called the ECTL that had the shutter speed displayed in the viewfinder, but even the new electronic Bronica didn't like the Vericolor paper backing. I ended up selling the Bronica system and buying a Mamiya C-330F TLR. Don't worry I'm a firm Nikon fan I now use a Photomic F, FM, FE, F3, plus an N70 my wife bought me last Christmas along with the 28-80D zoom. I later bought the Nikkor 70-300D zoom to go with it. Sorry about taking up so much bandwidth space, but the best advice is let your sister and her fiance hire a professional to do his job, then if you want to take some candids at the wedding go ahead. That's what we did for my oldest son's wedding in 1997. Tom Anderson Bedford, Texas > > > Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 11:47:31 -0500 > From: "Curfman, Donald (GEIS)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: RE: Volunteer Wedding Photographer [v04.n261/2] [v04.n264/6] > Message: 6 > > > >>my sister in law asked me to be the > >>photographer on her wedding. > > > DON'T DO IT!!! > > Heh -- well, at least be really careful. > > When I was working in a camera store as > a teenager, this woman came in complaining > that we'd messed up the pictures her husband > had taken of her sister's wedding. > > I looked at the negatives -- the poor guy > had shot the whole roll with the shutter > speed set too fast for his flash. One > third of each frame was perfect, the rest > was clear. > > It's an easy mistake to make, but it's also > an easy mistake to avoid. > > Don't let anybody touch any of your equipment, > and check every control on the camera, lens > and flash, every single time you pick it up. > > You might want to shoot 3 or 4 throw-away > shots at the start of each roll, and ask the > lab to do a clip test before developing the > roll so they can adjust if they have to. > > If you're really paranoid, two different cameras, > and two shots of everything on two different rolls > of film, developed by two different labs, approaches > being fool-proof -- But you don't have to be paranoid. > Careful is almost always good enough. > > -Don >
