It may be a simplistic view, but it's also true. I see no harm in speaking the truth plainly.

Their studios turn over more than a million dollars a year so I think they charge a fair bit.

I can tell you I wouldn't pay less then £2000 for the wedding photos and I would need to review the portfolio beforehand. Like I've said in a previous post, if you're cheap then you'll get cheap results. Beyond that, I would let the photographer use whatever equipment they're comfortable with.

In a wedding album that you produce, what percentage of the photos are in the poorly lit church? How large do they get printed, and would they survive being shot at high ISO speeds and then converted to black and white? Even in rainy Britain, you can get away with pushing the camera and converting the ceremony images into black and white. If the lighting is that bad, you're not going to get brilliant colours fast lens or not so you might as well go B&W.

No offense, but I don't think this is going anywhere. So this is me bowing out of this discussion.

In that same post, there's links to the Pentax FF DSLR that'll arrive in 2010. Somehow, I think the author is just hedging his bets

You could also have a look at Paint.NET which is free, has a fairly intuitive UI but is a little bit slow.

You don't really need fast lenses for wedding photography. They're nice to have, but they are not absolutely essential. If you take a look at the work done by people like David Ziser, you'll see that he uses the Canon 18-200mm for a lot of his shots. Many of them are shot at around f/5.6. Here's a photo he's taken with an 8 MP Canon 30D with the kit lens (i.e. 17-85mm which regularly gets slated by pixel peepers for the amount of distortion and CA). In fact he doesn't use anything faster than the 70-200mm f/2.8 and even then he rarely uses it. Give that 6 MP camera to photographers like David Ziser, Monty Zucker, Yervant, etc and they'll churn out master pieces. To me, that suggests that the photographer is far more important than the equipment used.

Having better gear is always nice though

A couple of comments on the video, if I may.

About the Photographer:
1) If you're getting paid for a job, use a professional printer. It might cost slightly more, but for those type of prints (they looked like 8x10s) it's not going to cost you significantly more.

2) Her kit was fine for weddings, if she knew what she was doing. Don't diss the gear when it's most likely the photographer at fault.

3) She should have visited the venue before hand, spoken to the vicar, tried to work something out. It's absolutely inexcusable to turn up at a wedding then moan about lighting and other restrictions placed onto you. Remember, it's their house so it's their rules.

4) Sign a contract before the wedding discussing the types of photos you're going to take. If you're not sure about making the shots, DO NOT PROMISE IT! Immediately after the wedding, when you deliver the photos to the bride ask her to take some time to fill in a satisfaction form. Most brides are happy with the photos they get. It's only after they've spoken to a "knowledgable" relative do they get upset. The satisfaction survey is your "insurance".

About the bride:
1) As with anything in life, if you're cheap you're going to get cheap results. Have realistic expectations inline with the price you're paying.

About the judge:
1) It's not the size of your lens but how you use it that matters.

2) Also since it's an APS-C camera, a 28-70mm would be horrible. Go for the 17-55mm IS instead

The photographer didn't do a fantastic job, but for the price that was paid I think that the job she did was fair. If I could see the photos IRL, perhaps I'd change my mind but from the video they looked ... slightly below average.

I'm still waiting on my money back ... *sigh*

It's not really worth the hassle, is it? The K7 Body + spare battery is available from SRS for £775, which when converted is $1172.

The K-7 is my first Pentax DSLR. Been shooting Sony and Canon before that.