best lense for wedding.

Published by: jack 2010-03-12

Ive heard so many suggestions on what lens to use for wedding with my canon xt. right now i have the standard lense kit to use for it. What would you suggest??

I've never shot a wedding myself, but my wife-to-be has and I'd say an 85 telephoto for portrait and 24-70 f/2.8L for the reception. Receptions are great for having no light, so you'll want a fast lens.

There is no "best" single lens for a wedding. You need to have a variety of lenses that will cover different situations. A good combination (for Nikon) would be a 17-55 2.8, a 24-70 2.8 and, a 70-200VR 2.8. This is just a basic selection of lenses to cover most situations then you could use a variety of different specialty lenses like, a macro for ring shots, a 10.5 for ultra wide creative group and individual shots, mabye a lens-baby for creative focusing some shots. So as you can see there is no "best lens just a group of core lenses to get and expand on. Now to knock all this out for me when I started and for 3-4 years all I had was a bronica and a 75mm lens (75 bring the "normal" focal length for 645) so I guess you can get away with a high quality, what is "normal" for digital, 30mm.

The typical recommended Canon zoom for the wedding and reception is the 24-70mm f2.8L. For portraits, which does play within wedding photography, 50mm f1.4 and 85 f1.8 are good as well. I've shot in a wedding reception (in addition to the wedding photographer by request of the groomand bride) and found that in low light, a fast 50mm or slightly wider focal length is ideal (1.3 crop). The extra stop you get over the f2.8L zoom was nice.

I kept both the 50 and 85 in my pockets with caps off....

Well you're going to get some flack for the whole "lense" spelling -

Having said that, most here are no doubt going to suggest getting hooked up with a nice prime -I've seen suggesting for the 50MM, but maybe an 85, or evern (if its in your budget) the 105MM - that would allow you to get all up in it for some nice portrait shots.

Of course something with a nice wide-angle as well for reception, after-party shots.