Two Weddings, One Weekend, A Nikon D3

This past weekend I had the immense pleasure of photographing two weddings - something that doesn't happen to me very often - thank heavens! As much as I enjoy the process I don't think I could handle two every weekend! I tend to pour almost every aspect of myself into my wedding photography and find it exhilarating but exhausting.

Knowing that I was going to be up against the dark Melbourne winter days I hit up on Nikon to borrow either a Nikon D3 or a Nikon D700 for the weekend. I am going to be getting my D700 soon, but it hasn't arrived soon enough. In their kindness, I was given a D3 and the SB900 to use over the weekend and I have to tell you I have never found it easier to photograph weddings. First of all, there is little point to setting the Nikon D3 lower than ISO 800 for this kind of work. The difference between 200 and 800 in terms of noise are invisible, but the advantages of being able to shoot at ISO 800 are simply wonderful. This portrait of Princess, one of the bridesmaids, is taken straight from the camera and captured at 800 ISO. Click on the image to see a larger version. You can see for yourself that the noise is not an issue.

Naturally I pushed it a little and by the end of the night I was taking candlelit portraits at 6400, at which point you can start to see noise. However, its not bad at all. Being able to hand hold your available light images is one thing, but having them result as such clean, sharp, well exposed and well balanced jpegs is something else again. I have already posted threads at my photography tutorials website, The Five Minute Photographer.I can't wait to get my new Nikon DSLR!