Nuts and Bolts pt. One

 

I get a lot of questions about gear and technique, so I wanted to talk a little about what I use and why.
First I want to say that I am a firm believer that all gear, whether it is a camera, lens, strobe, etc. is nothing more than a collection of tools that you the photographer, as a craftsman, have at your disposal to make your art.
There are very few photographs that cannot be made in a multitude of ways, using a variety of gear, so one should really not get too hung up on what was used to make a particular image.
I currently use Canon cameras and lenses. I have used Nikon in the past and have no desire to get into a Nikon vs Canon debate, because frankly it doesn't matter one bit. Either are the cream of the crop for consumer to professional DSLR's. The choice between the two comes down to some minor feature differences, ergonomics, and economics. I do tend to steer people away from buying a Sony DSLR, because that funky proprietary flash shoe pisses me off to no end. Since a PC flash sync terminal isn't standard on most consumer/prosumer DSLR's these days, putting some proprietary mount that limits your use of external lighting to speedlights or continuos sources only just aggravates me.

I use Canon 50d's which are of course an APS-C format camera. I prefer the equivalent of a 70-80mm focal length, and fairly wide apertures for just about any photographs of people in which I want to isolate them a bit from the environment. I used to use a 28-70 f2.8 lens on a Canon EOS1N when I shot film, but found myself pretty much living at the 70mm end of that lens. So on a crop-frame sensor, I find that a 50mm prime is pretty much ideal for me. I use the Canon 50mm F1.4 USM version, btu I know a lot of people love the 50mm 1.8 II non-usm lens. I often shoot at 1.8, so I like the ability to stop down just a bit from wide open on the 1.4 to get there. I also like the much quieter and faster focusing.

For headshots, beauty photography, or if I need a different flavor of bokeh in the background, I love the 85mm 1.8 - it's actually probably my favorite lens, even though it's not the one I use most often. If I tried the 1.2L version, I'd probably cry as I signed the credit card receipt for it, but the 1.8 is perfectly acceptable for me.
The only other lens I use with regularity is the 17-40mm F4.0L. You won't see it much in my galleries here, occasionally when I want to include much more of a scene and am not concerned with depth of field. I use it a lot for my commercial photography, or for situations in which I want to exaggerate perspective a bit by getting up close and shooting wide.
I tend to use smaller CF cards - mostly 4gigs each. I like the security of not having an entire project on one card. I haven't lost anything to accidental deletion, but I would hate to lose a whole shoot that way. Easier to reshoot a portion of something than the whole thing.

I shoot mostly straight to the card. Sometimes I'll tether if I'm doing a studio shoot and I have a particular look I'm going for in post. Then I'll shoot tethered into lightroom 3, with the appropriate preset being applied on capture, so that I can determine whether my lighting, composition, etc. is appropriate for the way I want the final image to look after post production.

I think that's about enough for part one on camera gear and capturing images. Next time I'll talk a bit about my lighting gear and techniques, and how I decide what lighting is appropriate for a given situation. Cheers.