Craig Terott
January 9th, 2006, 01:01 PM
It's great to see people post examples of thier brilliant work ...but equally beneficial (I hope) is this list of my mistakes. This list is just about every mistake I can think of that I've made and learned from in the process. Many - make me look stupid I'm sure but if there's a possibility that someone else in this forum can get something out of it, then it's a noble act!
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Overexposed camera setting for a very sunny outdoor ceremony. Too much over-exposure to totally fix in post.
Not enough wide scene-setting shots.
Too few close-ups.
Not enough shots of the parents during the ceremony.
Battery ran out on my I-River during a ceremony. I may have inadvertently replaced it's batteries with 1/2 used one's prior to the wedding. Put new batteries in it and there was no file.
Two camera shoot indoor ceremony - one camera's LCD was set bright the other was not. The bright LCD camera's shots ended up very dark and the two cameras didn't match so great even after a lot of tweaking in post.
Outdoor ceremony - didn't have the wind setting for my mic set to ON, and without a dead-cat, sounded like hurricane force winds with just a breeze.
Didn't use a dead-cat, a few times, when I should have.
Didn't have mic set to attenuated during a reception. Much of the audio was trashed. This couple didn't get much raw video from the reception.
Decided to go manual with audio levels one day and 1/2 way through the reception realized audio had been clipping for about about an hour.
Two camera shoot for ceremony, my wife had focus on a candle burning brightly behind the groom - during the vows. Grooms shots were out of focus.
Two camera's sharpness settings in custom presets were one notch different. Even after tweaking/filters they looked different.
Stupidly I asked bride's sister "are you the Melissa's (bride's) Mom?" She was very offended and I felt like a dumbass.
Switched microphones on my I-River. The one I switch to was much hotter and I forgot to back down the mic volume in the I-River settings. Ended up with a scorching hot volume and clipping at the podium.
I use two tripods for ceremonies. Forgot the piece that you screw into the camera for one of the tripods and had to go handheld for one camera. My shots of the bride during the vows were shaky.
Preceremony, ceremony & reception were all approx 1/3 mile apart. I saw several guests walking and figured I could do the same and avoid the hassle of finding a parking spot in a crowded area of town. It was a bad decision on a humid 98 degree day with all my gear to mule around. To top things off, the church's A/C was down, and by the time I got back to the reception I was completely drenched in sweat and I think I looked like a heat stroke victim.
My wide angle lens had a tiny nick in it, which at the time I thought was a spec of debris which I believed I was able to clean from the lens. Spent a lot of time in post tying to minimize the amount of shots where this spec was easily seen, mostly the outdoor well lit shots.
Didn't ask the photographer/or bride & groom if/where they were planning to have a post-ceremony photo session. They went to a great location and I missed it.
Got lost going to a reception hall I had never been to before. My wife entered the wrong address on our Magellan GPS and even though I had the correct directions on a map quest printout, we still got there late.
*************************************
Overexposed camera setting for a very sunny outdoor ceremony. Too much over-exposure to totally fix in post.
Not enough wide scene-setting shots.
Too few close-ups.
Not enough shots of the parents during the ceremony.
Battery ran out on my I-River during a ceremony. I may have inadvertently replaced it's batteries with 1/2 used one's prior to the wedding. Put new batteries in it and there was no file.
Two camera shoot indoor ceremony - one camera's LCD was set bright the other was not. The bright LCD camera's shots ended up very dark and the two cameras didn't match so great even after a lot of tweaking in post.
Outdoor ceremony - didn't have the wind setting for my mic set to ON, and without a dead-cat, sounded like hurricane force winds with just a breeze.
Didn't use a dead-cat, a few times, when I should have.
Didn't have mic set to attenuated during a reception. Much of the audio was trashed. This couple didn't get much raw video from the reception.
Decided to go manual with audio levels one day and 1/2 way through the reception realized audio had been clipping for about about an hour.
Two camera shoot for ceremony, my wife had focus on a candle burning brightly behind the groom - during the vows. Grooms shots were out of focus.
Two camera's sharpness settings in custom presets were one notch different. Even after tweaking/filters they looked different.
Stupidly I asked bride's sister "are you the Melissa's (bride's) Mom?" She was very offended and I felt like a dumbass.
Switched microphones on my I-River. The one I switch to was much hotter and I forgot to back down the mic volume in the I-River settings. Ended up with a scorching hot volume and clipping at the podium.
I use two tripods for ceremonies. Forgot the piece that you screw into the camera for one of the tripods and had to go handheld for one camera. My shots of the bride during the vows were shaky.
Preceremony, ceremony & reception were all approx 1/3 mile apart. I saw several guests walking and figured I could do the same and avoid the hassle of finding a parking spot in a crowded area of town. It was a bad decision on a humid 98 degree day with all my gear to mule around. To top things off, the church's A/C was down, and by the time I got back to the reception I was completely drenched in sweat and I think I looked like a heat stroke victim.
My wide angle lens had a tiny nick in it, which at the time I thought was a spec of debris which I believed I was able to clean from the lens. Spent a lot of time in post tying to minimize the amount of shots where this spec was easily seen, mostly the outdoor well lit shots.
Didn't ask the photographer/or bride & groom if/where they were planning to have a post-ceremony photo session. They went to a great location and I missed it.
Got lost going to a reception hall I had never been to before. My wife entered the wrong address on our Magellan GPS and even though I had the correct directions on a map quest printout, we still got there late.