[Dan Rentea]

Forget the full fame, write a business plan and keeps expenses as low as possible. It's a myth that you need a full frame camera to be a pro. What you do need is redundant equipment so you really NEED two bodies and the K5 is fine as one of them. You don't need faster than 4.4 FPS, you need properly exposed and composed images. Get the light right and most cameras will do. You can't buy that.

I shoot events and get paid and use on camera manual flash and its not that hard to do, if you understand the principles of lighting. Same with head shots, location portraits, studio portraits and occasional commercial work. Invest in learning lighting.

Buy a used K3II, it's plenty capable. Take the money you save and pay for your business liability policy, business licenses, extra batteries, extra memory cards, backup disk drives, web site, marketing, etc, etc..

Depends on what part of the world you come from. Orthodox and catholic churches from south eastern Europe are not so enlightened and you often may encounter a priest (or even a client) that doesn't allow you to use flash inside the church and if it happens to find such a priest (or client) then you're stuck only with the poor illumination from the church lights... A K1 with a fast prime will get you out of trouble. A K5 or a K3 will put you to a lot of work, and I'm not sure that it's confortable for someone to shoot the entire ceremony with a K5 or a K3 at ISO between 6000 and 10000, in a bad light. Churches lights are so bad and mixed (some chandeliers have mixed yellow and white bulbs...).

Here is an example without artistic value of how is the light inside a church which is illuminated only by the artificial lights (there are no windows) and I have to say that this is a big and good illuminated church. The ISO went straight to 10.000 to get a decent exposure. For getting the job done in such conditions, a K1 will be much better than a K5 or a K3. After all, we're talking about paid jobs here and although I agree that you must spend the money wisely when you write the business plan, in this case a full frame like K1 would be my choice without blinking.

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Last edited by Dan Rentea; 04-11-2017 at 04:48 AM.

[Dan Rentea]

What was the rest exposure data for this image?

For the image from above the settings were: ISO 10000, f5, 1/100s, at 70mm (24-70mm f2.8 lens I think) and I needed to use Lightroom because it was not properly exposed. I was in manual mode with Auto ISO and the upper limit at ISO on my camera was set to 10000.

The image from below was taken a minute after the first one at ISO 12800, f5 and 1/100s to get the right exposure directly from the camera and also for me to know of what I have to expect if I was going to shoot in that church for an entire hour. With a fast prime or with a 24-70mm f2.8 lens you can shoot at f1.8 - f2.8 and ISO between 3200 and 6000, but it's still not confortable enough with a K3 or a K5 to shoot the entire ceremony at such a high ISO and only at f1.8 or f2.8 (depending on the lens used). And this was a good illuminated church. From my experience, K3 II is not that good regarding high ISO combined with bad lightning, no flash and brown/dark walls.

[Rondec]

A K-1 would work fine. My wife shoots weddings and currently does so using a K-1 and K3 combo. She likes the K-1 better, but having two cameras with different lenses is key to getting different shots quickly. She does use a fair amount of flash at receptions, but she uses it in manual mode so I don't know that there would be any benefit to going with Nikon or Canon there. My understanding is that if you want to have on camera control of multiple flashes, then Canon and Nikon do better.

Auto focus is fine for weddings. They really aren't sporting events and you should be able to keep up with what is going on with any current Pentax camera.

The most important thing is that you have the skills and understanding of what shots you need and how you will get them and (as Brooke Meyer said) redundancy in gear. The moment someone knocks a camera over with your 24-70 on it, you need to have some other lens and body that you can push into place to cover the situation.

Good luck!

[BrianR]

Depends on what part of the world you come from. Orthodox and catholic churches from south eastern Europe are not so enlightened and you often may encounter a priest (or even a client) that doesn't allow you to use flash inside the church and if it happens to find such a priest (or client) then you're stuck only with the poor illumination from the church lights...

They can be enlightened with a flash. That's what it's for.



Bad joke on my part, couldn't resist. Sorry. I will accept my pun-ishment without complaint.

[Dan Rentea]

They can be enlightened with a flash. That's what it's for.



Bad joke on my part, couldn't resist. Sorry. I will accept my pun-ishment without complaint.

Say the prayer entitled "Holy flash" 5 times and all your sins will be forgiven.

[DeadJohn]

There are more church jokes about some religions hating sunlight, as evidenced by stone walls, few windows, and dark stained glass. This shrine is a notable exception:

[newmikey]

I have a Pentax k5 for the last 5 years. I decided to go professional and to buy a full frame. I have been looking at Nikon, Canon and Pentax K1 reviews. I don't mind to learn a new system. I really like Pentax and the feel of it and everything else. But I am also taking into account the weak points of my beloved Pentax and its new full frame generation. Thinks like the autofocus problem, the 4.4 fps, weak video camera (Although I rarely use mine) are making my decision difficult. I am planning to do weddings professionally and a bit of everything else like a documentary, street, portrait, macro photography....any advice, please???

I can only say that loyalty is about the lousiest reason in history to make a decision. If you are to rely on your equipment for a living, choose the brand that gets the job done. Yes, Pentax seems to have its fair share of idiosyncrasies but so does every other brand out there.

Moreover, if you are to do weddings, there doesn't seem to be a "Pentax autofocus problem" to begin with - it's one of those urban legends which, once repeated often enough, takes on a life of its own. You're not about to pln shooting a bride sat on a motorbike coming at you at high speed, are you?

Nowadays, the technical and quality differences between brands are so slight that choosing between them becomes a matter of personal preference more than anything else unless one very specific functional detail clinches the deal for you.

[Papa Lazarou]

K-1 AF is perfectly adequate for weddings IME.

[Simen1]

There are more church jokes about some religions hating sunlight, as evidenced by stone walls, few windows, and dark stained glass. This shrine is a notable exception:

Nice looking arcs, but knowing a few things about construction, I cant help wondering what the H the designer was thinking. Arcs where there should have been straight beams weakens the construction significantly and requires far more construction material. The roof would look more hoovering and let in more light if they used straight beams.

[reh321]

We need to be very careful about generalizations.

I'm sure that this first picture could be improved via PP - I just recently rediscovered the negative and haven't even finished dealing with scratches and other "scanner artifacts" yet - but I'm guessing that the bride would have been satisfied with something close to this if I had been a professional standing in the aisle, rather than a friend sitting amongst friends. The bride was a close friend of my bride; this woman played the organ at our wedding, which was scheduled to get us back from our honeymoon in time to attend their wedding, so I know with certainty that it was taken Memorial Day {U.S.} weekend in 1979, using ASA/ISO 100 color negative film {that's how it was labeled then} in my then-new Pentax ME SE {which had Av and M modes only} with a Pentax-M 50mm f/2 lens. I don't specifically remember taking this picture, but I don't see any sign of flash in it; I do remember that this was in a Lutheran Church, which means in most cases it would have the same ambiance as a Catholic Church would.





This second picture was taken at a Madrigal Dinner that my wife and I attended recently at the college where she now works. In this case I used my Pentax Q-7 with an f/2.8 lens, and specifically did not use any flash because my wife had complained the previous year that my flash had wiped out the special lighting effects provided by the producers of the dinner.




If images like this can be produced by ancient technology or lower-tier products, then surely "useable" pictures could be produced using a K-1 or K-3ii or KP!!

[normhead]

Nice looking arcs, but knowing a few things about construction, I cant help wondering what the H the designer was thinking. Arcs where there should have been straight beams weakens the construction significantly and requires far more construction material. The roof would look more hoovering and let in more light if they used straight beams.

ANd here I thought arches were a vast improvement over straight beams.

Truss or Arch Toothpick Bridge?
I'm making a toothbridge project for Science class, and I'm having a problem. I know I should create Triangles, since they are strong. For the design of my bridge, should I make a Truss type beam bridge, or an Arch? Which one holds more weight? Or are they both the same?

Any tips on building my bridge?
Thanks in advance! I need this ASAP, since I wanna start soon.

Best Answer: use an arch. thats all im gonna tell u though, u need to figure the rest out yourself thats why they give YOU home work.

[rpedra10]

Hey Dan you made me laugh haha...



---------- Post added 04-11-17 at 09:23 PM ----------

I can only say that loyalty is about the lousiest reason in history to make a decision. If you are to rely on your equipment for a living, choose the brand that gets the job done. Yes, Pentax seems to have its fair share of idiosyncrasies but so does every other brand out there.

Moreover, if you are to do weddings, there doesn't seem to be a "Pentax autofocus problem" to begin with - it's one of those urban legends which, once repeated often enough, takes on a life of its own. You're not about to pln shooting a bride sat on a motorbike coming at you at high speed, are you?

Nowadays, the technical and quality differences between brands are so slight that choosing between them becomes a matter of personal preference more than anything else unless one very specific functional detail clinches the deal for you.

---------- Post added 04-11-17 at 09:24 PM ----------

Say the prayer entitled "Holy flash" 5 times and all your sins will be forgiven.

Haha mam, you made me laugh

[DeadJohn]

Nice looking arcs, but knowing a few things about construction, I cant help wondering what the H the designer was thinking. Arcs where there should have been straight beams weakens the construction significantly and requires far more construction material. The roof would look more hoovering and let in more light if they used straight beams.

The shrine is built in Nebraska - land of wheat fields. This exterior shot helps explain what the architect was thinking.

[Dan Rentea]

I've shot a few weddings, just enough to know it's not my cup of tea but I photograph a lot of dance so no flash and high shutter speeds that require high ISO. Used K-5 bodies, then K5IIs bodies when price was good and also use a K3II. I was a little worried the K3II wouldn't be as clean as the K3II but it's pretty close.

Here's a K5IIs example at ISO 6400, long lens that max'ed at f4



Here's a K3II & DA 50-135 at ISO 8000 which I printed at 14x20 for the lobby card poster.



Finally, here's an older K5 & 50-135 image at ISO 6400 at an outdoor wedding reception that started an hour late and long after sunset

Nice shots. But take a look at your images, take a look at the images I've posted and tell me one thing, but please be sincere because I'm not trying to start a debate here. What is the big difference in our images? I'm not talking about composition right now because the images I posted above were just some test shots on location. I'm going to tell you the difference and you can confirm if I'm right, ok? The big difference in our images is the quality of the light. I photograph a lot of events in theatres and even if sometimes the light is poor on the stage, the quality of light compensate that poor light and that's why you can use high ISO and get away with good images with less noise than usual. If you also have a good background as you had in the first image...even better.

I had the opportunity to learn about the difference between bad light and quality light from a few very known photographers (each and every one has his own recognizable style), the most known of them being Jeff Ascough, one of the first top 10 international wedding photographers. His 1 day workshop was impressive, because he is known as a photographer who barely uses flashes in his work. All of them told me to always:
- look for available light and use it in my advantage
- look for quality light, even if is less than I wanted because the noise is not so visible in the presence of quality light

So yes, there are circumstances where you can use with success ISO 8000 on a K5/K3 (like the examples from above) and there are circumstances were poor light + bad light + bad background (brown being one of the worse when high ISO is involved) can give you headaches starting from ISO 1600. A full frame like K1 has a big advantage over K5/K3 starting from ISO 1600 and that's why I said that I prefer a K1 as my first camera for events. As a back-up camera I would choose a K-5 II or a K3 with no problem.

[newmikey]

Church weddings are getting quite rare these days in my neck of the woods(churches are closing down in droves due to lack of interest) but yes, if you are into using flash or even multiple flashes, Nikon seems a better choice. It's one of those "functional details" which could sway one to another brand. I'm not big on brand loyalty although I've been shooting Pentax-only for quite some time but if something would come up which would make it imperative to switch brands, I'd do so in a second. Don't really care about camera brands any more than I do about cars really. Whatever it takes is good enough for me. Corporate brands are businesses - they don't owe me any more than I do them.