Contax 645 Tutorial #1 | Hybrid Wedding Photography Equipment

Transcript:

00:07: Hey, guys, welcome to… Here at beautiful Daffin Park in Savannah, Georgia. I’m gonna talk to you guys a little bit today about what kind of gear does a hybrid wedding photographer carry? Obviously, hybrid, we sometimes tend to carry twice as much as a regular photographer because you need your digital equipment and you need your film equipment, and sometimes you even carry an extra bag with backup equipment or extra rolls of film, or you have a second shooter, you need a third bag. This tutorial is gonna have three quick parts. We’re gonna have my digital bag, my film bag, and my film bag.

00:43: So when you’re thinking about becoming a hybrid wedding photographer, you’re definitely going to have to make some decisions about what kind of equipment, what kind of digital equipment can you live without? Perhaps you don’t need your light stands, perhaps you can bring less flashes, perhaps you can bring less lenses, perhaps you can make your lenses smaller by trading that huge 7200 for a 100 millimeter which does the job 95% of the time. Sometimes I wish I had a 7200, but I can live with this. When I started to become hybrid wedding photographer, I realized that I was carrying too much to weddings and I had to really minimize that a lot. So, this is my entire digital wedding photography bag. This is all I take. I don’t take anything else. I don’t need anything else. I can cover a lot of weddings, 95% of the weddings, 95% of situations with this bag. And I think 95% is a pretty good number.

01:37: We have two camera bodies. I use full frame 5D Mark IIIs with battery grips. Both cameras have battery grips. I use a 50mm f/1.2, it’s probably my favorite lens. I probably keep this in the bag, in this lens, excuse me, for 90% of the wedding. I rarely take this out. My second favorite lens is my 85mm f/1.8. I don’t have the L series, I think that the L series isn’t absolutely worth the money because this lens does the job perfectly fine and it costs I think $1,000 less than the 1.2 L series. I also have the L series 100mm f/2.8 Macro. I love this lens, it never fails me for ring shots, I absolutely, absolutely recommend it.

02:24: And I have Sigma 35mm f/1.4 which is actually on the camera that we’re shooting with right now. Next, we have the Nifty Fifty just the 100 50mm f/1.8 from Canon. I love this lens. If I lose it, if I break it, I really don’t care. And its a really great backup lens with really fast auto focus, much faster auto focus than the 50mm f/1.2. Although the bokeh on the 1.2 is perfect for matching the Contax bokeh on the Zeiss 80 millimeter which we’ll talk about next. I also bring a little Pelican case with tons of memory cards. You can never have enough memory cards especially ’cause I also shoot video at weddings sometimes.

03:06: Next we have some spools of ribbon and some other styling items that I bring. We have a Mr and Mrs box, I have a pretty neutral color, it’s kind of soft peach or a blush.

03:17: I think this works with pretty much any color that I need and afterwards a Photoshop where in Lightroom I can turn this pinker or peachier or even white, if I want to, very easily. My backup film camera is a 35 millimeter Canon EOS-1. I love this camera, super practical, super fast auto focus. 36 exposures. Sometimes I’ll use this instead of my Contax. If I’m really pressed for time and I wanna shoot film, I really, I feel comfortable using this knowing that my focus would be on point, everything will be sharp, I can shoot 36 exposures, so I can move a lot quicker and it’s a really good backup camera to the Contax, and I can fit all my L Series lenses on it very well.

04:03: Next in my bag, I have a Sekonic L-358 Light Meter. I have some fantastic videos on how to meter for different stocks. Just search for it on my channel and you’ll find it. The next item on my bag is these Hoya Close-up Macro Filters. There’s like a plus one, plus two, a plus four, sometimes I stack them. They’re great for getting ring shots or macro shots of anything you want. However, my 100 millimeter Canon is the best lens that I find to get ring shots. Nothing will give me a more beautiful, crispier, sharper ring shot that this. However, sometimes you don’t want crisp, you don’t want sharp, you want a very soft… Police siren in the background. Very, very soft police siren in the background.

04:52: The camera straps are really popular right now. Everybody and their grandma, every hipster photographer, every beginner, every advanced photographer, every amateur, everyone has a hip camera strap. I used to have a HoldFast. It doesn’t work for me because the HoldFast absorbs all the sweat when you’re shooting in a 100 degree weather, in a 100 degree humidity here in Savannah. So I actually use two HoldFast straps as my camera straps. However, this strap is actually the sling strap from this bag right here. I love this strap. It’s super comfortable. Somehow it does not absorb my sweats simply ’cause I keep it out of… I keep it out of my sweaty areas as much as possible. This is a very comfortable little padding right here. And this is also another strap from the Sightseer, the HoldFast Sightseer, and I clip this on to the bottom of the camera with that little HoldFast D-ring. It works perfectly fine. This one is shorter so I like this one a lot for the Contax. And this one is longer, so I use this a lot for my 35 millimeter or my DSLR.

05:57: So guys, if you’re trying to become a hybrid photographer, there’s not that much information out there. The only thing that you’re gonna hear is, “Shoot with the Contax at 2.0. Read Jose Villa’s book, and shoot with Fuji 400.” Well, I think that that is a fantastic place to start. That’s how I started. That’s how I got into film photography. I still love the Contax to death, but I think there’s a plethora of other film stocks out there that we should be exploring as well. So first and foremost, I do love Fuji. I shoot it quite often. Now, it’s not necessarily what I’m gonna shoot at every event or every wedding, but I do love this film stock.

06:37: So guys, now, we’re gonna talk about my film organizer bag. I really love this bag. It is a Ape Case. I’ve had this for a long time. I’ve used it in several different configurations. It’s really practical. You can put your laptop here. This was is your camera bag, but I actually like it for film. It helps to organize my film very, very well.

07:02: This side pocket here on the Ape Case is fantastic for keeping your unopened boxes of film. I separate my film bag into three different spaces. I keep all the Fuji in one area. I keep all the black and white in one area. And I keep all the Portra in one area. I also label each bag, so this is Portra 400 with my fantastic handwriting. Portra 400 right here, Porta 800, 35mm Portra 160. So this way, I know exactly what I’m grabbing instantaneously. And I make sure that I always double check before I load because that’s the easiest way to mess up your exposure is loading the wrong film.

07:43: Alright, guys, now remember, click like, share this video, check out the description for more links of fantastic tutorials. And I’ll see you next time.

Thanks for watching “

Thanks for watchingContax 645 Tutorial #1 | Hybrid Wedding Photography Equipment! Check out my other articles for photographers like The Case For Film Photography,  Why Photographers Need A PDF Pricing Guide, Contax 645 Tutorial #2 | Camera Accessories, Film Loading and More, Contax 645 Tutorial #3 | Camera Settings, Film Choices, Metering, and Posing, and many more in our Journal page.

Also go check some of my wedding photos to see some of my work at The Market At Grelen Wedding | Virginia Wedding Photos, Delta Plantation Wedding Photos, Belmond Maroma Cancun Wedding, Aldrich Mansion Wedding | Providence, RI to name a few. Don’t forget to check out my homepage for my newest wedding photography work.

Curious to see more?? Please watch tutorial #2 HERE and tutorial #3 HERE!

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