The longer you work in photography, and the more weddings and events you photograph, you get to understand the absolute importance of a full frame camera. A recent wedding I shot made me thankful that I had the best gear for the job.
“It’s all about the environment”
Usually when photographing inside we have the ability to use flash to supplement the low light that can often be a part of a venue. Most of the time we will carefully decide when and how to use the flash, based on the environment, which stage of the ceremony or event we are at and the effect we need to create. It’s a fine balance of choosing your moment precisely and getting varying degree of image quality.
And then sometimes a curveball is thrown at you. You have to photograph a wedding in a room that barely holds 20 people, with low ceilings and hardly any source of quality lighting.
This gives you a number of problems that many people do not think about, but which seriously affect the outcome of your images if things go wrong. What I like to call “The Three D’s”
- Distraction – When you have a very small area to work with, and you are standing less than 6 foot (around 2 meters) in front of the people you are photographing, suddenly everything you do is amplified 10-fold. This means using a flash for extra light suddenly becomes impossible. If it’s on-camera, they see a huge flash in front of them, and there is simply no room for off-camera flash to be set up.
- Distance – Suddenly, you can not use your F/1.4-F/2 apertures as easily as you usually can, because as soon as there is more than one person in the scene, the other person is out of focus. Yes, this makes a great effect, but you need at least some images with the important people in focus.
- Darkness – Bad lighting and a small room, with little to no ambient light, and you are thrown into a much darker environment, which means you only have two options left as you can’t shoot wide-open any more. Drop your shutter speed, or raise your ISO. And here is the problem you can not drop your shutter speed below 1/320, because you will have motion blur with the sudden movements that can occur, so you have no option but for the ISO to raise.
And that is a severe constraint in a dark environment. Your shutter speed can not go below 1/320 (unless you want to risk motion blur, which you don’t!), you can not shoot between F/1.4 and F/2 (realistically often even F/3.5) and you have little to no light!
“It’s all about low light performance”
When you are photographing weddings and events, keeping noise to a minimum is a priority for obvious reasons, and when you are forced into a situation where you can not add light into the equation, your cameras low light performance suddenly matters more than anything else.
I’m used to ISO at ISO100 for most of the ceremony, with occasional peaks up to ISO1600 when I don’t use the flash in the conditions that I choose. When you’re in a dark environment, that ISO (and I use auto-ISO, because you don’t have time to think about your settings in a fast paced environment), combined with an aperture of F/4 (for example) and that fixed shutter speed of 1/320 means ISO can reach between 3200 and 6400.
At those ISO levels, lesser cameras become a noisy mess, and the clinical sharpness you need disappears. Thankfully, with the Nikon ZF and Z6ii, there is no need to worry. If you zoom in you can see a little noise at ISO6400, but clients do not zoom in to their photos, as it’s all about the memories of the day for them. The images they get are still clean and perfect, and no time is needed to de-noise anything (de-noise software is wonderful these days, but it is not perfect!)
“Sensor size matters”
Working in photography, you often hear amateurs and enthusiasts say that “sensor size doesn’t matter“. Of course, that is true when you are not being paid for your images, you can use what ever you want! However, the majority of professional photographers who make money from their images with their work in photography often have low light scenarios so they choose full frame for that low light performance. Be it wedding photographers, portrait photographers, wildlife photographers (with their huge lenses!) or studio photographers, full frame is almost exclusively the common denominator.
This is not an argument or an article to persuade you to buy a full frame camera or say they are better for the photography you do, as the majority of readers of this website are not professional photographers. You will use what suits your photography, be it micro four thirds for wildlife photographers and those older photographers who have been downsizing over the years, through the extremely common perfect middle ground with aps-c cameras and beyond (I have four very popular articles about Micro Four Thirds, aps-c and full frame which take an honest look at sensor sizes). It’s just a realistic look at working life in photography in low light when you don’t have the option to add-in extra light.
“Conclusion”
Experience is everything, and results are everything. Always have a backup plan when going out to photograph somewhere. As much as you think you are prepared, with lights and lenses, often circumstances can throw you into a predicament where the best lenses and the best additional lighting in the world will not help you.
It will come down to one thing, and one thing only, how well your camera can perform at a moments notice, in the worst possible scenario. Will you be able to keep your shutter speed high? Keep your aperture reasonably wide open? Keep your ISO low? Or your noise levels low enough to not cause issues. And something important that I didn’t mention, but which can also affect low light photography, will your autofocus be up to the task of working in low light situations?
There is a lot to working in photography that the average photographer does not ever think about, or even need to think about. It’s never as easy as just turning up with a random camera. You need a tool that can work beyond expectations.
My name is Mark G Adams and I run Photography By Mark G Adams. I am a professional photographer from South Wales, shooting weddings, events and portraits as well as running meets and workshops. For fun I like to shoot landscapes, wildlife and occasionally do street photography. Enjoy my website as I share my knowledge learned over decades of working and having fun in photography.
You can find all the latest articles and blogs on my homepage here.
My main photography social media page is my Photography By Mark G Adams page.
Nikon Recipes for the Z system can be found here.
You can find a complete list of my gear here.
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