The complete guide to video for hybrid wedding photographers

In this guide

1. 01Video kit for hybrid wedding photographers5 min read
2. 02Camera settings for wedding video5 min read
3. 03Recording vows, speeches and the band4 min read
4. 04A wedding footage workflow from camera card to backup4 min read
5. 05Adding video to your wedding packages4 min read

Couples sometimes ask their photographer whether they could film a little of the day as well. Saying yes can make your packages more valuable, as long as the video fits around the photographs and you have a realistic plan for editing it. This guide covers the whole job for a stills-first photographer, from what to film to how to price it, with a link to a deeper article at each step.

Why do couples ask their photographer for video?

Photographs show how the day looked. Video keeps how it sounded and moved. A voice catching during the vows, the room laughing at a speech and the first dance as it actually happened are hard to hold in a still, and for some couples hearing those moments again matters more than a long, polished film.

There are practical reasons too. Booking you for both means one fewer supplier to find, brief and feed. They already trust your eye. Their budget may not stretch to a dedicated videographer as well as a photographer, and they would like something short to share with friends soon after the wedding.

For you, video can raise the value of a booking and give couples one more reason to choose you. It also adds work, most of it after the wedding. The rest of this guide is about keeping that work under control.

What should you film on a stills-first wedding day?

Photographs come first and video fills in around them, so decide in advance which moments get video and let the photographs lead everywhere else. A highlight film is usually built from a familiar set of moments:

• preparation details, and the dress or suit going on
• the vows, the ring exchange and the first kiss
• the walk back down the aisle and the confetti
• guests, the venue and the drinks reception
• the speeches
• the first dance and some of the party

To capture these without missing photographs, separate the two jobs as far as you can.

• Let a second body record the long, predictable moments. During the ceremony and the speeches, put a camera on a small tripod with a wide or mid-length lens, start recording and go back to your stills. Glance at it between moments to check framing, battery and card.
• Film short clips in the gaps. Preparation, the empty venue, the drinks reception and the walk between portrait locations all give you a minute to pick up a gimbal or switch bodies.
• Use your phone for quick moments, especially ones you expect to use in a vertical teaser.
• Never change settings mid-moment. A body kept set up for video, with its settings saved to a custom mode, means you never switch your stills camera over while the rings go on.

Tell the couple before the day what you will and won’t film, and ask the officiant whether there are rules about recording the ceremony. For how these moments fit together on screen, see how to structure a wedding highlight film.

What video kit does a hybrid photographer need?

The core kit is small. A second camera body that stays set up for video, a small gimbal such as a DJI Osmo for smooth movement and a phone for vertical clips cover the pictures. Add a wireless microphone that plugs into the camera, a variable ND filter so you can keep a video shutter speed outdoors, spare batteries, fast cards and a small tripod for the ceremony and speeches.

Video kit for hybrid wedding photographers goes through each category, what it does on the day and what to check before you buy.

Which camera settings should you use?

Video settings work differently from stills. Shutter speed controls how motion looks, so you fix it at about double the frame rate and control exposure with aperture, ISO and ND. In 50 Hz regions such as the UK and Europe, that usually means 25 fps at 1/50 for normal speed and 50 fps at 1/100 for slow motion, which also avoids flicker under mains lighting. Elsewhere, 24, 30 and 60 fps are the norm.

Fix your white balance so colour doesn’t drift mid-clip, use a standard picture profile unless you are ready to grade every clip, and shoot 4K if you want room to crop a vertical teaser. Camera settings for wedding video covers each setting, with a table of frame rate and shutter pairs.

How do you record clear sound at a wedding?

Sound is easy to forget when you think in pictures, yet the vows and speeches carry the story of most wedding films. A camera’s built-in microphone is too far away to catch them clearly.

For the vows, clip a lavalier microphone to the groom or the officiant, after asking the officiant. For speeches, take a feed from the venue or DJ desk, or put a recorder near the PA speaker, and keep a backup running. For the band, ask the sound engineer for a desk recording. Leave headroom in your levels so laughter and applause don’t clip.

AfterRushes reads the audio inside your video files today. Support for separate audio recorders is coming, so for now a wireless microphone into the camera is the simplest route. Recording vows, speeches and the band covers placement, levels, backups and syncing.

What should you do with the footage after the wedding?

A whole wedding’s footage is often 100 to 500 GB spread over several cards, and until you copy it, those cards are the only copy. Offload each card whole, keeping its folders and original filenames, and use a copy method that verifies the files. Keep three copies on at least two kinds of storage with one off-site, name folders by date and couple, and keep every part of recordings the camera split into several files. Format cards only once the backup is checked.

A wedding footage workflow from camera card to backup sets this out step by step, including working drives, archiving and how long to keep couples’ footage.

Why is the edit usually the bottleneck?

Filming fits into a day you are already working. Editing doesn’t. Cutting a wedding by hand means watching every clip, choosing the best seconds, finding a story, picking music, cutting to the beat, levelling the sound and then building a separate vertical version for the teaser. For a photographer who doesn’t spend the week in a timeline, this is where video packages stall.

There are four broad routes.

• Edit by hand in a traditional editing suite. You get full control, but there is a real learning curve, and it takes the most hours per wedding.
• Send it to a freelance editor. It saves your time, adds a cost to every wedding and means handing couples’ footage to someone else.
• Use a cloud video editor. You upload the whole wedding first. At 50 Mbps, 300 GB takes about 13 hours 20 minutes. Try your own numbers in the upload time calculator, and see local vs cloud AI video editing.
• Let AI on your own computer make the first cut, then shape it yourself. Making an AI first cut your own covers that second half.

Whichever route you take, the same decisions make a good film. Choose a sensible highlight film length, build around the best lines from the vows and speeches, use music you have the right to use and make the cuts land on the beat. A short teaser sent soon after the wedding buys you time for the full film, as sending a teaser days after the wedding explains.

How should you package and price wedding video?

Offer video as a few clear products, such as a vertical teaser add-on, a highlight film and a speeches edit, rather than open-ended coverage. Price each from your own time on the day and in the edit, a share of your kit, and per-wedding costs such as AI and music. Be clear that hybrid coverage differs from what a dedicated videographer provides, put scope and delivery times in a contract checked by a lawyer, and ask permission before you show a couple’s film as a sample.

Adding video to your wedding packages walks through the options, a simple way to work out a price, and the contract points to check.

Where does AfterRushes fit?

AfterRushes is a desktop app for Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit) that turns a wedding’s raw camera cards into a highlight film and a vertical teaser, on your own computer. It is aimed at the part of hybrid video that stalls, the edit.

It reads cards and folders from several cameras and phones at once, rejoins recordings the camera split into parts and sets aside unusable clips, such as ones that are black, blown out or shaking throughout. It transcribes speech on your computer and finds the music and its beats. Then the AI (Claude, Anthropic’s AI) logs each clip’s best moments and writes the films: a highlight film of 3, 5 or 8 minutes, a 30 or 60 second vertical teaser and an optional speeches edit, in a cinematic, documentary or upbeat style.

The AI makes the first cut. You review it, trim and move shots on the timeline or ask for changes in plain English, such as “make the opening slower”, and export a 1920×1080 highlight film, a 1080×1920 teaser and a captions file.

Some things are still coming, including support for camera log profiles, separate audio recorders and multi-camera sync, and a Mac version. Until then, shoot a standard picture profile and record sound into the camera. How it works shows each step, and the privacy page sets out exactly what goes where.