For Weddings, prime or zoom

[PhotoGimp]

Whats your opinion, a wide to short tele zoom or low light prime? Favs?

[Lionheart]

Whats your opinion, a wide to short tele zoom or low light prime? Favs?

The lens that gets 95% of the shots during the ceremony in my wedding shoots is my 70-200 f2.8L IS. This lens gets me the shots without being obtrusive during the actual ceremony.For the posed shots after or before the wedding, whatever it takes, but my favorites are definintely primes, 50mm f1.4, 85 f1.8, 135 f2. It is somewhat inconvenient to change lenses, but the better quality from the primes is worth it. It helps to have at least two camera bodies and an assistant carrying the extra body and lenses. If you are alone, then carry two pro zooms 24-70 f2.8 and 70-200 f2.8 or something similar, and a quantum battery pack for your flash.
Just my two bits-I'm not a working pro, just a hobbyist, so take this with a healthy dose of salt ;)
Leon

[Franglais]

The lens that gets 95% of the shots during the ceremony in my wedding shoots is my 70-200 f2.8L IS. This lens gets me the shots without being obtrusive during the actual ceremony.For the posed shots after or before the wedding, whatever it takes, but my favorites are definintely primes, 50mm f1.4, 85 f1.8, 135 f2. It is somewhat inconvenient to change lenses, but the better quality from the primes is worth it. It helps to have at least two camera bodies and an assistant carrying the extra body and lenses. If you are alone, then carry two pro zooms 24-70 f2.8 and 70-200 f2.8 or something similar, and a quantum battery pack for your flash.
Just my two bits-I'm not a working pro, just a hobbyist, so take this with a healthy dose of salt ;)
Leon

I too am a humble amateur and I only do weddings for friends. I try to keep things as simple as possible because I have enough to handle doing my set shots, choosing locations and managing the crowd. A 28-70 f2.8, 80-200 f2.8 plus a powerful flash and everything on full-auto.

Charles

[another view]

Whats your opinion, a wide to short tele zoom or low light prime? Favs?

Answer? C, both of the above.

Yesterday's wedding was a little different than the norm in that I could use flash during the service (had to, it was very dark in there - like ISO800 at 1/8 and f2.8, after they brought the lights up a bit!). I also used a 28-80 since I was fairly close to the action, but agree that an 80-200 f2.8 is pretty normal for during a service.

Most of the time things are happening too quick to change lenses so I really need to use zooms even though they're only f2.8. I use primes when I have to - when it's so dark it's hard to focus without an f1.4 lens, or the 85 for details and abstract shots. But I'd say my #1 is the 28-80, #2 is the 20-35, a distant third is the 80-200 (usually only during the service) and then the others are just nice to have but not entirely necessary (you can manually zone focus if you need to, sometimes with the best AF cameras and fastest lenses you'll still end up doing this).

[MJS]

Like everyone else said 28-70 and 80 - 200, both 2.8. I've also had my eye on one of the new 12-24 4.0 Tokina digitals. It looks like a pretty sweet piece of glass.