What’s in the bag

Sometimes I get these questions: what do you shoot with? Well, I can say “it does not matter” until the cows come home, but sometimes, even I have to admit that sometimes, the gear does matter. When? When it rains - the really dirty, filled with dust particles rain - and you still have to shoot. When you’re trying to take a specific picture under near full sunlight and you need a powerful strobe. When your subject’s eyes must tell a story and f/2.8 is simply not enough. But those are special cases - I chose my gear the way most people do: I’ve always used Nikons, I like them - same with my Apple equipment, from iMacs to, more recently, the all-powerful MacStudio. I chose Godox lights because they do what I want them to do very well and they cost 1/5th that of the equivalent Profotos.

If you still want to to know the details, here they are below (along with some additional pieces of equipment I use):

Around this core kit, there are a couple of dozen octaboxes, from 60cm all the way to 150cm, parabolic umbrellas and various stands and tripods. As a bag I tend to favour Domke’s F1-X Little Bit Bigger bags (of which I have 3 - I use one until it melts and then pick up the next one etc etc) - even though I am experimenting all the time. No winners to day though. Oh, and I use VNDs extensively - not GNDs as they are cumbersome to carry and maintain and require further processing time - to control ambient and manage contrast and saturation. Again, why? They are excellent in what they do and very reasonably priced.

In terms of post, because I do very little of that, I use CaptureOne paired with two onsite 24gb 7200rpm drives (mirrored) and one offsite (slower as it’s only a backup). I do have Topaz Labs’ suite as well as the Nik Collection one, but I rarely use them - very light touch in terms of post.