Wondering What Is The Best Lens for Wedding Photography? Here’s Our Take at Shan Photography
Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder and in the skills of the photographer. An average venue, imperfect makeup, and event mishaps can all be excused with the skills of a good photographer. In the end, the pictures remain, and they become memories you will remember forever, which is why having the perfect photographer at your wedding is absolutely crucial.
In the era of Instagram and social media, everyone has some knowledge about what it takes to click a good picture. As a team of professional photographers, we often have specific gear requests from couples who want their pictures to look a certain way.
So, if you’re a couple interested in learning more about the gear that goes into making perfect wedding pictures, here’s our take on the best lens for wedding photography. Just remember, the gear is one part of getting the right photos, and the other part is the skill and vision of the person behind the gear. So make sure you choose experienced professionals like Shan Photography to capture your love in photographs on your special day.
8 Lenses We Always Swear By For Indian Weddings at Shan Photography
Even before we get into lenses, knowing the right camera body for wedding photography is also crucial. At Shan Photography we’ve upgraded our gear lineup to also feature the best of mirrorless cameras from leading brands like Sony, Canon, fujifilm, and Leica. These mirrorless models have better autofocus capabilities and lighter frames, which make covering event photography easier and ensure perfect pictures despite the conditions. So, what are the lenses we swear by for both our mirrorless and DSLR camera bodies? Let’s find out.
1. 70 – 200mm f/2.8 Zoom Lens
We like to stay out of the way at weddings. Ideally, the guests and the ones visiting your special day won’t even notice that we’re there. While there are many photographers who like to let their presence be known, we understand the best photos often come out only when people are not aware of the camera.
The 70 – 200mm zoom lens lets us keep a safe distance from the festivities while still capturing all your special moments with perfect clarity. Having a low F-stop of 2.8 ensures we can capture pictures in low light and still get great clarity and background blur when required. A zoom lens allows us to get candid moments of the couples in between rituals and also capture the guests being their natural selves all at once.
Even though this isn’t a prime lens, for large venues and big fat Indian weddings, the 70 – 200mm zoom lens often becomes one of our most used lenses at weddings.
2. 24 – 70mm f/2.8 Zoom Lens
We like to cover all possibilities with our gear. For example, we could have used other lenses like 28 – 105mm or 35 – 150 mm, but what’s the point? Coverage overlap helps no one, and while shooting weddings, we like having complete coverage for focal lengths. Since our chosen glass also has an aperture of 2.8, changing between these lenses does not create any noticeable jerk or a difference in picture clarity or quality.
In fact, it helps us get complete focal length coverage from 24 to 200mm without any drops. When you’ve been in the business of wedding photography as long as we have, you understand that couples do not care about excuses or understand why their pictures aren’t perfect. That’s why we work on the nitty-gritty details when creating our gear bag, which is easy to carry and offers the versatility that an Indian wedding demands.
If we could only choose two lenses to cover a wedding, these first two lens options would be our choice without fail. A 24 – 70mm lens offers coverage for wide-angle shots and also up-close bride or couple portraits. Pairing this up with the right full-frame or mirrorless body ensures you get the perfect wedding portraits that couples love.
3. 35mm Prime Lens
Even though this may be an unpopular opinion, we really believe the 35mm prime is the best lens for wedding photography among prime lenses. Sure, shooting with a wide lens has certain challenges, such as lens distortion or perspective distortion. You also have to ensure that the subject is in the middle of the frame. But if you can take care of these things, the 35mm prime works better than a 50mm prime. Why? Because the additional width of your frame is great for storytelling.
Weddings are not about portraits that capture only the emotions of the couple. It also needs to capture the surroundings, the outfits, and the grandeur of the scenario, and for these reasons, the 35mm works better. As a prime lens, you get great coverage for low-light photography, and the background blur is amazing with a low F-stop of 1.4. The wide lens also ensures you’re able to get perfect clicks in tight spaces without having to give up on photo ideas.
4. 85mm Prime Lens
As a couple, you can easily check whether the photographer you’re choosing for your wedding is experienced or not based on their opinion of the 85mm prime lens. Experienced photographers who have worked on real weddings always swear by this lens. It fixes the problems often associated with a 50mm prime lens and offers near-perfect portraits for wedding shoots.
There is minimal or no lens distortion when you use the 85mm lens, and it also has a significantly low F-stop at 1.8 or 2, which makes it perfect for a wide variety of uses. As this lens doesn’t distort facial features, it is perfect for couple portraits. Over the years, the options and autofocus of these lenses have also improved significantly, which now makes it a popular choice for wedding portraits that couples often specifically request.
5. 105mm f/2.8 Macro Lens
This is where we’re getting into the details. A macro lens can be a game-changer for you when you’re covering a full wedding. Every small detail can be captured and showcased in perfection when you have a macro lens like the 105mm lens we use.
From the rings, the wedding invites, the flower arrangements, and the bridal decorations, every small detail can be captured in perfection when you work with a macro lens. Even though this lens is not as widely used as the other ones mentioned in this list, it still is an option we keep in our gear list when covering all events of an Indian wedding.
6. 24mm f/1.4 Prime Lens
This may seem like an option that’s not suited for this list, but we’ve always had great experiences using it. At Shan Photography, we’re not just wedding photographers; we also offer wedding cinematography services. What’s better and more cinematic than a 24-mm prime lens? The aperture of 1.4 allows coverage for low-light and bright daytime shoots. The cinematic look of an intimate yet wide frame of a 24mm fixed focal length is very immersive.
Even though we’re not shooting a drama, there are a lot of emotions at a wedding, and we like to capture them in a cinematic manner to offer couples a chance to feel like they are the stars of their lifetime movie. The 24mm prime lens gets a lot of use at the weddings we cover. Thanks to the low perspective distortion of this lens, it offers great portraits, establishing shots, and videos for our wedding coverage.
7. 14 – 24mm f/2.8 Zoom Lens
Yep, we go even wider. As Indian families are big, we want to ensure everyone has a place in the family portraits that we click on at weddings. The 14 – 24mm lens is a speciality lens that you may not need every time. However, more often than not, having it handy is certainly a good option. When you’re clicking family portraits at the reception with artificial lighting, it is crucial to have this lens option handy. You can’t or at least shouldn’t ask the family to force who gets to stay and who has to leave for a photograph.
With a simple lens addition, we’re able to offer coverage for everyone without having to change the entire photography setup. This saves time and makes the wedding flow naturally, which is crucial for event photography. So, even though this may be an expensive addition to our lens budget, we do not consider leaving it out for our convenience. When you choose Shan Photography, we use our skills and gear to offer you convenience rather than the opposite.
8. Lensbaby Velvet 56mm f/1.6
This is, without a doubt, a speciality lens, but you can say it helps us create signature shots more often than not. In our almost a decade’s worth of experience as premier wedding photographers in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Austin, and other major cities in the US, we’ve noticed couples love bokeh.
Even couples who do not have much idea about photography or lenses often ask whether they’ll be able to get that cinematic and perfect background blur with our photos or not. So, over the years, we decided to give the people what they wanted and go for specific bokeh lenses. The Lensbaby Velvet 56mm lens offers a dreamy look for portraits, especially bridal portraits. This lens often clicks the most liked photos when we cover weddings for both bridal and couple shoots.
Ending Note
There you go, that’s our selection of the best lens for wedding photography. If you’re a couple looking for our gear capabilities, now you know exactly what we bring to the table. To learn more about our gear coverage and our experience, feel free to reach out to us through social media or our website. We can help you bring your vision to life for weddings with our skills and gear. So, make sure you choose Shan Photography for the Indian wedding photography coverage.