Advice on taking wedding pictures?

Question:

Advice on taking wedding pictures?

I am taking wedding pictures on Sunday for the first time and I am worried about the motion pictures such as throwing of the bouquet and cutting of the cake. I have a Kodak Z-650 and was wondering what would be the right settings? Sometimes my pictures end up blurry if the subject is moving. Thank you

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: I am going to assume you will be doing an indoor wedding and will be using your flash. I would set it on red eye reduction, not automatic, because some light situation may fool the camera into thinking it does not need a flash and give you a slower shutter speed and hence, the blurry pictures. I tried to look up and find out what the flash synch shutter speed is when flash is on but could not find it. Hopefully your manual can tell you. If you want to do some of those mood shots by windows and such I would suggest setting your camera on shutter priority, where you select the shutter speed(no less than 1/125th of sec) and the camera selects the aperature. Your model also has a flash fill option that could be helpful but be looking for what shutter speed the camera picks on this if you can't use fill flash in shutter priority. Most cameras, regardless of what mode they are in, once the flash is popped up will revert to the built in shutter synch speed for flash photography.

You have time to experiement between now and then and try some settings. Have someone walk down a hallway in your house while you snap pics of them to see how it will work for you. Also, you will need to decide what ISO to use. The flash range for ISO168 on your model camera is only about 15ft. So, with the higher ISO of say 400, you will get a little more range on the flash. That may be important when you do large group shots at the alter after the wedding.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to email me.

Good luck.

PS: Everyone has to have their "first wedding" to photograph. Don't get uptight about it. Do your homework and practice.

PS2: Ditto on having plenty of batteries and memory cards. Too bad you can't rent or borrow a better camera though.