Taking pics at a friends wedding?

[Ara57]

Outdoors in daylight is easier for the novice wedding shooter than inside a dark church. You should be able to use a moderate or low ISO and still keep your shutter speed high enough to avoid blur. Your 50mm will be great for portraits and coverage from a small distance away. The 24-85 is a good general purpose lens, (I used one quite often on a Nikon film camera) but it not very wide on a crop sensor. I am thinking that you may miss having a wider angle lens, I use a 17-50 a lot in wedding and reception coverage. Your flash will help some in the daylight if you are close enough, or if you only need a bit of fill to lift shadows and add catchlights in the eyes.

Reading about wedding photography is a great start. Also look at several different wedding photographers' sites to get ideas and see what you should be covering. I would suggest a lot of practice with your flash during the same kind of light you expect during the wedding. Practice balancing subject exposure with bg lighting in particular, and practice posing people for the formals. Get some friends or family to help out here. If you can dress one model in white and another in black, that will help you learn to get good exposures, but always skew in favor of the dress. Shadows that are too dark on a black tux are not as objectionable as having blown highlights on the white dress!

Here is a good site for first time wedding shooters:

http://www.rokkorfiles.com/Wedding101-page1.html

Good luck.