There're generally four types of photography lenses that each and every wedding photographer must 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 vital photography lenses that every wedding photographer must have, usually 17mm to 35mm in length with a fixed aperture of f/2.8. They offer a huge depth of field, making it easy to have foreground and background in focus. They are an essential wedding photography tools which allows versatility in confined areas like a small banquet room or crowded dance floor. While shorter photography lenses allow you to catch more details, wide angle zoom lenses enable you to catch more reactions and atmosphere to tell a livelier story.
To explain more, wide-angle zoom photography lenses enable you to shoot a wider perspective of moments happening around the major subject, hence providing a bigger picture of the entire event. For instance, wide angle pictures have the capability to tell "stories inside a story", allowing you to uncover more of the story behind the shot. This is essential for a good photojournalistic wedding photography. As events around weddings are extremely time sensitive, excellent photography lenses will enable you to capture as many actions or emotions in the quickest time as possible.
When used in a place such as the church or ballroom, wide angle zoom photography lenses also magnify the grandeur and spaciousness of the area, which encapsulates the creative feel for a photojournalistic wedding photography.
But, you have to be picky of the scenes or actions using wide angle photography lenses, as a caveat to shooting wide is that it makes some body distortion, especially when a subject is photographed close-up. Normally, people often look heavier and shorter on the edges, while arms may look large. The final thing you need is to have the bride cursing you for making her seem she has put on 10 pounds! To go 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 may also introduce distracting or undesired elements into the frame, which could otherwise spoil a picture perfect moment.
Wide to Telephoto Zoom: Wide-to-Telephoto lenses are the most crucial photography lenses that a wedding photographer cannot do without. They should ideally be lenses that cover around the 20-70 mm focal length range with an aperture of f/2.8. This ideal range allows you to get wide enough to take a group picture and close enough to catch facial emotions in your candid shots or a three-quarter portrait of a couple without the undesirable effects of wide-angle perspective distortion. They also double as good lenses for portraits. Given just this lens, you would be able to capture most of the shots necessary for a wedding nicely.
Image Stabilized Telephoto Zoom: Image-Stabilized telephoto zoom lenses are also crucial components of your wedding photography equipment checklist. The 70-200mm focal length is a significant range for wedding ceremony photos. It allows you to give your subjects more room in conditions where you don't want to obstruct. As you'll sometimes be photographing down the aisle from the back of the church, image-stabilized telephoto zoom lenses will come in very useful. 200mm is good enough to be able to take 3/4 length photographs 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 bridesmaids or groomsmen as a group without switching photography lenses.
A good point to note is that while using this sort of photography lenses, wonderful blurred background could 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 image as the primary subject you desire to portray. This kind 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. Some 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 such moments.
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