Back few years ago I challenge my self to shoot a wedding with an old DSLR camera and today I wanna share to you about the Nikon D7100 review for shooting glamorous wedding in Indonesia. For over than 5 years I using Canon camera starting the 1st generation of EOS 5D and EOS 7D but in 2013 I sell all my canon camera and move to Nikon system. Actually there is no special reasons about it but I just only want to try another camera brand.
I use Nikon D800 and Nikon D7100 right now but on this wedding shooting I challenge my self to use the Nikon D7100 as my prime camera over and over again during 16 hours wedding and I wanna share to you the result as well.
Dear lovely people my name is Bima and I’m a photographer who focusing my services on destination wedding photography, anyway thank you for keep in touch with me and stumble upon my blog, if you are a photographer than you could see my tips and tricks related to wedding and portrait here in this blog.
How is the Experience of Holding D7100 in My Chubby Hand
By the way I’m 176 cm tall and 96kg weight guy so I got chubby hand that really need good hand grip and that’s why I’m still using the DSLR better than the mirrorless camera even I even use it will shooting for travel photo stock in Singapore back few months ago.
D7100 is quite smaller if comparing with my Nikon D800 so in this case I still got my own little finger don’t hold anything while shooting, sometimes it’s quite dangerous for big guy like cause it might be slippery. But I know that this camera is built for everyone who love photography no matter you are an old lady, freshman in photography career or even using it for traveling.
If you are a big guy like me and love photography or gonna start your wedding photographer career than I still recommend you to buy this camera on Amazon or the closest store nearby your home cause the photo result are extremely amazing!
Nikon D7100 Real Photo Result
By the way I bring Nikon D7100 for shooting wedding in Jakarta Indonesia and during this session I shoot almost 16 hours so that gonna be very long session that I spend with this cool 24Mp camera. So on this part I’m gonna show to you the Nikon D7100 review by seeing the real photo result from my previous wedding so you can determine how the final photo looks like and answering your question about “Is Nikon D7100 good for wedding photography”
Shooting for Wedding Details
I shoot my couple wedding rings in an oriental glass box, there is a pink satin fabric as its cover so it looks so beautiful. What I did on this frame is put the rings right in the centre of the box (above the pink satin fabric) than using my flash camera phone as a fill in light (see the white flare light behind the box). When you shoot continues flash light from your smartphone and you got a pink satin fabric which is reflected than you will see pink ambiance light surrounding the box, you must try this technique and voila!!! I got this pictures.
If you focusing your services on wedding photography than you might a person that gonna feels crazy with detail or somehow we can call you as a detail lovers. If you see my photos above than almost every images that I shot on that frame is using the room light or combining with my LED dimmable light. In fact if you shoot wedding in a great hotels like what I had now, it;s a Grand Hyatt so all the room lights will come in yellow colour so you gonna have a warm image on your camera.
By combining this Nikon D7100 with Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 so I can get a clear photo with quite fast focus during those condition, for sure it would be better if you also bring Nikon AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G so you can get a detail on the jewellery, shoes, or even the dress.
Shooting for Preparation
When I shoot this preparation it was like 5 am and I got my beautiful bride, Marcia was done for the hair do, she looks gorgeous by the way! I’m in a dark suite room and only got the lights from bed lamp and some down light yellow room lamp so I set the ISO on 1600 and put my Tokina 11-16mm lens on f2.8 and this is what I got. So I’m not using any on or off camera flash on this frame so I want to shoot fast and let my bride naturally move as she want.
Shooting with ambiance light and high iso like this will affected to noise on the dark side so if you could see in the detail than you will see noise effect surrounding Marcia’s face but since I love noise effect than it’s fine. For me noise is a classic effect that I still got from an old camera and it comes naturally so I think at this digital camera era than I want to keep the noise as my photography style.
Since I only bring 2 lenses this morning Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 and Nikon AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G so generally I could get various angle that will come in a superb result, it was truly fantastic by capturing moment through this gear since it’s quite cheap to buy especially if you just starting your photographer business. Till now I hope my Nikon D7100 review story will answering your curiosity about this old DSLR camera result, it’s still worth it to buy on your first year or photographer career.
Shooting at Ceremony inside the Church
Now I will bring you into the most important moment in wedding,
the Blessing!
Shooting in wedding ceremony is quite challenging cause there is no repetition during moments. I must set my camera in normal speed and make sure to hold the f number on 2.8 so I got sharp images. Look at this picture above, superb moment! I found Marcia hug her father after the ceremony and I saw her mother look at her and give a nice smile when see her two lovely person hug each other, it was fantastic!
My personal and honest suggestion for shooting on blessing moment is NEVER check your LCD quite often because if you doing this than you gonna lose the moment. Make sure you know your camera as well so everything that you set on this gear is ready to fight and you definitely able to capturing the moment of your couple. When I shoot on the blessing ceremony I saw the church got quite low light so I shot in common with 1/60 exposure time and f2.8 lens, due to my experience, shooting on that setting is quite safe and you still able to get clear and sharp image for the result.
My Honest Nikon D7100 Review for Shooting Glamorous Wedding
If you just start your photographer career or simply love photography and wanna have your first cheap DSLR camera than I highly recommend you to buy this Nikon D7100. It might now the latest camera at this time but so many people still using it even just for back up camera and bring this cool DSLR for traveling in such extreme condition. It means no matter where you gonna shoot than D7100 will still fulfil your needs.
Down here I’m gonna make some lists that gonna telling you about the pros. and cons. about having this Nikon D7100 for your own. It might be the best comparison so far but these reasons below is coming from my personal opinion after using it during my wedding photography projects.
Hope you inspire with this!
Pros.
- Cheap or affordable camera that you can buy for first time running a photography business
- High resolution image for the final result
- Suit on your hand
- Quite small so you can bring it for traveling too
- Compatible with various Nikon lens or third party lens like Tokina or some other else
Cons.
- Few un-educated people still think that you are not a professional by using this camera
Nikon brand is coming with sharp and fine saturation raw files so somehow you even don’t need to do over-retouch your file to get wonderful image for sure. Nikon file also used to be bigger than other brand like Canon so if you get used to set on JPEG L fine than you can set as JPEG M fine on Nikon. In fact when I shoot with the Nikon D7100 and put my images on lightroom than I got around 10MB for each photo which is great for designing the final album presentation and it still reliable when my couple want to print it in big wall print.
Down here I’m gonna give you some suggestion about lens that you could consider to put on your Nikon D7100 gear.
Nikon D7100
I’m gonna say that this is a must have camera if you just want to start your photography business at the first time, trust me, it’s worth it to buy
Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8
You can buy any high-end Nikon lens for sure but whenever you want to save your budget than this Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 for Nikon will come with extraordinary photo result. The most important thing is you can use the 11mm ultra wide lens + 2.8 aperture setting for any kind of situation both indoor and outdoor
Nikon AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G
50mm is one great fix lens that you can buy and use it in advance to shoot for detail and couple portrait. Surely you must move forward and back since it is a fix lens but as long as you get plenty of free space to shoot than shooting through this amazing lens will blown your mind away!
If you want to buy this camera on Amazon than there are two accessories that I also suggest you to have:
- Camera bag – you must need it to keep your camera and some lenses save and on that link I share few bags that less than $50
- LED dimmable light – sometimes you gonna need this portable artificial lighting for shooting both indoor and outdoor
So what do you think about my personal Nikon D7100 review here? do you got something to consider after all? What’s better than super cheap great DSLR camera that could help you to shoot like pro no matter you run a wedding photography business just like me or having some other niches that you love for the most. By checking Nikon D7100 on Amazon than you can buy the brand new camera or having used camera that come in super cheap price, all you need to do is reading all the review and make sure you got fine camera for your own. At this time you may consider to spend around $1200 for the brand new gear or you also may consider to spend around $700-800 for the used photography gears.
Conclusion
So please let me know what you thinking after reading my Nikon D7100 review, if you already own this camera than I would really appreciate if you can write a comment on the form below so you can inspire other blog readers who gonna buy this camera for their own. Once again I’m gonna say thank you in advance for your consideration of stumble upon my blog and please keep in touch and let me know what things that you really need to know more about photography.
If this gonna be your first time to read my blog, I also have a previous story when using Nikon D7100 for shooting on an engagement session and I think it gonna be fantastic buy seeing both the final image quality on engagement, pre wedding and surely for the wedding it self.