Tag: battery

What equipment do I need to photograph weddings?

 Gavin   Tips
What equipment do you need to photograph weddings?

 

What equipment do I need to photograph weddings?

Photographing weddings is easy. Don’t be put off by the illusion of stress on the wedding day because it’s just that, an illusion. The secret is having a plan and having the right equipment to do the job. In this post, we’re going to talk about equipment. (If you’d like to talk about planning the day to make it stress-free, leave a comment and let me know).

OK, so what do you need?

This list is what I believe to be the absolute minimum. Can you do it with less? Of course you can, Continue reading What equipment do I need to photograph weddings? »

Quick Tip: Packing Some Power

 Gavin   Equipment, Strobist, Techniques, Tips
Packing Some Power - 24 AA Batteries
Packing Some Power - Spare AA Batteries

I do a lot of strobist work out on location and really enjoy it. One thing that is a real bind is battery management and how to pack them in your kit bag so you know which ones are which when it comes to using them. This quick tip explains how I go about it.

The image above is, for me, part of the solution. I simply use an old, plastic business card box with dividers made from some of the old cards. It’ll comfortably hold 24 AA batterie, enough for 2 spare sets with 3 speedlites  or 3 spare sets with 2 speedlites. This is more than enough for me as I’ve never depleted more than two sets per flash gun and only then because I was in a dark nighclub.

The dividers keep them together in their sets of 4 and depending on which way up I put them I can immediately tell if they’re charged (positive end up) or depleted (negative end up). They’re only used in my speedlites so its really easy to maintain the grouping – they’re either in the box, in the speedlite or in the charger but just in case I do also number them as I mentioned in this post on Battery Management I wrote a while back.

There are commercial solutions to keep batteries together but I like this quick tip. It’ a nil cost solution made from something I already had lying around the house.

Battery power

 Gavin   Equipment, Tips

I don’t recall suffering from this in the good old days of analogue photography, but these days I’m forever charging batteries of one sort or another. The list just keeps getting longer too. For instance, these days I have to do the following prior to every photo-shoot:

  • Camera battery – 2 or 3 Canon LP-E6
  • Flash batteries – upto 24 AA batteries (3 flash guns with 2 sets of 4 batteries per unit)
  • Radio triggers – 6 AA batteries. 12 if its a long shoot and I’ll need two sets
  • Portable back-up drives – 8 AA batteries (2 drives with 4 batteries each)
  • Spare AA batteries

That little lot adds up to getting on for 40-50 AA batteries. Managing that number of batteries is not without problems.

Continue reading Battery power »