Note: Photographers’ Friday is a weekly blog series directed toward professional photographers, and in some instances, serious amateur photographers. All Photographers’ Friday blog posts will assume that readers have a basic working knowledge of digital SLR cameras, but if you’re left with questions or don’t understand any of the information, don’t hesitate to ask. We love e-mails!

—

Happy Friday, everybody!

I know I’ve done a “What’s In Our Bag” blog post, but that was ages ago and things have changed! So today and next Friday, I want to cover not only what gear we use, but give you a little bit of insight into how and why we use it in a particular situation. So today I’ll be talking about what we use for portrait sessions, and next Friday I’ll be covering what we use at weddings. Here goes!

At an engagement session or other portrait session, Danny and I have a system worked out. We pool our gear when we pack it up to head to the shoot, but as soon as we get there, we know exactly who is using what, and we know exactly why. Here’s what we take to every portrait session:

Nikon D700 (x2)
Nikkor AF-S 35 mm f/ 1.4 G
Nikkor AF 50 mm f/ 1.4 D
Nikkor AF-S 105 mm f/ 2.8 G
Nikkor AF-S 70-200 mm f/ 2.8 G II
36″ round 5-in-1 reflector
Black Rapid straps
Opteka Wrist Grip straps
Shootsac
ExpoDisc
SanDisk Extreme and Extreme Pro CF cards

Nikon D700s
These are kind of self-explanatory: We need cameras to do our jobs! And we love our D700s.

Nikkor 35 mm f/ 1.4
This is one of the lenses I use during engagement sessions. I love this lens’s crispness, its fast focusing, and its wide aperture so I can shoot it in low light and at a very shallow depth of field. It takes beautiful pulled-out photographs that let me capture a lot of scenery around my subjects, and it’s perfect for shooting in tighter quarters. I absolutely love this lens, but I use it far more at weddings than for portrait sessions; of the three lenses I rotate through at portrait session, the 35 mm is the one I use the least these days. Here’s an example from the 35 mm:Nikkor 50 mm f/ 1.4
This lens is my baby! On my camera probably 75% of the time during portrait sessions, I’m incredibly comfortable with and in love with this focal length and the amount of space if gives me to work with within my frame. The perspective and flexibility I get with the 50 mm are my favorites. Like the 35, it’s sharp, fast, and gives me that same (optional) super shallow depth of field that is so fun to work with. An example:Nikkor 105 mm f/ 2.8
While this lens is technically a macro lens intended for extreme closeups (which we definitely use it for, especially when we’re photographing rings and jewelry), it’s also a stunning portrait lens. The longer a lens’s focal length, the greater compression it gives to the images, and more and more, I am loving longer glass . . . which is why the 85 mm and 135 mm are two lenses I’d love to add to my bag! But that’s another story. What I don’t love quite as much about the 105 is that I have to stand at a much farther distance from my subjects, so I feel like I end up shouting instructions to them, whereas with the 50 and the 35, I can be much closer to them and talk conversationally. The 105 offers buttery creaminess, and striking color, so it has become my go-to lens for dramatically backlit portraits. Here’s an example:Nikkor 70-200 mm f/ 2.8
The only zoom lens we use for portrait sessions, this (big!) lens is Danny’s baby. It’s the lens that stays on his camera for the entire shoot at most portrait sessions, except when he swaps it with the 105 to get some ring shots. Like the 105, it offers that creamy, color-rich look you get with long lenses, and we love the sharp fall-off around our subjects, which makes the background look like an expressionist watercolor. It focuses fast, so it’s great for action shots, and the long focal length allows Danny to zoom in tight from a ways back, so while I’m close to the couple, directing them, he’s sniping great candid shots from different angles. Another example:Reflector
We bring a reflector along to every shoot, whether or not we end up using it. Which reflector you buy isn’t a major decision — just choose one that is around 40″ wide, so that it bounces a substantial amount of light at your subjects, and choose one that offers a reversible slipcover, so you can choose whether to reflect with basic white (the best option in most scenarios) or silver (perfect on overcast days). Also great is having a reflector (sans slipcover) that is sheer, which allows you to use it to diffuse harsh light on your subject or a closeup detail.

Black Rapid straps
Our Black Rapid straps are our neck-savers! They distribute the weight of our cameras evenly across our body, versus neck straps, which put all the weight right on our necks. Being able to let our cameras hang from our necks/bodies also allows us to swap our lenses more quickly and freely.

Opteka Wrist Grip straps
If the Black Rapid is the neck-saver, the Opteka is the hand-saver. This makes us feel more secure when we’re holding our cameras, and it really reduces hand fatigue as we’re shooting. Anything that helps us take our focus off our gear allows us to devote that focus to our work.

Shootsac
I love my Shootsac! And I blogged about it a couple years ago. I love it even more now that I have the shoulder pad and a cute patterned cover with a zippered pocket to store lip gloss, car keys, and the like. It can hold up to three lenses, and having my lenses right on my hip makes it a breeze to swap them out quickly.

ExpoDisc
Let me be truly honest here: I don’t always use my ExpoDisc. But Danny always uses his. It lets us custom set our white balance in camera to make sure the color temperature of our photographs is accurate and looks great — and that our photographs don’t have a green or orange cast. Getting our white balance right in camera saves us time during post processing.

SanDisk Extreme and Extreme Pro CF cards
When it comes to capturing and saving our clients’ memories, we’re not going to take a risk on off-brand compact flash cards; we need top-quality hardware and software that we can trust, so we stick to SanDisk’s Extreme and Extreme Pro cards. They also write data to the cards very, very fast, which means we don’t have to worry about missing a shot while our card saves the previous image.

So that’s what’s in our bag for portrait sessions. Check back next week for our wedding checklist!

~ Laura