Flash for beach wedding?

[sufran]

Would you use flash for a beach wedding which is heavily backlit by a bright sun-lit ocean? If you don't use flash, you can expose for the people in the ceremony, but the ocean will be very over-exposed. If you expose for the ocean, the people are underexposed. Which appears to leave the only option being the use of fill flash to light the people with manual settings set to expose for the background. Which way would you recommend: use flash to balance the light, or stay "natural" and overexpose the background? The other thought I had was to have a flash on one camera and use natural ligting only for the second camera. Obviously, this would result in an inconsistent set of wedding images, but it would also provide the couple with the choice of which "look" they preferred. Thanks.

[Wobbles]

I'm not a wedding photographer but I've done quite a few outdoor glamour/fashion shoots on the beach. Personally, I'd say flash would be virtually essential to get quality shots. You could maybe get away with assistant + reflector but that could get awkward. Easiest option would be 1-2 off camera flashes with remote triggers. I prefer ETTL triggers, even shooting manually, for remote adjustment of compatible flashes. Umbrellas would suffice but softboxes are better as they catch less wind outside, go to bare flash if really windy, either way sand bags are essential. Hope this helps.
Cheers
John

[MissionMan]

You could try one of these but they're $2.5K a pop :p

http://profoto.com/int/b1

[Wobbles]

Well yes, the B1's would be perfect for the job! But a tad pricey...

Try Yongnuo, cheap but fully featured and reliable. Could go even cheaper if you can live with fully manual.

http://www.protog.com.au/buy/yongnuo-yn568-ttl-high-speed-sync-flash-for-canon-dslr-camera/YN568C

http://www.protog.com.au/buy/yongnuo-yn622c-wireless-radio-ettl-flash-trigger-t/YN622C

Cheers
John

[sufran]

Thanks for the replies. There are a lot of people who say "never use flash at a wedding ceremony", so I was wondering whether a beach ceremony was an exception to this general rule. And then sometimes, people seem to prefer that slightly overexposed look for beach scenes. And yes, a profoto B1 would be divine, but maybe not so appropriate for a wedding where there can be a number of different angles, people to photograph in a short period of time?

[jev]

There are a lot of people who say "never use flash at a wedding ceremony",
That must be the stupidest advice I've heard in a looooong time (at least if you put it that generally - in a church for example there may be other reasons not to use one).

Just use flash. Use whatever you need to get the right picture, if that is flash (either on- or off-camera) use one. Or don't take photo's at all ;).