detail in wedding dress

i am going to be shooting about 4 weddings through out the next year and i have to admit, ive never been the sole photographer at a wedding and am a bit nervous. what modes should i be setting the camera to so that you can see the details of the dresses? i dont wanna the that photographer with the blown out wedding dress shots! i have a canon rebel xsi, 18-55, 55-250, 50mm, lumopro flash (that i use on camera but they take some time to recharge between flashes!). is there any advice that would be helpful? i really love outdoor photography, but when it comes to indoors (which a few of the weddings are to be held in a hall), i have issues with lighting...too dark, too bright...i just hate shooting indoors!

i guess im basically looking for lighting tips...

[kencaleno]

Best to beg,borrow or buy an incident-reading light meter-failing this,set your exposure compensation to - 0.3 Ken

[candleman]

i'd buy a 430ex....(eTTL) you dont have time to screw around with manual flash at a wedding.
maybe between events when you're covering details... you can get away with it.
you can do it the manual way with meters and whatnot... but you're going to get a HELL of allot fewer shots in an already time-strapped environment.

hmmm, the whole reason i got the lumopros was cuz i couldnt afford the 430 right now. wish i would have known that the lumopro had such a delay! but theses arnt quite the tips i was looking for...these are the obvious... does anybody use a soft box on their flash (when using on camera)? or is it just the same as using those little defussers that go over the flash

[Saralonde]

Buying the 430 as candleman suggested will be a good investment for you. You don't want to lose that all important shot that will newver happen again because you are waiting for your flash to recharge!

Indoor weddings are notorioiusly dark, so you may be using your 50mm quite a bit.

ok, im just gonna ask one question, i'll figure the rest out on my own... what do i set my settings to so that the dress is not blown out? im not using a meter.

[candleman]

theres no magic rule becaus the lighting will change constantly...

but if you REALLY want to focus on retaining details, spot meter for the dress when shooting ambient.

when using flash you will have to do as Ken suggested.

OR, (what i'd do)
in manual mode and manual flash (bounced or direct depending on what is available)
set your flash power high .
, use a long enough shutterspeed to get about -1 EV on your in camera meter.. then "ride" the aperture until the flash is exposing the dress properly.
"shutterspeed controls ambient, aperture controls flash"
ISo affects both

then chimp and see what you get... make an adjustment.. repeat until its right.. then you can get some actual "though out" images.

i think dont worry too much about the dress... concentrate more on getting good gestures and smiles, poses and clean backgrounds.

also,
i dont know if your camera has it.. but many show a histogram after every shot or the "blinkies"
which show blown out parts blinking.... so just watch that preview after every shot.

i think a 430ex will make life allot easier.. but budgets are budgets.

[Digidave]

I've been searching for an article I had bookmarked. It was all about how not to blow out the white dress. Can't seem to find it right now! The one thing I do remember is to have your natural light come from the side. This will create texture when all those little frilly things on a dress cast a shadow. Now, the shadows won't be huge, just enough to let the texture come out. I'll keep hunting for that article.

[bhursey]

It is really hard to not blow out the dress. I think having light at a angle can do it. As for flash. The Luma Pro is for strobe work not on camera. I would suggest getting the 430 or 580 ex. I also could not afford one so I modified a SB-24 it has a 120 100iso guide number and recycle is not that bad but you need fresh batteries. I got mine used for 89$. You can shoot in auto thyristor mode. You just have to set the fstop and iso on the flash to match the camera. So you have to shoot in manual. This takes allot of practices. So good luck. I would get a flash bracket or bounce off the roof. In the reception keep the iso at 800 or 1600 with flash to save recycle time. So like for example I shoot in range of f5.6 - f8 800-1600 iso 1/100-1/250 at the reception. Carry a whole lot of batteries also.