Sony Diaries #1002: What's in my bag?

I strive to capture spontaneity and candid moments in my wedding photos and it is essential to be  nimble on my feet. Traveling light is important for easy movement and the good health of my back. 

For a typical wedding/event shoot, I take 2 bags (main and backup gear), a monopod, and a light stand. I use the monopod for reception shots with the Tamron 70-200f2.8 and the night stand is for when I use my backup flash as an off-camera flash.

My main gear consists of a Sony a99, Tamron 28-75f2.8, Tamron 70-200f2.8, Konica-Minolta 17-35f2.8-4, Sigma 24f1.8macro, Godox TT685S, 3 spare batteries, 12 rechargeable AA's.

My backup gear starts with a Sony a77II , Minolta 24-85f3.5-4.5, Tamron 70-200f2.8, Sigma 10-20f3.5, Godox TT685S, 2 spare batteries, 8 rechargeable AA's.

The two sets are notable for it's low acquisition cost. The Tamron's are the lowest-priced in their  category but can compete with the OEM in image quality. The Minoltas are the best-kept secret in the full-frame world. Sony Alpha cameras are descended from Minolta and still use the Minolta mount. Minolta lenses are world-renowned for their optical and build quality. Minolta stopped producing lenses 20 over  years ago but these lenses are equal to, if not better, than current lenses. And there's plenty of them still available on Kijiji and Craigslist. The Sigma 24f1.8macro is an anomaly: a fast wide that is also a macro lens. And it's less than $600 new. The Sigma 10-20f3.5 is a crop-sensor lens but it is cheap at $500 and very sharp at f5.6. 

In a pinch, I also have the Sony RX10 as a very capable 2nd backup: a very sharp 24-200f2.8, built-in flash.

                                                                                           

Sony Diaries #984: it still comes down to great service with a genuine smile

photo courtesy of bostonimages.com

For the last nine years, and counting, from the demise of film to the advent of digital, from 6MP Pro cameras to today's current 24-36MP, I have been working with Chris and Shelley at Boston Images. In a business where you're only as good as your last job, in an industry where the price of entry is as low as the price of a consumer-grade camera at Best Buy, in a world where referrals rule and fancy websites, not as much, I'm still shooting. I work alongside shooters young enough to be my twenty-something kids. What's the formula for longevity?
I think it's the same formula used by any other long lived enterprise. Great Service. Beyond a basic level of technical and artistic competence commensurate with your pricing structure, what wedding clients will remember is the atmosphere of the day (or the absence of anxiety and concern for the photographers' conduct), the agreeable "flow of events" initiated by the photographers' instructions,  and the photographers' people-management skills (some clients need bossing around, others not so much). This is for the day of the wedding. 
There's is also the front-end consult and back-end post-shoot relationship, which I'm not qualified to comment on as much. Suffice it to say that they're just as crucial; these 3 aspects are closely interrelated. 
Wedding clients won't remember (or care to know) how much your gear costs, or what f-stop was used for the portrait session. They'll remember the feeling, of how they enjoyed themselves that day. This is what leads to referrals. And longevity in this business.

What to do, what to do...

or how one news item from Sony can alter one's plans.

For the last 4 years, I've been shooting Weddings and Events with a Sony a99. This is a camera that embodies perfection for my style of shooting: excellent AWB, useful LiveView, quiet (not silent) shutter, dual card slots,  full frame, useable autofocus for video. I'm on my 2nd aA99 body, and the recent release of the a99II meant that new a99's would be taken off the market soon. 

The a99II improves on "perfection" but it comes at a high cost: $5000CDN. I've been getting more and more requests to shoot video and the a99II would be the ideal hybrid Stills/Video camera as it comes with 2 of my must-have features for shooting wedings these days: 4k video (really good 4k) and 5-axis stabilization. But still, $5000CDN  is a lot of weddings.

I've looked at the RX10II and it ticks off almost all the boxes except for the inability to use lenses faster than F2.8. In-body stabilization (IS) is the tried and true Sony SteadyShot but it isn't 5-axis. I've looked at the a6300 and it doesn't have a headphone jack and no IS at all. 

Today, Sony announced the release of the a6500, which builds on the (fastest/quickest in the industry) autofocus of the a6300, 4k video and ADDED 5-axis stabilization! Like the a6300, the a6500 still doesn't have a headphone jack but I use a pre-amp anyways. But the 5-axis stabilization is the deal-maker for me. And all for $1700CDN!

One may ask: why not use the a7 Series of full-frame cameras? 

Well, I did, for 1.5 years with an a7II. It wasn't ideal for shooting weddings and events. slow focusing and very expensive native FE lenses. Since I have alpha-mount lenses, I use the LA EA4 adaptor and this further slows down auto-focusing, disabling all the focus points that the a7II is known for. And apparently, even the native FE lenses are slow to focus, in this blog entry by Mann & Frau Schmidt.

The a6500  is an APS-C, cropped sensor camera, fine for Video but will take time to get used to for Stills.. For me, it'll be a different way of looking , having used mostly full frame bodies. But hey, cropped sensor doesn't seem to be a negative for Kevin Lam and Ramon Cespedes!

Wedding Photography: a shooter's look into the future

This week, the Toronto Star had an article on wedding couples crowdsourcing wedding photos. This past Saturday, I was a guest at a wedding where there was an official photographer (OP) as well as place-cards encouraging guests to upload  to Wedpics.com. Here then is my take into the future of the business of wedding photography.

As phone cameras (and cameras with wifi capabilities) get better, and image quality expectations go lower, there will be a rapid increase in the use of crowdsourcing as way for couples to obtain their photos for free. As a bonus, crowdsourced photos have a unique look and feel that may be an art form in itself.

In addition, the turn-around time for the images is as fast as the shooter can upload, whereas the OP can take 2-6 weeks to deliver. The excitement will be there when photos show up on Facebook, Twitter, or on the predetermined gallery on one of many crowdsource sites, e.g., wedpics.com and Shootaround. The excitement may not be there when the OP delivers the photos a few weeks later. 

I can see 3 classes of clients:

Class #1: Will only use a professional photographer. Expense is not an issue. Proper decorum is a must and the use of iPhones during the ceremony is looked on as declasse.

Classs #2: Crowdsourcing is tolerated and is encouraged but photo  memories are considered too precious to be left to chance. Expense is a consideration but there is money in the budget for an OP; the best value in photography is sought out.

Class #3: Expense is a primary issue. A budget photographer may or may not be hired, and crowdsourcing is actively demanded.

How does an OP compete in such a scenario. Arguably, the OP will have the technically and artistically superior images but will not have the instant gratification factor. As consumer cameras get better and cheaper, guests (likely shooting over the shoulder of the OP) will take the credit for "wowing" the bride and groom with pics the very next day! When the OP delivers his DVDs in a few weeks, the WOW factor will have dissipated.

The solution is for the OP to offer next-day-edit! The OP's  images will be showcased in the same venue as the crowdsourced ones; the OP's (hopefully) superior images will shine in comparison and will most definitely be primo great advertisement! The OP's images can be rough edits; the colour-corrected, print ready files may be delivered weeks later. 

How is this doable for a photographer tired from a 15-hour Saturday wedding? Or worse, for a studio with a stable of photographers out shooting on a Saturday? Well, time will have to be set aside as I feel that this will be the new reality in the wedding industry. For cameras with 2 card slots, 1 slot will have to be dedicated to  medium-res jpg files. For cameras with only 1 card slot, cameras will have to shoot RAW+medium jpg. The jpg files can be rendered overnight using Lightroom (read: fast computer required),  and quickly edited for uploading on Sunday. This minimalist workflow rewards the photographer who produces "almost-ready-to-go" photos that require minimal-to-no post-processing. A photographer who "gets" the in-camera- metering with a camera that gets excellent AWB is well worth it!

I honestly think that this is a seismic paradigm shift in wedding photography and I, for one, will be rewording my offerings to reflect this new reality!
(Photo taken with a Panasonic Lumix LX3, 1/3 crop from original image. Not bad for a small 1/1.7 sensor... must be the stabilized Leica lens!) 

The Walper

The historic Walper Terrace Hotel in Kitchener at 11:45 pm (after a wedding shoot). Aapril 6th.

A new business model for wedding photography

What do you get when you combine  a decent eye for visualizing images, affordable professional digital equipment, WordPress, Kijiji, and smartphones?

You  get the key components for a talented wedding photographer to bring their services to market all on their own, without the infrastructure that used to be essential to translate one's art into a commodity made visible to the consumer.

A "pro-photographer" is by definition, a photographer who earns a percentage of their income from photography... "pro-photographer" is not a measure of the quality of the images produced, although the market has a way of vetting the ranks of photographers. But it is a big market out there, and there's a market for anything.

There have always been considerably more people who are innate photographers than actual "picture-taking" photographers. Innate in the sense that they see these images in their minds but have been technologically (and financially) hampered by the analogue, film-based processes to partake in image capture beyond point-and-shoots. The last few years have seen a plethora of very affordable digital equipment that, along with social media, has resulted in  an explosion of images taken and disseminated all over. Technological advances have democratized the whole process.

Bloggers, and self-styled publishers have piled on top of the commercial magazine world to cultivate an image-aware generation(s). A photographer with something to say, and something to sell, is now enabled to say it for next to nothing, blogging using the free versions of Blogger and WordPress (add in online albums such Picasa and Photobucket, or full-blown websites such as Smugmug, Zenfolio, and PBase).  And to let the city/province/state/world  in which they live in know about them, there is Facebook, Kijiji, and Craigslist, or preferably a combination of all of these, for free or for a small fee. 

As for an business office, the savvy image-maker has the take-it-with-you office called the smartphone with voice-mail, call-forwarding, skype (free), and emailing. An office and a meeting place may be a coffee shop with a wifi connection (for the price of a coffee and a doughnut, washroom included).

And finally, we now have a generation of photo consumers that are not bound by the conventions of the past: mass mailings, magazine advertizing, billboards, brick-and-mortar stores, tv and radio commercials. To be sure, there will always be a market for the boutique photo studio, just as there will always be a market for BMWs and Hermes. In these recessionary times, value-for-money has never been more essential, and opportunities abound for the talented photographer/videographer who is able to use the tools available.

Having said/written all these,  these tools will only let you get your camera/foot in the door, so to speak. You still have to have a product that consumers like, at an affordable price. It's always wise to remember that  with wedding photography, just like with surgery (I know, a bit extreme analogy here), you're only as good as your last job.

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