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What’s in our bag January 2011

We posted one of these last year but just for fun thought we should do it yearly in the spring since it seems to change so often!

Normally we get questions on ‘Oh my! What lens did you shoot this with?!” or “What lighting do you use?” Thus post solving the entire problem of spilling our guts. For all your pleasure here is our breakdown of the main equipment used by ZTS for weddings, engagement and seniors:

Equipment used

2X Canon 5D MK II‘s

21.1 megapixel full frame sensor cameras. They have the ability to take 1080 videos with ISO range from 50-25600. Love them! If your shooting weddings I would recommend investing in a full frame camera.

4X Pocket Wizard Plus II’s

We use these to trigger off camera lighting with our cameras. These may not be around much longer. 😉

Canon ST-E2 Transmitter

Tanner picked up this little guy two years ago for a wireless slave flash controller for our 580 EX II’s. It helps with focus assist when shooting in extremely dark venues as well.

1X Alien Bee 1600

I could never shoot another wedding or mid-day bright and sunny shoot without this little guy. The best lighting investment we ever made! If you shoot weddings…GET ONE.

Vagabond II –

Portable power for our lighting allowing us to shoot indoors and out with our studio strobe. Basically a car battery…everyone in the industry complains about the weight of it. If I can lift it and I am a wimp…so can you. 🙂 They did just come out with a mini version of this as well.

2X 580 ex II‘s

These our our external flashes we use on and off camera.

Sigma 14mm f/2.8

ULTRA wide-angle lens on full frame. Has a rockin’ close focusing distance of 7.1 inches which allows us to get great close up shots with the lens. This lens is fun to pull out for a different feel and has some wicked lens flare if wanted. Took us forever to find one of these boogers they were sold out everywhere as they are discontinued. Still lusting over a Canon 14L II though!

15 f/2.8 Fisheye

ULTRA wide as well like our 14mm f/2.8. This has a 180 degree angle of view on our full frame cameras which creates fun shots of venues and creative and edgy portraits.  It has a minimum focusing distance of 8 inches so also works well for close-up detail shots in a unique way.

24-70mm L f/2.8L

We are prime people for the most part but not sure how to get away from having a regular zoom when shooting events or weddings. We swapped out our 24-105L F/4 for this little booger a few months ago and couldn’t be happier. Great for studio work as well as group shots at weddings.

50mm L f/1.2

We rented a 35L and a 50L from CPS this fall and seriously fell in love with the 50L. It is everything people say it is and more. Crisp, amazing creamy bokeh , the contrast and colors…to die for! We immediately picked one up and sold our 50mm f/1.4 to a good home. Couldn’t say enough awesome things about this lens on a full frame camera. Just wonderful!

100mm L f/2.8 IS USM macro

This baby rocks. Hands down so much better than the Canon 100mm f/2.8 handheld and focusing wise. If you are in the mood for a great portrait and detail lens…get it. Sharp, fast, image stabilization…enough said.

135L f/2

Shooting weddings or portraits indoors or out this is the one to invest in when shooting full frame. Also use it quite a bit for sports photography with the longer focal distance and low f stop creates some sharp images with a creamy bokeh.

70-200L f/2.8

We purchased this last spring at Christan Photo here in Des Moines. Mainly use this for the long stuff. Primes as I said earlier are our favorites but wedding ceremonies and dances this little lens gets used quite often. Also great for sports and produces a wonderful bokeh as well at 200 f/2.8.

The lineup!

Just for fun we have a Canon G12 so often if you see pictures posted from random trips and such it could have been taken with this. Great camera that also allows us to shoot in raw.

SanDisk Memory Cards

We have a TON. Seriously. Shooting 21.1 megapixel RAW images adds up FAST. We shoot mostly on SanDisk 8GB Ultra Compact Flash Memory Cards.  We feel safer shooting on smaller cards and switching out often. Letting you in on the secret that Costco has these gems on sale for $27.99 often if you are a member with coupon! (SAY WHAT?!) At that price we can afford to have a ton and invest in new cards often and retire old ones. An 8GB card holds about 225 images if not a little less so between Tanner and I shooting all day in Large RAW + Small JPG  at an event we go through normally 10-11 of these guys so great to have extras! Trust me you can NEVER have enough memory. More is always better for safety sake!

Batteries

We use a mixture of rechargeable and regular batteries for our Pocket Wizard Plus II’s and 580 EX II flashes.  Yet again Costco saves the day with 48 packs of Kirlkand batteries for ONLY $12! (I think here in Des Moines they are even cheaper!)

We also use Enelope batteries that are rechargeable. Thus Costco has great deals on them usually if you look with 8 packs of rechargeable AA’s and charger for around $30.

Back-Up HD’s

We back up on CD’s and Hard Drive as well as two on-line sites. You can NEVER be to covered with images backed up in several places for peace of mind. We have a wireless Time-Capsule as well as over 5 Terabytes of hard drive space upon several drives. We recommend Western Digital for a hard drive brand. We had bad luck int he past with other brands such as Seagate crashing.  Safety first makes you sleep better at night!

Light Stuff

-Alien Bee Octabox

-Various Umbrellas

–Speedlight portable softbox

–2X light stands

-2X tripods

–Alien Bee Beauty Dish

We Edit On

2X 27’ iMac’s

Fast, big, good. We usually tote around one to a wedding reception to put a same day slide show on of the images.

15’ MacBook Pro

The workhorse if on the road.

iPad 3G

Great for portfolio viewing, internet everywhere for e-mail and communication with clients. Attempted to use it for same day slide shows at wedding receptions as well a few times.

We Editing With

Photoshop CS4, Lightroom 2.3 albums with InDesign CS4

If you ever have any questions about anything feel free to shoot us a message! We love to answer geeky tech questions if we have the knowledge and time to.

We are looking into the possibilities of purchasing a tilt-shift, a sigma 85 f/1.4 or Canon 85L f/1.2, a Canon 14L II and a Canon 24L II  in the near future. Looks like rentals at CPS come spring are going to be busy with us trying out new equipment!

Hope you all are staying warm during this crazy blizzard going on right now. Where is spring?!