This is a very popular question actually, but before I give you a list of all my photo toys, I just wanted to say this: it’s not important! 99% of the time, you can advance your photography more by thinking about what and how than by buying a new camera or lens. Seriously! I made my first cover with good old 350D in an old bath of my old den. The model was professional, though, and we had an excellent MUA. I thought long and hard about how to create all these ripples and how to light everything safely and how to direct the model if she does not hear me underwater and how not to make her skin red and so on.
Don’t get caught on beautiful bokeh of old film, don’t write a review to a review to some new lenses you bought, and don’t hang up on the illusion that more expensive stuff will make you a better artist. It’s just a way to lose a lot of time.
Now, as promised:
- Camera: Canon 6D because it has a plastic ( = light = good for girls) corpus and excellent focus in twilights and smoke.
- Lens-1: EF 24–70mm 1:2.8 (for everything fashion-related)
- Lens-2: EF 85mm 1:1.8 (and not 50mm for portraits)
- Lens-3: 60–400mm which I never use because it doesn’t have a stabilizer
- Reflector: small all-white, very useful sometimes
- Flash: Speedlite 430EX — use reflected if I don’t have a choice or direct for experiments sometimes, but mostly as a starter for studio lights
- Studio lights (with batteries): 2 lights, heavy-good-tripod studio ones, not the ones for makeup artists. Batteries are crucial if you like to work in location
- Countless light-shapers: beauty dishes, softboxes, umbrellas, filters, colored filters, cones — all of them will be useful once in a while
- Backdrop Frame: Bought for one project recently, and will use it again
- Portable backdrop: One of the most useful things I bought, now whenever I go, I know there will be a decent backdrop is I won’t find a good one on the spot
If you would like more info or examples of use: aliona.kuz@gmail.com
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