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Wedding Photography Workflow?

SomethingBlue
Hello there! I am a wedding photographer. I recently downloaded a trial of CaptureOne 5 (5.1.1 I believe). So far, I'm more than impressed with the image quality, and I'm working on getting used to the tools, but what I'm struggling with most is what the best way is to go about dealing with the large number of images that I'm left with at the end of a wedding day. I've been using Lightroom for years, and I'm very comfortable with the way I've been doing things there, but the lure of some of the tools in CaptureOne is strong. I can briefly describe what I do in Lightroom, and maybe some of you experienced C1 users can help me out and tell me how I can do this (or something similar) here.


  • I create a new Lightroom catalog for this couple (unless I already have one from a prior session I've done with them)

  • I offload all of the cards onto my HD into separate folders created in the catalog's root folder, by camera.

  • Import into Lightroom from the HD, and batch rename all of the files based on the camera they were shot with. (5D-1-001, 5D-1-002,... 5D-2-001, 5D-2-002,... D300-001, D300-002,...) In case you're wondering, I shoot 2 5D bodies, and my second shooter shoots a D300.

  • Now that the files are renamed, I merge them all into a single folder, and sort by date.

  • I create sub-folders for each portion of the day (01_Getting_Ready, 02_Ceremony, 03_Formals...) and sort all of the files into those folders.

  • I go through all of the files and either "pick" or "reject" the obvious ones and leave the maybe's unflagged.

  • Then view only the "picks", do color/exposure corrections

  • For any files that I want to create alternate versions, I create "virtual copies" and convert to b&w or sepia or what have you.

  • I output the files as full-res JPG's, and upload to zenfolio for proofing right out of Lightroom.


    • Now... I'm pretty sure I can't upload to Zenfolio from C1 directly. I'm fine with that. It's the rest of that stuff... For those of you that use C1, how would you do all of that? Is there a way that works better with C1?

    Here's the scenario:
    You have 6 CF cards; 2 that came out of 5D#1, 2 from 5D#2, and 2 from a D300. Now what? Go!

    Thanks in advance!
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    Comments

    5 comments

    Date Votes
    • SamC1
      From what you just described, I would suggest you download a trial of Photo Mechanic http://www.camerabits.com/site/. That software is capable of ingesting cards, renaming files, sorting files, and moving files with ease. Plus, it's not too shabby at metadata. Once you've flagged the keepers, I would move the images into a subfolder named "keepers" and then slide the folder onto the C1 icon and edit the images. Since you're coming from Lightroom, you should be pleasantly surprised how quickly you can view 100% previews of each image in PM. Good luck!

      -Sam
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    • SomethingBlue
      Sam,

      Thank you very much for the suggestion! I'll take a look at PhotoMechanic, but I was really hoping for a purely CaptureOne approach to this. The reason being is that I would love to use some of the tools provided in CaptureOne for going through the photos. (Chiefly the Sharpness Mask and that wonderful little window in the sharpening tool.)

      None the less, thank you! I'll take a look at it. Anyone else? Anyone willing to share what you workflow looks like from start to finish? (not so much develop settings, but more file organization and the process of picking which files will get further processing.)

      Again, thanks in advance!
      Vlad
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    • Paul Steunebrink
      My first thought was to use Photo Mechanic as well, as I use this program for import (copy from memory card to HD) and renaming. As an alternative, I suggest you create a session in CO5 Pro for each wedding, create additional capture folders for import of the respective cards and move all the keepers into the Move To session folder.
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    • SomethingBlue
      Paul,

      Thanks! So basically, if I were to do this purely in CaptureOne, I would do exactly what I was doing. This validates the strategy that I came up with for myself. It seems a fair bit less convenient than what I was doing in Lightroom (which could be because I am so used to the Lightroom way of doing things) but definitely workable.

      Thanks,
      Vlad
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    • Gareth
      I'm not a wedding photographer so my usage of C1 is very different.

      I find C1 the best app to capture images into and work with sessions of a small (compared to wedding) number of images.
      On the rare occasion I shoot a job to multiple CF cards with hundreds of images I always go back to Lightroom as for me it works so much better/easier than C1 to sort through and catalogue my images.

      Of course there is PhotoMechanic but Lightroom has all this stuff built in and just makes my life easier faced with the daunting task of wading through lots of captures.
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