1st time wedding with ambient light (lensrental)

Woutorius wrote:

Hi All,

I am an amateur photographer (mostly on holidays or occasionally with friends). Friday is my sister's wedding where she asked me to take some photos (after the official photographer left, so no pressure for perfect shots) of the dinner courses, people and anything I like. The scene is indoors (restaurant) with ambient lighting in the evening.

I can use my iPhone 11 or camera x-t20 (she doesn't care) but iPhone is of course my last/backup resort. Normally I would use my xf 18-55 but would like it to try out something new & better and consider to rent the xf 50 1.0 or xf 56 1.2 (slightly favoring the xf 50 1.0 due to faster AF). However I have minimal experience in low light, or with prime lenses.

Do you have any suggestions or tips how to handle this best / which lens is the better one (if any of those two)? I am also doubting if the focus area will be to small (just a couple of cm) although I am looking forward to the bokeh, not sure how this works out in practice. I mainly want a couple of cool pics, shooting a couple of times for a few minutes and mainly enjoy the party (non shooting).

Hmm, just my very personal opinion, but for me the stated lenses would be too long, concerning focal length, when shooting indoors as you describe it. As another poster already mentioned, maybe better think about the 35mm f/1.4 or the 23mm f/1.4, these lenses are regarding focal length just more versatile and flexible and still enable nice subject isolation and bokeh.

The main problem with fast lenses: You have a really shallow depth of field when shooting them wide open and it needs good technique to produce then also good images in such low light situations. It's definitely not just point and shoot with such lenses to get the desired results. Even cranking up ISO and shooting wide open you sometimes will also still  struggle to get the desired shutter speed, another factor to take into account.

Flash could be an alternative and solution, but if you have no experience with such style of shooting you will also struggle to produce the desired results.

So my recommendation: Get yourself a fast lens or a flash, whatever feels better for you, go to the wedding and just try. And if it doesn't work out don't worry, there was an official photographer who gets paid to deliver the wedding mages, and you just enjoy the wedding of your sister, a really important day for her and all her family.

Herbert