Whew. I would never discourage someone from getting into this, far from it. But you won't like my recommendations from what I've gathered from the thread.
A comment about your trolley shot. The idea is good but as you said, you lost her face. The flare would have had to be further away from her to not loose the face. Lens sharpness would have nothing to do with the grain you saw in the original file. The FA 50 is a very sharp lens from f2 up and quite usable even at f1.4 With a shot like this you really wouldn't want the sun flare. The main focus should be on the bride and not some more powerful element. We are naturally drawn to the white aspects of an image and the sun would be competing with the bride. Without the sun, that would have been a great shot.
Other experienced wedding shooters will use different gear than I do and we all have a different shooting style. But I feel all of them will agree with my comments on preparation, understanding gear, gear choices, backup equipment and experience. I don't mean this to be a rant or arrogant. Simply a reality check before jumping into this field.
First skip any variable zoom. It's often forgotten that if you set your flash for the lens at 17mm and f5.6 then you zoom in to 50mm and the lens jumps a stop, your flash settings will underexpose the shot. Variable aperture zooms are a PITA that will ruin a lot of shots or make your task harder.
Next you need a second body.
No wiggle room on that. You may not shoot with it but you have to have one. And it needs to equal your primary camera. If the camera you have fails, you are in serious trouble and you've ruined one of the most important days of the couple's life. Harsh but true. It doesn't matter if you are doing it for $50 or $5000. A failed shoot will disappoint just as much. Gear fails. It's a fact of life. I've had equipment fail at the worst possible moment and the couple never knew, just grabbed the backup unit.
That goes for your lens selection. You need spares of your most important lenses and flash. Not necessarily the same lens but a good quality and competent lens that can do the job if the primary has a problem. Again I've had lenses jam, stop focusing correctly etc. This type of shooting is tough as heck on gear. The action moves fast and for those who shoot for fun and take the time to replace end caps, carefully place the lens in it's designated pouch etc would be appalled at how I handle my gear for a full wedding day. Now I do the best I can to not abuse the gear but you don't have time to fiddle around.
You need to have a solid contract that clearly states what you are doing, the maximum liability and the expectations. The contract must be done by a lawyer. Not having a proper contract correctly done is playing with fire.
You need backup flashes, cords, batteries and any other parts you will use. If you saw the back of my van on a shoot, you'd think I've lost my mind. There are spares of everything there. Preparation for everything that can happen is important and the DA*16-50mm is an important lens because of the weather sealed body. You have to have it if the weather is poor.
So my kit:
Primary:
- K20D with DA*16-50mm (IMO a must have lens because of the weather seals)
- Off camera grip for the flash. With 5P cable and Hot shoe adapter. Flash Diffuser
- Battery grip with spare battery.
- AF540FGZ or AF400T and Quantum battery
Secondary:
- K10D with Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 (DA*50-135mm would be great as well)
- Off camera grip for the flash. With 4P cable. Flash diffuser
- Battery grip with spare battery.
- AF400T flash and quantum battery
Lenses:
FA50mm f1.4
Sigma 28 f1.8
FA* 85mm f1.4 (77mm Ltd would be perfect for this)
DA12-24mm f4
Now with that, I usually shoot with the DA*16-50mm for 75% of my shots. The other lenses are for special circumstances. For example I'll shoot the fast primes if it's a darker church. The Sigma 70-200mm gets a fair amount of use for candid shots and getting tight portraits.
As nice as the K10D is, it's not a great high ISO camera. I love mine and use it a lot but when the shooting comes indoors, it's not the right camera unless you are going to use a flash. To offset this, fast primes are important and will help. IMO a grip on the body with an extra battery is important as well. A dead battery in the middle of the ceremony is not something you need happening.
Practice with a flash is key. I'd love to be an available light shooter all the time but being able to use a flash in a hurry is key. Direct flash looks horrible and you need to be able to bounce and diffuse flash light. Understanding how to compensate for the loss of light from a diffuser and bounce. I always shoot flash in manual on the camera and manual on the flash. P-TTL is fine some of the time but to get consistent results, you have to shoot manually.
Memory cards. You should be using only the best. IMO that is Sandisk Ultra II or Extreme III's. You should have around 24-30 Gb for the day. I'd strongly recommend you shoot with a card no bigger than 4Gb. Because if a card has a problem, you've only lost some shots not the whole day. I'll shoot with 4Gb cards and half fill them. When things pause, I'll swap out cards. I carry 40Gb for a wedding. Shoot RAW.
You're in it now and I hope it goes well but if I were to advise you beforehand, I would have said shoot 10 weddings as a secondary shooter to get the feel for it. IMO this is the most challenging form of photography behind a war journalist. The day is long, you have to constantly anticipate what is going to happen, you have nearly no time to make a mistake. There is no substitute for experience. The formal shoot is usually 2-3 hours and although the waiting guests think it's long, you'll feel like you are racing the clock.
I have to be honest. When you said you just discovered the crop factor, it concerned me. You must know everything about the gear you use. How each lens will render an image and how every control on the camera works. I won't shoot with a new lens until I've tested it at least for a couple hundred shots. A complete understanding of High ISO shooting (It's not simply turning up the number) and the relationships between ISO, aperture and shutter speed. How those fundamentals will influence the shots.
Finally plan your day as much as you can. Prepare for bad weather. I just shot a wedding today that was an outdoor wedding. If you look at the weather the East Coast has gone through in July, you know I've been wet a lot. It's the toughest thing to deal with. The couple wants nice formals and they have certain ideas in their heads. Shots they have seen on the internet or in a friends album. It's why having the DA*16-50mm is so important. With the WS lens and body you can do things other kits can't. For example tonight I had the couple on the beach (in itself a bad spot for an SLR due to the sand and dust). It was raining lightly. So they stayed under an umbrella until I had the shot set up. When I was ready, they tossed the umbrella aside and I fired a quick 5-6 shots and they picked up the umbrella again. We did this for 2 hours. Got the shots they wanted and they didn't get wet. Me and my gear on the other hand were soaked by the end of it.
Just to give you an idea. The shot below is a flash shot taken with
K20D DR mode ISO 200
AF400T with diffuser and off camera 4P cord on lightstand (with protection cover for the rain)
DA*16-50mm at 26mm
f 11 1/125th
Locked the exposure and focus to recompose the shot.
It's raining and they got ready, I metered the scene and took a test shot, checked the histogram ( a key tool that needs to be used, never ever trust an exposure from what the LCD tells you) and then when I was ready, they passed the umbrella to the best man who was off camera. It's unprocessed other than to resize it to post here.