Our Gear: Camera + Lenses

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Hey friends! It’s been a little while since we’ve shared a post relating to photography tools and equipment so I thought, what a perfect time. If you follow us on Instagram (shame on you if you don’t… just kidding lol) you know that we’ve been doing these fun Q&A’s on our story where we answer some of your questions. We’ve been doing them about once a month and the last Q&A we decided it would be cool to answer your questions on Instagram Live. If you’d like to watch a replay of that, click here. You can also find past Q&A’s in our IG story highlights.

Anyway, the real reason I brought that up was because a common question that has surfaced many times is what type of gear and equipment we use. So, here is our first installment of a three part series ( click here for part two and here for part three) that relates to all of the photography gear and equipment we use for most of our product shoots. I’ll be breaking this series into three parts: camera & lenses, lighting & studio equipment, and photography tools & programs. We’ll do our best to provide links for as many of the items as possible so that you can purchase them for yourself if you’d like. Let’s get to it then.

our fancy camera

Now we know there are many brands out there and all of them are pretty amazing. You really can’t go wrong with whichever brand you choose because every year, the DSLRs just keep getting better and better. We currently own and use the Canon 5D Mark III (see the newest version here) as that is the camera I had before we started our business. It is now 4 years old and still works like a charm.

I honestly believe we have several more years with this camera before we feel that we have to upgrade or replace it. I used to own the Canon Rebel T3i before I upgraded to this bad boy. Any Rebel fans out there? For many, that camera was pretty much everyone’s first DSLR. It was honestly great but when I finally spent some big bucks on the 5D Mark III, the quality instantly blew me away.

Now, I’m a huge believer in the idea that you don’t need to have the most expensive equipment to create beautiful photography. At the end of the day, your ideas and the way you execute them is the most important. With that being said, it was a true upgrade when I made the move to get the 5D Mark III because it greatly improved the quality of my work and it was especially useful as we started to get into the commercial photography space. Photography is an investment at the end of the day and sometimes you have to spend money if you want to make more of it.

*Canon 100mm 2.8L Macro not pictured*

our super cool lenses

Since I’ve remained loyal to Canon, the lenses I have acquired over the years are Canon as well. Elle and I were really lucky that we didn’t have a lot of overhead expenses when we first started out because photography was already a passion of mine and something I was already making money from. Therefore, all of the camera lenses that I invested over the years before Weekend Creative proved to be super helpful for our business in the beginning. Currently in my camera backpack, we have a total of 4 lenses which include the Canon 50mm 1.2L, Sigma 35mm 1.4 DG (Canon Compatible), Canon 24-70mm 2.8L II, and Canon 100mm 2.8L Macro.

When we first got started, we typically reached for the Canon 50mm 1.2L because we thought that the 50mm was the most accurate representation of what our eye sees which is important in product photography. However, after some friends (Jurada Studio) responded to our question about which lens they use the most for their product shoots, they let us know that the 24-70mm was their favorite because it gave them the flexibility to zoom in or out of the scene.

Since then, we’ve always picked the 24-70mm and something we realized that we appreciated about using this lens was that it can get to an aperture as small as f/22 whereas the 50mm only got to as small as f/16. While we rarely need to go as tiny as f/22, we liked that we could get the majority of our images in focus without a problem at all.

Lately, we’ve been playing around with some fun texture shots which is why we invested in the Canon 100mm macro lens to capture all the fine details of a swatch or smear. (I didn’t get to capture this guy in my gear shot because it’s new and stayed behind at the studio, oops!)

extra handy items

Alright, so some of these items might seem a little common sense but I have to include them because well, why not? First and foremost, we always have extra batteries because more often than not, we’ll go through at least 2-3 batteries per shoot. Maybe thats’s different for you but we’re constantly using the Live View feature on our Capture One program which takes quite a lot out of our batteries so it’s always nice to have extras on hand. With that said, you can’t forget about your battery chargers.

Also, if you’re wondering what the heck Capture One is, read this post here and get ready to be amazed. We also have plenty of memory cards in our camera backpack, both SD and CompactFlash in case we ever have to shoot non-tethered which is pretty rare these days.

Next, we’ve got our rocket air blower and lens cloth to help us remove dust and clean our camera lens. Last but not least, this next item technically could go in our lighting section of this series but I’m choosing to include it here because it is the only camera-mounted flashlight we own.

Yep, I’m talking about our Canon Speedlite 430EX II. We also have a dome diffuser attached to it to help soften the flash. While we typically don’t use this on a daily basis, it has come in handy whenever we’ve wanted to get that flashy look indoors or even outside. Think Glossier with their indoors bathroom shots where the shadows are visible or an outdoor shoot where it’s slightly overexposed but done intentionally.

Well, we’ve made it to the end. Hope you guys enjoyed that little breakdown. 😊 Be sure to stick around for part 2 where we’ll dive a little deeper into our studio and lighting equipment. Leave us a comment if you found this helpful and make sure to follow both our Weekend Creative and Little Sunday Studio IG pages as we’re always sharing fun behind-the-scenes of our setups and equipment.

See more of our equipment in our Amazon shop.

Is it the weekend yet?

Arabela