Photography Gear Update - September 2020

in PHOTOGRAPHY [DAC]4 years ago

I've upgraded my photography bag(s) with some new gear. A while back, I asked What is in your camera bag? What's in your past camera bags? and it is more than a year since I updated that post. I'll be going through my gear piece by piece and explaining its purpose. Let's start with camera bodies!

Check out my Portolfio on Peakd if you want to see my style of work.

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The old pile o'cameras

Camera Bodies

1x Nikon D750

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This is a workhorse of a camera, with a full frame sensor, excellent low light performance, and a decent auto focus system. Importantly, it enables the use of older F-Style mount lens, owing to the fact that it has a screw on its mount, enabling auto-focus on older AF-D type lenses, which allows for the use of older, "vintage" lenses, which can't be used on many "pro-sumer" Nikon camera bodies, owing to this crew missing from the camera's mount.

1x Nikon Z6 (NEW!)

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This is a new piece of gear for me, and it has a dual role. I will be branching into some video work shortly, and I needed something with 4K capability, and importantly, non-cropped sensor output, otherwise my lenses would all be "zoomed in" when shooting video. The auto-focus sytsem is pretty good, (but not as good as Canon and Sony's mirrorless offerings) - but it is good enough for the type of work that I do - that, and I want to bring my old lenses along on the journey via Nikon's FTZ adapter.

Lenses

Nikon Z Mount 14-30 F4

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I've only used this lens once so far, and its main puprose will be for the shooting of video, indoors, in tight quarters, as well as environmental portraits where I do not want to the model to be the only focus of the image. It is also an incredibly capable landscape lens, with good sharpness, and it is light enough to take up a mountain and trek around all day long.

Tamron 24-70 f/2.8 F Mount

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This lens is the most commonly used for "everyday" shooting - events, photo journalism, weddings, full length portraits, in-door photography - it has an excellent focal range, sharpness, and it a weather sealed lens, that you can take out in the rain without a care in the world.

Tamron 70-200 f/2.8 F Mount

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This lens is the other portrait workhorse, ideal for gorgeous, flattering portraits outdoors, as it melts the background into nothingness and smooth, buttery bokeh, enabling you to isolate your subject against the background. This is a very, very heavy lens, and requires a strong grip. Thankfully, it has built in stabilisation, and a robust vibration control mechanism to ensure sharp images.

Nikon Z Mount 85 f/1.8

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This is now my go to portrait lens - it is very sharp, even wide open; and it focuses incredibly quickly. It won some award for being the world's best portrait lens, and deservedly so - the images it produces are fantastic, and sharp edge to edge. Having said that, having a good portrait lens in your bag doesn't count for much if you don't have a story to tell with it.

Nikon F Mount 105 F2 DC

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This is a unique lens, which Nikon has produced for decades without any design choices. It is a professional lens, and suited to portraits. It has a unique feature, where it lets you adjust the out of focus elements to allow a subtle effect that leads to unique portraits.

Lighting

2x GODOX TT685N

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Speedlights. These sit on top of the camera, or off camera, and are ideal as fill, bounce, or direct flash for events and small set-up indoor portraits. They produce even, beautiful light, and are powered by 4AA batteries, which means you can get them cranking anywhere, anytime.

1x Godox AD200

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This is a portable strobe that has replacable heads. You can use a bulb, or a Fresnel head, and it works well in large modifiers, and is excellent for balancing sunlight (but not direct, mid day sunlight - unless you're willing to use it as fill, and not a main light) I absolutely love this light for its portability and power. I've produced some of my best images using this light.

1x Godox AD600BM

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The manual version of the Godox AD600, with no TTL. This is a monster, portable strobe, which is equivalent to a studio strobe that you can carry with you to (most locations). I've got a sling bag for this light, and while I've only used it once (so far) - it is very easy to work with, and integrates well with all the Godox products, thanks to the flash sytem which they use.

1x Godox X2 Pro Trigger

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This trigger leverages the 2.4GHz wifi range to connect to many, many lights at once - and letting you control the output power, group, and channel of all your flashes without needing to re-adjust light stands, press some buttons, and then test fire again.

Lighting Modifiers

Several x Shoot Through Umbrellas

I see these as commodity items, owing to their fragility, cheapness, and their propensity to become small, land based yachts when used outdoors in windy locations. No matter how much I seem to weigh down my light sands, these always end up going flying in a random direction.

1x 80CM Softbox

The go-to object for on location shoots, and produces a beautiful, editorial styled light, or indoors, a softer, gentle light. It's my most used modifier.

1x 120CM Softbox

The same as above, except bigger. You lose a bit more light, so need to use more powerful lights in it (as every modifier reduces the effective power of a light) - and is wonderful indoors as a key light for amazing, soft portraits.

1x 38 inch Deep Parabolic Softbox

I can't wait to use this indoors. I've used it outdoors once, and its performance was pretty similar to the 80cm softbox outdoors, but indoors, where light can be controlled more easily, I think this modifier will be truly amazing.

1x Beauty Dish (All Metal)

This modifier creates a specular, diffused light, which is good for capturing surface detail in subjects. This works directly with the Godox AD200 only (or at least mine does) - owing to its unique mount.

.... and that's all!

All images in this post were taken from their product pages.

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i am thinking about upgrading from canon 80d to an r6. and i was kinda in the mood to do it last week, but canon did not made enough of them? there is literally one one seller in my country, and i am not really sure do they have it on stock, because they advise me to wait till october as there will be some promotions for r cameras and rf lenses.

At where I am, I would rather spend every cent on lighting. :D

The 80d to an r6 is a significant upgrade, though!

a better light stand and some softboxes would be handy. the no name ones are in bad shape, and umbrellas suffered some accidents. i was surprised how nothing happened with yongnuo flashes, they survived :D

i think that would be an upgrade to a full frame that i would be happy for a while. but photography spending is a hole without a bottom :D

That it is. Neweer (found on Amazon) is decent, but its bottom-barrel tier as far as light stand and softbox durability goes - especially wtih my style being primarily artificial light outdoors.

What a beautiful army you've got!

Thank you, I don't think of it as an army, but sure :D