An Asian wedding in Britain is not a eight-hour church-and-barn day. Mehndi runs late. Haldi is wet. The baraat is a road. The rite may ban your light, your gimbal and your second body. The walima or the reception then asks for a dance floor. Pack for the strictest room, not the loosest.
Two pictures, one clock
Cinema and stills do not share a body. A hybrid that flips from 25 frames to a still will miss the blink or the breath, and usually both. Run them as two crews that agreed a map in the morning: flash only on the formal list, cinema owns the vow, stills own the fraction of a second inside it.
Match the cinema bodies. Same codec, same base ISO, same shutter. In the UK that is 25 frames a second and a 180-degree shutter, 1/50. Twenty-four is a choice, not a requirement, and mixing 24 and 25 in one timeline is how a dhol drifts. If a palace job is going to be finished at 24, both bodies shoot 24 from the first battery.
Bodies
Two cinema cameras is the minimum on a wedding day. One stays wide and often locked: the formation at a sangeet, the geometry of a mandap, the walk of an entrance. The other is the long lens, from the side, for hands, the palla, a parent. A third body is a luxury until the bride’s nikah is in another room, and then it is a staffing problem, not a shopping problem. The third camera is only useful if a person who is allowed in that room is holding it.
Internal raw or a high-bitrate log is worth it on the rite and a waste of card space if you cannot grade it. If the delivery is a week, do not shoot a format your desk cannot open on the night. Dual slots, always. One card failing on a Sunday in Southall is not a story you tell the father.
Lenses, and the one you will not need
- 24mm for rooms: a ballroom ceiling, a gurdwara from the side aisle, a courtyard. Not for faces at the edge of the frame.
- 35mm for the street and for two people in a bedroom. This is the baraat lens and the mehndi wide.
- 50mm for the exchange, the tray, the quiet after haldi. It is the lens that does not show off.
- 85mm or 100mm for the mandap, the laavan and the nikah, from a place you were told to sit. This is how you are close without standing in the rite.
- 70–200mm for the sehra from across a road, and for a parent in the third row. It lives on the long-lens body.
A 24–70 on a gimbal will cover a reception if a lens is dropped. It will not replace the 100mm at the fire. Stopped down to f/4 it is a document. Wide open at 24mm, on a face, it is a distortion you cannot grade away.
The gimbal has a job, and then it stops
Use it on the baraat, ahead of the procession, with a person whose only task is to stop you walking backwards into a guest or a bus. Use it low on a sangeet floor if the choreography earns it. Do not carry it into an Anand Karaj. Do not orbit a mandap. Do not walk it down a mosque. A locked frame is not a lesser frame. On the vow it is the correct one.
Balance the gimbal before you leave the house. A sehra and a horse will not wait while you autotune a motor in a forecourt. If the wind is up, the gimbal comes off and the 35mm goes on a wrist strap. A wobbly horizon on a dhol is worse than a held shot with a little breath in it.
Stills, kept separate
One stills body with a 35 and an 85 will photograph most of a wedding if the photographer knows when not to raise it. A second body, or a 70–200, is what makes the milni and the formal list possible without walking into the cinema’s locked shot. Bounce flash for the formals. No flash during pheras, laavan, ijab, sindoor, or the leaving. A macro or a short telephoto for henna lives in a pocket, not in the formal bag, because the cone does not pause.
Sound is part of the camera kit
A recorder with two XLR inputs, a pair of lavaliers, a short shotgun you will often leave in the pouch, and a cable for a DJ desk. Label the channels before the first speech. 32-bit float is forgiveness for a dhol that starts without warning. It is not forgiveness for a lav you never put on the officiant. The full method is in the sound piece. If you only add one thing to a cinema kit this year, add the recorder.
Power, cards, weather
- Batteries for fourteen hours, plus a charger that can live in a locked car, not on a mandap.
- Cards you can afford to lose a copy of, because dual slot only helps if both cards are real.
- A rain cover and a cheap second stills body for haldi. Turmeric is not a filter you wipe off a sensor.
- Gaffer, a lens cloth that is already dirty, and a small LED you will often not turn on.
- Head coverings in the stills pouch. You will forget, and the gurdwara will not.
If the committee allows one camera, the second body stays in the lobby. The kit you own is not the kit you are permitted to use.