Wedding photography requires speed, creativity and excellent equipment -- especially lenses.
When shooting a wedding, you need to be prepared with the proper equipment, which means at least two camera bodies, a tripod and a bevy of lenses. However, what lenses to bring? Simply, you need to be prepared for as many situations as possible while being able to change between these possibilities at the drop of a hat.
Zoom Lenses
While you may want some prime lenses in your kit, the best choice you can make is a couple of zoom lenses. Because these lenses cover the range of several prime lenses at once, they make it easy to change composition on the fly, zoom in to catch events happening farther away and go out wide to capture the group shot, all without changing lenses or dropping the camera from your eye. It's wise to keep your specialty lenses as primes for sharpness, but all your other lenses should be zoom lenses. Ideally, there will be three lenses - a wide angle, a midrange-to-short-telephoto, and a full-blown telephoto - all of which have their own camera body, allowing you to switch between the three on the fly.
Fast Telephoto Lenses
One lens that every wedding photographer and photojournalist needs to carry is a fast telephoto lens. Because you will be working indoors for most occasions, a fast lens, meaning a lens with a wide maximum aperture, is critical to your success. While you can use a flash, it's unlikely that subjects at telephoto range will be properly illuminated. This lens is great for work inside a church, when you normally can't get close, and for those all-important detail shots.
Fast Wide-angle Lenses
Again, speed here is crucial. Nearly all your situations will be low-light, unless you're shooting an outdoor wedding, so a maximum aperture of 2.8 is required. Fortunately, most camera manufacturers make lenses of this type. For your wide angle, you'll want to carry something that can reach about 16mm on the low end and 35mm on the high end. Also, don't use the kit lens that came with your camera, even though it should cover this range - you need something of much higher quality for wedding photography.
Lens quality
Don't skimp on lens quality when it comes to putting together your wedding photography kit. Buy the most expensive lenses you can afford, and if you can't afford them, get another job to pay for them. Wedding clients are notoriously picky, so you need to make sure you can satisfy their hunger for sharp, clear, properly-colored images.
Tags: lens that, maximum aperture, need prepared, prime lenses, wide angle