Hawaii wedding photographer

Feel free to email us this quiz, filled out by you, for our personal recommendations.

Do you desire a proof album of 4x6 prints to view your entire Wedding, or to share with others?

What is the largest print size that you are considering?

Are you wanting a traditional album or a digital montage album?

Do you wish to purchase all original images for the purpose of making your own prints, or to email photos to friends and family?

Are you "graphically inclined", or is someone in your family or network of close friends?

Is your Ceremony outdoors or indoors? Where is it, and at what time?

Answers

If you said yes, then film & digital will both work well, but digital will cost a little more because of the extra labor to make the 4x6 prints.

If you said 11x14 or smaller, 35mm film will do just fine and cost you less. If you said larger than 11x14, digital will render better quality enlargements up to 4 feet x 6 feet with proper lab. Another option for those who like film is to shoot with medium format. You can print up to 20x30 and have all the image quality of film, BUT- no lab in hawaii does a good large print from film, 11x14 is the largest, so we would need to have our lab in LA print anything larger than 11x14.

If you are planning on a digital montage album, both film and digital will work, but digital will work better, especially for those landscaped backgrounds that cover 2 pages. 35mm will not work in that situation with a color image, but you can turn that color negative scan into B & W or sepia, and that will work fairly well for your landscaped pages if you can live with the increased grain and lack of sharpness. Scanned film images actually look very nice up to 8x10. Computer adjustment of those scanned film images is much finer than what a lab can do on a typical film machine. With a traditional album, both film & digital are pretty close. When we put together albums made from scanned film images, we have to use backgrounds that are B & W or sepiatone if from film scans, or use digital images, or make graphic style backgrounds created in the computer. That is a huge limitation, so if you desire a digital storybook album, it is best to shoot digital.

Here is a significant question. So many people go with a digital pkg where they own all images on CD's. Sounds great, but if you are not willing to spend the time on the computer manipulating and sizing images, it can be a nightmare. You can't take that CD to a retail printer and get a good print made because they basically will not tweak the image, crop or size it, or set the resolution. You need to do that, or pay someone to do it for you. We now offer free instruction for those who purchase all of their digital images, as well as special prices on a custom traditional album. On the other hand, with film, you simply go to a pro wedding lab, tell them which shot and what size, and that is it. Your prints are cropped properly by a pro, with no hassle. Do keep in mind that you cannot always adjust contrast or color intensity printing from film to paper directly. That depends on your labs machine, and if they even care to do a good job adjusting your prints. These adjustments can make a huge difference. Finally, you can email your digital images if you know how to downsize the files (not too hard), and with film, you can scan your favorite prints yourself, or have someone do that at a reasonable cost. A scanned print is fine for email purposes. Consider what you really want vs how much the total costs are.

If so, buying all the digital images is the way to go. The labor costs of tweaking images in the computer is high, so knowing someone, or having those skills yourself is not only cost-effective, but personally rewarding also. We now offer free instruction for those who purchase all of their digital images, as well as special prices on a custom traditional album. You can also work with film scans, so if film looks good to you, the option also exists to scan the negs and you can work on them just the same. You can also create montages and montage albums, and we can arrange to have a digital album bound for you , if you wish.

If your Ceremony is outdoors, in the middle of the day, with no shade and blazing hot sun, film is a safer medium. Digital has higher contrast already, so lower contrast film will look better, although nothing will look great if you are in that kind of direct, intense sun and strong shadows. Film is much less critical with exposure, so for a live event, with the sun going in and out of the clouds, film is a great choice. With this kind of lighting, it is very easy for digital to over-expose your white dress, which usually wipes out all detail in it. Film has a greater ability to record bright highlights without loosing detail, and is more forgiving with exposure.

Feel free to email us this filled out quiz, and we will give you our opinion on what might be best for you. You could possibly figure out what is best just by answering these questions and reviewing everything a few times. If we can offer you advice on the phone, it would be our pleasure. Toll-free is 866-591-2224, and our Oahu number is 591-2220. Aloha!