TIPS FOR TOGS

In the middle of the panic to get out the door and on set its easy to overlook a few essentials for your camera bag and miss a few key components to tie up your shoot!, its also refreshing to find dual use for a few bits that can really come in handy and here are a few of my tips for any shoot.

Phone

This is usually my party trick either by leaving without it or leaving with it and 9% on the battery, phones can be essential for access SAT NAV directions of your shoot and more importantly remembering your clients details, names, service or shoot location plus homes and flow of your day, a back up charger cable in car or back up table with details added are great ways to avoid failure on the day! 

Light Modifiers

With the ever growing use of OFF CAMERA FLASH, OFC on weddings and commercial shoots is easy to want to bring your entire collection on every shoot, unless your driving a van or in some cases a jeep you would struggle to fit your second shooter in, be careful to bring the correct modifiers that suit the theme of your shoot and clients needs, my favourite would be the 42cm beauty dish or 120 octobox as my go to.

Lenses

This is a mixed bag as lenses are small enough to carry but after 12 hours of hanging off your shoulder they become a lot heavier, these days prime is booming with versatile light weight lenses like the 50mm 1.4 or sigmas amazing 35mm 1.4 art, the 70 200 2.8 is in no way a poor piece of kit but for example in wedding you can store it in your car after the service as its barley used, unfortunately if your a second shooter there maybe a few addition hours to shift this log about as your shooting from distance instead of shooting main shots.

Ice Lights

Becoming more popular by the day is the use of ice lights, these range from £100 to £350 and provide fill light in really poor natural lighting situations, ring shots are amazing with these and even to warm a setting a complete must, touted at first to overshadow strobe these offer massive battery life and handiness to transport.... also great for entertaining kids as the new Luke Skywalker!

Bounce

This might seem like a random one to say the least but the bounce can come in useful in more ways than one, with OCF its a great add on to fill and bounce to the subject/s face but a few added features would be to block out direct sun if held by a 2nd shooter on location to your subject, another great use is when your at a mucky or wet area and aim for a low shots they save your suit or clothing becoming bogging by kneeling or sitting on them, they're plastic material is easy to clean and wipe down and if they're ripped they're very cheap to replace at £15 roughly.

Battery

Last but not least its battery power, Ive experience the horror of 2nd shooting a wedding and finding 2 bars on my battery as the plug switch wasn't on prior to charging, after major levels of stress the Hotel allowed me to charge one of my back up batteries and a back up body was on full charge but DX so the images were a bit tight, from that point on I have a routine to open and lay out my entire kits the night before and double check my check list to ensure everything is being charged and ready for packing that morning, another tip is decent batteries for your flash as it can trigger well over 2000 times at a wedding or even more at a workshop, OCF is advised as the power can last for 1800 full 1/1 triggers per full charge and potentially 5000 on mixed power which his fab for the greedy shooters on location.

Thats my final tips for today, be sure to checkout my workshop page for upcoming fashion, bridal, creative workshop in Northern Ireland.

Chat soon!