Today, I'm going to be walking you through my gear for the 2020 wedding season.
Taylor Jackson shooting 67 wedding last year. Taylor Jackson, welcome.
You are well known in this community. You're an amazing photographer.
Welcome to my gear for 2020 as you can see, this does everything.
My bag has exploded everything into a very photogenic set up right here and I
have the the blackjack dealer cam above me, which I'm pretty excited about.
This is my camera gear specifically for wedding photography.
If you're a follower of this channel,
you know that sometimes I also do hybrid coverage,
which means I'm making a highlight film of two to four, five,
six minute film while also doing wedding photography coverage.
We're talking specifically about photography too.
So if I'm hired to go out and do a four hour wedding or a six hour wedding or an
eight hour wedding or 12 and 14, 18 hour wedding this is what I'm bringing.
I might bring more batteries. We'll talk about that in a moment.
If I'm doing like a big long day, my typical day is somewhere.
Usually I would say maybe eight to 10 hours and this is kind of the kit that I
use for all of that. I started, I had a lot of equipment, I had a Rollie case,
I have second bags everywhere.
I've realized over time that if I can fit everything in here,
it really does make my life happiness a heck of a lot better. A quick mention,
if you're watching this video before April 11th I have the biggest deal that
I've ever offered and I will never be offering again.
So I apologize if you're watching this video after April 11th,
2020 but if you're watching it before you can get all of my wedding photography
courses,
it's like $2,000 in course content for $30 there is a link in the description
below this deal. Never be coming back. So again,
I apologize if you're watching this after April 11th let's get into the,
the talking about the gear.
The one edition this year is my Nikon D seven 80 and that's going to be my main
camera body as I spoke to before. I also do hybrid coverage as well.
So I'm doing both photography and video sometimes. So as a main camera,
this Nikon D seven 80 is really key.
I actually put up a review of this maybe two or three days ago.
So if you're interested in checking that out, a head over there,
but also keep in mind if you're watching this and you're only doing photography
that you don't need to go for something like a [inaudible] that's brand new.
You can get a D seven 50 which is,
I'm going to say the best deal in all of camera's right now to get a beautiful
full frame camera that has back access to every lens at Nikon's ever made since
like the 70s pretty much that you're able to just have access to all that.
Some of them are going to be manual focus, but there's a lot,
there's a lot of good stuff in the catalog,
so don't obsess about getting the latest greatest if you're just doing
photography.
The advancements really do come in when it comes to doing video coverage.
So if you're interested in hybrid, this might make sense.
But if you're just interested in photography,
don't worry about spending all the money to get something like this or the
[inaudible] or whatever it might be. On my main camera body,
I'm actually gonna do a little, little quick switch here on my main camera body.
I always have, or I'm going to say 95 98% of the time.
I always have my 85 millimeter F 1.4 G.
This lens here is my favorite lens. It is.
The reason I think that I stuck with Nikon is that I liked this lens so much for
weddings specifically.
This might not translate to absolutely every other genre of photography,
but for weddings specifically and portraits,
when you shoot this lens at something like 1.4 it really just does create a
flattering image across all lighting situations unless there's a lot of really
strong contrast like it might not handle like contrast points like the black and
the bright sun behind me here. But that's,
that's a thing you get to know and when you're photographing people,
if they look good in the images, if they're happy with their appearance,
if their skin looks great, they're going to be a lot happier with their photos.
And I find that this 85 really does go beyond any other 85 from any manufacturer
that I have ever seen. So I love this lens a lot. It is my main lens.
It would be on my camera all day if I could,
but unfortunately sometimes you got to get that wide shot.
Secondary body is always my wide camera. So usually how this goes,
the reason why this one has a strap on it is that I will just kind of have this
over my shoulder like so all day with this in my hands taking photos now if I
ever need a wide or if a group comes up to me and they're like, Hey,
can you take our photo of 150 people? I'll be like,
so this camera here to the blackjack cam is a Nikon D eight 50 with a 24
millimeter 1.4 G on there and overall it gives a very similar style to this 85
so these go very well together.
You might have seen even yesterday a the 35 Tamron review went up and that is a
lens that I use on my secondary body.
Actually I use that lens on my secondary body for photography coverage until I
got this 24 and I just really liked this 24 a lot. One of my,
I guess big things,
maybe it's leaning a little bit too much into just shallowed up the field to
compensate for lack of other things going on in an image.
But on a wedding day you can really kind of balance using depth of field to make
things look more interesting.
And I think shooting a lens like this 24 1.4 wide open is one like aesthetically
I think it's one of my favorite looks ever.
It's just this kind of beautiful wide angle lens and you don't really see it too
often. So that's the reason that I got this lens.
I thought 35 one eight looks great. I love that lens.
It's way more versatile overall,
but I like the 24 specifically and just having these two lenses, 85 one body,
24 in the other body,
I feel like I can get pretty much everything from a wedding day completely
captured as beautifully as I want it to be. So this lens here, I love it.
This lens here, I love it. I also have the 35 version of this the,
the G version of it as well.
And I find myself not really using it as much that I wish that I probably
would've just stuck with a Tamron and I suspect that it will be in that 35 1.4 G
at some point this year. The only other lens that I use outside of these two,
or if I know, usually I have a heads up,
if I'm going into a wedding day and there's going to be a group of a hundred
people that are going to have to photograph and the size of the studio and I can
bring this super wide.
Or another thing that I do is I tend to work with the same photographers pretty
often. So I'll ask Tim, Hey Tim, can you bring the supervised this weekend?
I think we're going to have to like do a shot in a very unusual and strange
environment.
So sometimes he will bring what I need and I know that that's pretty much the
only thing that maybe I could ever kind of paint myself into a corner with the,
if I was doing solo coverage eight hour day or something and a group was like,
Hey, can you photograph all of us in this room? And I'd be like, ah, yeah,
I guess so. And then my creative problem solving would go and I'd be like,
I can just do a Panorama with this. Instead of shooting with this super wide,
I'll just do six frames and I'll do that a few times.
So they stitch better and everybody's smiling and looking and then I'll just
build it in post rather than shooting with a super wide.
So that's always in my mind. My contingency,
I guess if I don't have a wide enough lens or if I only brought my 35 and I have
to do something that needs a wider lens, that's another,
another quick work around
This 70 to a hundred is the lens that I use pretty much for every ceremony as
you've seen, I'm sure in the full wedding days on my channel.
And the reason I like it is because I can get all of the shots that I need
without really kind of moving my feet too much during a wedding day.
Like any other part of the wedding day,
I'm happy to just kind of zoom manually if my feet and the,
the negative is that I guess I don't have the 7,200 on all day that I can't get
all of the shots and I have to actually move.
But the positive is that they usually can look a little bit better and it gives
you that little edge. In the grand scheme of things with business,
is that making me more money? Probably not.
I realistically could just shoot everything with this all day and just kind of
get it done.
And I feel like that's kind of the same as shooting with a 24 to 70.
Is that like, yeah, the images exist, they look pretty good.
But I feel like these two lenses here really kind of do make your images a
little bit next level. With the 7,200,
it is simply because I don't want to run around during the ceremony.
I would rather just be able to zoom around and get the shots that I need and
then moving into hybrid coverage and doing video.
This is the VR on it is really amazing. It's their, I guess sports line,
I don't know, differential Termez.
But it's whatever their best VR that they can put in the lens is this,
I feel like I'm on a steady cam whenever I'm shooting with this in VR mode.
And maybe if you're a Nikon shooter, there's a F a few different VR options.
So you have normal and you have sport or sometimes you have normal and you have
active what the active or sport in some cases means is that you're ever shooting
from a moving vehicle. That, that's the,
the studying that you should be on that it really just kind of tries to
stabilize everything and then normal means you're kind of standing still doing
stuff. So maybe hopefully I helped you.
I'm sure Canon or other companies probably have something similar going on.
But that's something that I learned a couple of weeks ago and I thought I would
share with you cause it really did make my images from a car a heck of a lot
better. Next up in the important things. We have this go docs flash.
It is the V1 depending on what camera system you're using,
you have to be selecting it. So the goat ox V one and is for Nikon.
And basically it means that it just works correctly with your Nikon camera or
the see if you're a canvas shooter, F if your Fuji or S if you're Sony.
And it does everything that I could ever need from a flash on a wedding day,
a speed light. I do have an AAD 200 pro also by go docs.
But I find myself that this just kind of gets more than enough done.
But I really do find that the power,
I'm never outside with like a modifier trying to overpower the sun or anything
crazy like that. So I never really need that level of power.
This does everything that I need whenever it starts to get a little bit darker
and I need to compensate for a little bit of flash.
I also have with me in the back of the, the case here,
we'll get to the bag in a moment. In the back of the pouch, there is this,
this lovely little, I'm gonna call it the,
it's like a little Turkey little Turkey.
And what that does is just a little stand here for my flash and I find myself
using this as much as I actually use this light stand. So this light stand,
I don't know what it is. It's I dunno.
I want an Amazon and whatever the cheapest light stand was, I purchased it.
You don't have to get too crazy with light stands if you're just supporting a
small little speed light like this. But do know to,
to put them in a spot where they're not going to kick get kicked over by kids
like running around and kicking stuff because things get a little,
things don't really get that wild at weddings, but your light stand, I've had,
I'm gonna say three or four flashes tip over and they've all survived.
Fortunately, one of them, I lost this piece. It just exploded out.
But flash still works perfectly fine.
Basically my process for flash is that if I walk into room,
quality of light is good but it's very dim. No problem.
I have cameras that can go high ISO and really just kind of handle anything.
And if you're interested,
there's actually a video that I shot all that 5,000 ISO.
The entire entire wedding day was all at 5,000 ISO and it was on this eight 50.
So yeah really no problems at all shooting that high ISO if quality of light is
not good,
which means that there's those little pothole or pot lights and just kind of
like making everything just look a lot. It just doesn't look good.
Everybody's bags into their eyes at that point is usually when I come in with an
on camera flash and if I know that on camera flash just isn't going to cut it
for whatever reason. I'll move it off camera. So when I move it off camera,
I put this X T,
I put this X to T N cause again Nikon icon on the top of my camera up here.
And all it does is actually really cool.
So it controls everything by groups here.
So if you're on group a or on group B or on group C, D,
which means whatever you've set your flash to.
So if you have a bunch of these kicking around in the room,
you can control all of them individually.
You have your wheel down here to quickly just change whatever the settings are.
So if you're a little bit too high flash power,
you can easily dial that back or you're gonna shoot it on TTL.
I find for my post-production that it's better when I shoot everything manual so
that everything is just the same.
And I can do batch corrections when I get back into Poston and correct.
But if you wanna shoot TTL, by all means do that.
This is like the nicest off camera flash kit really that I've ever used and I'm
super excited that I can actually use off camera flash reliably.
Now beyond off camera flash,
one thing that is often overlooked is just a simple video light like this.
This is the go docs. I think it's the [inaudible].
If it's not a put the correct name on the screen and essentially what it does is
it just, it's a nice soft white light and you can change the Calvin of it.
So if you want to go all the way down to something like, I don't know,
make it nice and orange, you can go and you can match that weird incandescent.
There's also a bunch of like crazy different settings you can do like red if you
want to get like really unique and weird I guess with your wedding photography,
I find myself using this, the police siren,
so if you ever filming a movie and you need that blue and red flash in the
background, you get that anyways. Not really necessary for a wedding day,
but for just having that nice soft video light that if you ever just need to
clean something up or if you're in a dark space and you're like,
this is a beautiful environment,
but I just need a little bit more light on the couple to make them kind of like
more of the focus of the image, that video light,
it's usually a better situation than setting everything up with an off camera
flash.
And what I actually use a lot is this little sort of cup here and this actually
works with the V one.
So if you want a little more modifier there or if you want it on here,
it works as well. So basically what it does is it just makes everything nice,
nice and soft. So rather than a big kind of more directional LEDs,
it just softens it out.
So that kind of looks a little bit more like a real light that could have been
within the frame. My off camera light or my, I guess off camera,
video light. Really,
the only thing that I'm trying to do is make it look like it should be part of
the scene.
I don't want it to look like it's just like weird light that just shouldn't
exist. Or if the lights actually in the scene, I just like, I just want it.
I want it to look natural. I want it to, I want to hide my African or flashes.
Guess what I'm trying to say. On top of that, we have a CTO gel.
If I could have a CTS gel,
which is just like a little less orange I think it's color, temperature, straw,
I would love that. But I don't have that.
So basically all this does magnet again clips on there and now your flash is
orange. With this you can just change the color temperature to match that.
So it's no big deal.
But for flash that's pretty much the only thing that I ever use.
I rarely if ever, use this little cup here on this flash,
but what I will do is is used as if I'm in an incandescent environment.
Next up we have batteries and we have cards and a battery charger.
So battery charger, pretty exciting.
These all charge or this camera charges USBC now so I can just kind of bring one
of those battery packs with me and charge wherever rather than finding basically
if I find an outlet like cool,
I'll use that and then I leave that there and I never see it again and I lose
batteries and charges that way quite often.
So if I can just charge it with like USBC just kinda in my,
or even like put it back in my camera bag and shooting my second body while it's
charging.
I would way rather do that than just keep replacing these over and over again
cause I really do forget them. I forget a lot of light stands too,
so that's why I buy the cheap ones. Amazon basics batteries for this,
X T for this [inaudible] getting really,
it's difficult to say because Fuji has the,
the X T two X two three and X T four and this is the [inaudible] very confusing
to say. And then a backup card for each camera.
I have two cards in each of these cameras,
two SDS and this one and execute and an SD in this one and I have one 20 eights
sometimes I'll even shoot the two 56 if it's the SD and that.
I would say if I'm just doing photography on a wedding day,
I will never reach the end of that again.
That's kind of my eight to 10 hour day.
I was doing something like an 18 hour day,
which is long time to be at a wedding. I might bring extra extra cards,
but again, this is kind of geared to the, to my usual environment.
And then if I'm working with a second shooter,
usually I have a second little small bag with me and it has my laptop,
a card reader and a hard drive in it so I can just download all their cards.
Or you get somebody like that in our box that I don't have here with me.
But you need to download cards that way and it just downloads everything to this
hard drive that you just walk around with or you just take your seconds cards
and you meet up with them on a Monday or you have them shoot on your cards.
If that's the easiest. There's, I dunno, there's a lot. It's like Photoshop.
There's a hundred different ways to do everything.
So how you get your photos from your second photographer, that's your business.
Last item here, peak design, everyday messenger.
This is the V one version of this bag. There is a [inaudible] available as well.
I, this one's perfectly fine, so I'm probably not going to upgrade and tell.
I need to. But all the peak design items are just absolutely amazing.
This is all I bring with me. So the,
I guess the cool thing or the amazing thing with this is that you get these
little,
these little flip downs if you want to make some shelves in my peak design
messenger, I have kind of three slots here. So usually what happens,
I guess I'll load this up since pretty much pretty much done here.
Usually this guy sits right here.
Let's go docs V one sits right here in the middle and my second camera body
sits up front there. So if it's not needed, all I need is this.
That's where that all goes in the front pouch here. What happens there?
Battery charger, X two T, extra cards,
extra batteries. You can put them in slots if you want to.
And then this guy that we forgot about,
he can either go on the side or he can go on the front up here.
There you go.
One of the other great things with the peak design bags is they have this kind
of, depending on how full it is,
it's a little stretchy and you can pick which one you are.
So if you don't have the second hammer body in here,
you can probably be all the way down here.
And if you do it kinda just makes it like as compact of a package as possible.
So no problems whatsoever carrying this bag around all day.
I leave my light stand in my car cause I don't really need that all the time.
And yeah, that's all this in my hands.
That on my shoulder sometimes my second camera body on my shoulder as well,
depending on what part of the data is.
And then this just in the trunk of my car. Thanks for watching today.
I hope that this revealed some of the mystery and the fact if anything else like
you can invest in these expensive lenses but you can also get similar versions
of them that are a lot less expensive as I spoke to with the D SevenFifty like
that. That's an amazing photography camera.
So you don't have to worry too much about spending all your money on the latest
and greatest if you're just doing photography. So yeah,
thanks for watching today. I really appreciate you being here. And again,
if it is before April 11th,
you can currently get all of my wedding photography courses for $30 rather than
2000 plus dollars and save yourself ACO a lot of money. Thanks for watching.
See you next time.