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Equipment Q&A

Any questions going on on the internet? They we sure do I'm gonna launch with this this question read what's your desert island lens seventy two two hundred two point eight okay thank you perfect all right, another question from diane we've out on the internet, huh? Do you actually change your lenses or do you carry more than one body? I have a backup body in the camera and stare in the camera bag, but I changed my lenses as I'm going along I have seen photographers shooting with two cameras, but as you've noticed, I'm very structured so I know what shot is going to come next so it's not like I'm shooting with a seventeen to turn it oh my gosh and either wide take up you know, have the other camera over here and you also have noticed that I go strapless so I just think that the straps getting away so I shoot like this all the time and that I change lenses a ll the time I don't I don't change camera bodies change lenses uh, so yeah, I think I think if you if people are shooting with one...

camera here and other camp, go with what works for you, I don't think it's going to change anything about the quality of your images or how you but I just like to change lenses as we're going along great thank you and pro photographer would like to know do you use uv filters uh yes yeah just um yes this one's the son pack um uh I don't know if that's a good brand or not um yeah yeah I do used uv filters I think maybe even on the other lens is I've got a different different one I know that a lot of people feel that the uv lenses are very, very important in terms of the quality ofthe off that this one's off where so yeah, I know that another nick on also make a uv filters but I've got uv filters on and in my experience that's their full protection I do understand that they do have other effects and and I've but it hasn't hasn't had any effect on my on my photography I haven't seen any detrimental effects in terms of herring non branded uv filters but yes I have a uv filters and the reason I have uv filters this so that if my limbs get scratched it's uh it's more about the protection yeah great thank you. Koules page three is wondering if you could let us know the model of the low pro bag it's that this one here is the two fifty light roller yeah one more question from corporate using the led people to use a flash it'll use in nineteen yes, I am getting to the flash okay um I've got it up in a couple more slides in couple slides time but I do use flash and a few if you have had a look at my other my training videos and dvds and things you'll see that I don't use flash much if I'm going to use flash I'm going to use the big boy useful with the ranger tricks with you know, one thousand two hundred watts and I'm I'm gonna crank it up I'm going to show that I'm using, you know, great lighting great equipment I don't shoot with the speed lights for portrait's and things like that so it's not but I will I will get to that you guys okay? Any other questions do you hire second shooter's? What do you do it all yourself that's a very good question the question was do I hire second shooters or do I do my own stuff? I shoot all my own work I've never had a second shoot to shoot for me I've always have any system have an assistant but I don't have a second shooter I do I really believe that if a client is paying for me that they want me to do the photography I do understand that a lot of people shoot with second shooter's it's great if it goes right and it's a disaster if it goes wrong because who takes the flag? Yeah yeah and you know how much how much if it and how much dedication and how much passion is your second shooting going to have is going to be as much as you do they really care as much about your brand that you do. I do understand if you working in a team in the same company fifty fifty then it's different but I'm talking about hiring a second shooter for a lower amount of money then I really believe that the client is paying for me they want to see me at the wedding I know that a lot of people shoot second shooter's sometimes three people shooting so yeah okay, so, uh yeah that's the bag that we were chatting about the roller and then that one there is thie the a w two hundred it is a smaller bag you know the backpack type of type of bag but this is when I am traveling in my own vehicle so the rest of the gear is in a pelican case or in the back in the trunk but I've got I've got the back sorry my sisters my assistant's got the backpack on his back. Okay, so um just two more lenses that I wanted to chat about I don't have I don't have slides with them for them, but I just wanted to chat very quickly about thie the fifty five mil, a macro lens this is quite a sentimental lends to me it's a it's a fifty five mil macro lens that was given to me by a journalist back in nineteen ninety two I don't even think he knows how much of an effect ahead in terms of my career but like I said, the police force didn't supply us with camera equipped we had to go and buy up by our own so I went and bought a little point and shoot and I was shooting for six months with a pointed shoot in one day I've given a lot of information to this particular photographer his name was mark peters he worked for newsweek I don't even know what he's up to these days I probably should google him but it's quite a generic name so it might be quite difficult but hey was like, what are you shooting with that equipment for you night? So I was like, well I'm a policeman where I can't afford to go and buy expensive equipment and I'm doing it for for for the cops so it's it's not about me building up gear for them so he's like well, you know we get we get allocated a certain amount ofthe equipment and after two years it gets just thrown away or gets made they give us new kid so here you go here is a nikon f three with this lens that was on it and the one thirty five mil portrait lanes also manual focus and manual capita I know that some people that were born in the eighties and nineties have no clue what I'm talking about right now but manual eh pacha on the outside and manual focus and I just keep it in my camera bag too remind me where I came from because it's really really important to remember your roots and every single time I put this lands on my camera I remember where I came from and where I've got to today so obviously I mean I'm I'm a nick on brand ambassador if I wanted a you know, one of five microns I said to them I need a lens and give it to me but I'm never going to get rid of this man's because it just reminds me off where I've come from so that's the eddie I don't think you could get them anymore but anyway that's eighty five and three fifty five if three point five okay then this lens here it's a d excellence this is the um the dx it's ah ten and a half mil fishel and two point eight as well and this is really cool for shooting those group shots when when you come out of the church or shooting interiors off the church or shooting interiors off the uh reception venue now you thinking well how are we going to do that? Um a really cool tip is to take your camera and if you look at the menu, I won't be able to go through the menu here because we're tethered at the moment, but if you go through the menu, you could see there's a section where it talks about timers you go to the timing section and you can adjust yourself timing delay so by default it's on ten seconds you can adjust that to five seconds and the cool thing about the d for is that you can say in your menu you khun khun saying your menu, I want to shoot six shots with a half a second delay or a one second delay or a two second delay, you can customize how you want to do that so that you can end up shooting shots that will work really well if you're shooting insect, can I just get a little bit more on the court here coming here? That's cool, perfect, thank you. Okay, so what I would do is you're going to slip on the ten and a half mil fisheye and this lanes over here. It is a de explains, but it automatically crops, so I don't have to worry too much about that I'm gonna put the mono pod on and this morning parts being with me since nineteen ninety seven very sentimental, as I said so what you going to do is when you come out of the church or in the reception venue or even at the dancing this can work really really well you're going to put your menu on and you're gonna go two s or you're gonna go to self timer so you go to the top of your camera, you put it on to self timer so I know that as soon as I press the shutter, I've got five seconds before it starts firing so what I'll do is I'll focus on where I wanted to be in focus and I'm gonna press the shutter and I know I've got five seconds I'll go up with that and I'll go okay, right? Work it baby here we go right and okay, this this camera came back from a from a servant there you go, there's your aerial shot there's your aerial short where ordinarily you have to go upstairs or have some sort of a cherry picker or a stepladder or something like that. And then even if you're doing dancing for example, you've got this over here and you do it like this and you go above the broad in the groom on the dance floor and you shooting a shot like that were there in the middle there and they'd dancing and everybody else is talking and you got literally got a bird's eye view ofthe off what's going on over there so there's mon a pod a really cool piece of equipment to have and it can it can be very versatile as well just to talk a little bit more about the mono pod I will talk about the the flashing a second that you can take your speed light your speed like comes with littlefoot skander into this first speed light comes with a little foot that you can uh calabar bean that comes a little foot that you khun attached to your money and your assistant the speed lights going to be on this and during the dancing your speed light your I don't really know how to do all of this because I don't do it okay, so your assistant is now illuminating you know you've got that creative lighting system with the speed lines is talking to each other and you've got a situation where your assistant can bring in flash from right up through the back there or anyway, you know in terms of human putting it behind the subject so you only have to photo shop at the pole as opposed to somebody standing behind your your subject with the mono pod is a amon apart is a very important piece of equipment I really didn't know how versatile where you khun if you go teo, just if you google behind the scenes vogue fashion shoots a lot of the stuff any liebovitz shoots a lot of four images for vogue. They you get a little spigot called the spigot. You put it on to the end of this. It basically allows your morn apart to be a light stand. And just like we were shooting with that doctor upstairs with the big soft book, they put that on top of this. So you're holding instead of having your your flash on a understand it's on, um, on a pod and your assistant is holding that whole scene up there. And if your subject's moving, they can move with, you know, with with this subject so that the distance between the subject and the flash remains constant one apart. Really cool piece of equipment to have. Okay, so what I wanted to show you is a little experiment that I did that's pretty much it for the camera bags. I'll talk about the we'll talk about the speed light in a while just to go through this little section. I mean, obviously, I can put my my laptop in over here. Um, and then my my prison that we used upstairs, we need to smell good cologne, and then I've just got all these little gels he's, he's. Things that I can put over I can put those over the led if I wanted to just with elastic bands I mean, I know that it's kind of in contradiction with going on about you know you need to look so so slick and all of that but you know when you're doing dancing gets too drunk already so don't worry about that kind of thing as long as you get the effect but yeah, these little these little gels come with the speed lights use them there for a reason uh yeah, I think that's about it with regards to oh there's there's the joel for the for the led yeah that's pretty much about it in terms of the memory cards that I use um at the moment I have the uh sixty four gig excuse card the x q d sixty four gig licks aren't really, really cool also put in another maybe a thirty two gig into the compact flash side of things as well. Okay, here's luck, sire. The only brand you use a memory card? Yes, that's because I'm sponsored by them and the reason I'm telling you that I think we can speak about this on day three as well is with regards to making yourself marketable like like I spoke to you about how I went to nick on and I showed you know, I made a a finished product, and I gave it to them. I made it easy for them as possible. I would I write articles, and I just send them to people, and if they use them, they use them if they don't, you know that there's no harm lost, but I would write a little piece about how great I thought this this memory card was and shoot some images to them as well and said, you know, if you're more than welcome to use them for your advertising, they're not gonna come to me. You gotta go out and make yourself marketable and and write a little peace, send it to them and see what happens. The same thing happened with I mean, it's, really? You have to also understand I'm not telling you this to elevate myself, I'm telling you this because this is really how it is the same thing with adobe, I'm in adobe brand ambassador low pro ellen crom, manfredo, nikon licks are pelican because I make myself marketable, and I make myself available to speak for these for these people on behalf ofthe these people, so I will go and do an adobe lecture. I have just done one in london, I'm off to dubai at the end of the year, and I've made myself available into them, and obviously I need to be reciprocal in terms of them supporting me and me supporting them on dh. Really? It's just it's just a case off this is a case of having the confidence I know, I know without a doubt they all way better photographers, photographers than me out there, the people watching right now, you guys, right now, I it's because I have being so adamant that I have to make this work that's why I am speaking here right now and not you, your time will come and you but you need to put in the hard work and it has to it has to come from from a place of passion and, um, really, if just knowing my history and where I've come from, if if I can do this, most people could do this. It's so, yeah, it's, I mean, I don't want to get too deep about it, but yeah, okay, but is that I do use likes our memory cause and also I never ever sell my soul if I think that those memory cards we're not good, I'm not going to put my name to them. I have had people come to me with certain products and say to me, use this product and, you know, promoted and like, it's. Not good for me, it's. Not good for our brand. I'm not going to say that I love this product just because it's like an endorsement or a sponsorship deal or something like that, because I need people to believe me. I need people to make sure I need to have people to understand that I it's, coming from from place off, genuine integrity, because that's part of my whole brand.