Equipment and Lenses

Dec 19, 2009 by Bo    4 Comments    Posted under: Camera Equpiment, Equipment Review

This is a bit of a rambling about equipment.  Even though i haven’t been shooting that long, I’ve kind of understood that photography is not about your camera equipment.  Many photographers come into this industry with huge budgets and they buy absolutely everything and the best of everything you need.  And the come to believe that with the best of everything they will get the best photos.

I’ve given a couple talks about fashion photography and shown my photos and people often ask “how many lights are you using? what equipment are you using?”  If you look at most of my photos, I actually own only 2 lights.  They are two simple Alienbees with various modifiers which cost under $1000 for everything.

That’s how i produce all my photos, they use a maximum of two lights, (note 2 lights, but not necessarily 2 light sources, ie sun/reflector etc).  For on location shots, I use my Nikon Speedlights (SB-600, SB-800 and SB-900), generally just one or two of them maximum.  The more lights I have the more light sources I have to consider including the various shadows, highlights, colour from each of the light sources.  There is just so much more to worry about, and there is a lot that can go wrong.  Hence I follow the engineering rule, K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple, Stupid!.

Lighting is one thing, and I actually plan to host a series of creative lighting workshops in the coming months partnering up with DCPhotocoop to show off what you can do with one light and the various possibilities.  Essentially understanding what you can do with one light, two lights, and various modifiers and just what’s possible.

Moving on, lighting is one thing, people often ask me what camera do you use and what lenses etc.   Camera equipment is perhaps the most pointless bit, it’s whatever you are comfortable with.   The Nikon-Canon debate is again fruitless, either camera will provide fantastic results.   The other side of the story is that I’ve seen photographers produce great pictures from a D40, which is a $300 camera.  Similarly, I’ve seen photographers produce crappy photos with a D3x which is an $8000 camera.  It goes to show that it’s more about the photographer and not the equipment.

Personally I shoot with a D2x, and a series of primes and a couple of zooms.  Why do I shoot with a D2x?  mainly because I like the vertical grip.  95% of my photos are taken in the portrait orientation, having the built in vertical grip makes it really comfortable and really steady to shoot.  Furthermore, I like the build quality; I don’t take care of my equipment, everything is abused and D2x can handle the abuse.   Also it has native 100 ISO which is very useful in studio.   At the same time, the D2x high ISO quality is crap, my D50 produces better results.  All in all it’s a good camera to use and what I’m happy with.

With regards to lenses, people go out and buy $1500 lenses.  And yes you do need good lenses, but you an get away with bad decent lenses.   The two stable horses for my studio shooting is my Nikon 50mm 1.8D ($100) which is wide and I use for my full length shots (keep in mind D2x is 1.5x cropped sensor)  and Nikon 85mm 1.8D ($400) for just about everything else, 3/4, headshots and closeups.   now if I want to do a bit closer up I use my Tamron 70-200 f/2.8 macro.  This lens is a slow focusing lens, but the copy I have is ridiculously sharp.  My comfort zone is shooting at f/6.3- f/8 in studio, this is also the range you can get the most out of your lenses.   Obviously on location is different and you have to take into account all the other factors.  I have a Nikon 17-55 f/2.8 as well which I use a lot less these days.

Again all in all, learn what you can do with your current equipment and figure out what you need before you drop a couple grand buying some shinny new piece of metal.

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