Hey photographer friends! Welcome back to our Photography Blog, Mastering the Wedding Photography Biz with Hunter and Sarah! Today we’re literally opening up our camera bags and sharing every piece of wedding photography gear that we bring with us to photograph high end weddings. Not only are we going to talk about what cameras and what lenses we use, but we’re also going to share about all the other essential items we bring with us that help us photography high end weddings. So let’s jump in!

 

 

Our Professional Camera Bodies

We’re going to start with the basics: our camera bodies and our lenses. We’re Nikon shooters, but even if you don’t shoot with Nikon, just seeing what kinds of cameras and lenses we shoot with can still be helpful, as anything that we have, we know that Canon and Sony will have their own versions.

 

So first, let’s talk about our camera bodies. We both shoot with Nikon Z6ii, full-frame mirrorless cameras. This is Nikon’s second generation mirrorless camera, and is a professional body, but two steps below the “flagship” (biggest, baddest, most expensive) camera. We began our career on DSLRs, but absolutely love shooting with mirrorless cameras. By the way, if you want to know why we made the switch from DSLR to mirrorless, we have a blog/video from just a few months ago all about that here.

 

We each have two full-frame, mirrorless camera bodies in our bags, so four total. Hunter will shoot all day long with two cameras. Sarah typically shoots with one, but during certain parts of the day will use the second. However, we mostly think of the fourth camera as a backup. If you’re a solo shooter — whether you shoot with one camera or two — having a second body in your bag as a backup to the first is always a great idea.

 

 

Our Essential Camera Lenses

The next thing we have in our bag is our lenses. And boy do we have a lot of them! We typically have 8-10 lenses with us on a wedding day. However, don’t let that discourage you if you’re just getting started! Hopefully it’ll be helpful to hear that our prime lenses — which were some of the first lenses we purchased —  are still the ones that we shoot the majority of a wedding day with. And if we could each only choose one lens to shoot an entire wedding with, we would each grab our favorite prime lens, and leave everything else behind.

 

Sarah shoots close to 80% of a wedding day with her 50 mm f/1.2 prime lens, and Hunter shoots close to 70% of a wedding day with an 85mm f/1.4 on one camera, and a 35 mm f/1.8 on the other.

 

If you want to know how we arrived at that particular combination of prime lenses, and how each one produces different imagery, check our this blog/video. It’s Part 1 in a series we did last year called “Camera Bag Essentials”. That video in particular is all about those 3 most common prime lenses, and helping photographers figure out which one makes the most sense for them. That link, by the way, will bring you to the start of the entire blog series, where each post is dedicated to just one of the lenses we talk about in this post. So check that out if you want a more in-depth exploration into any of our gear!

 

 

 

Additional Camera Lenses for Wedding Photography

Anyway, if you’re getting ready to shoot your first wedding and all you’ve got is a prime lens or two, that’s a great place to start. But once you’ve started to book more weddings and can afford to continue growing your kit, a zoom lens or two is probably next. We always keep a 24-70 mm f/2.8 and a 70-200 mm f/2.8 in our bags as well. These come in handy for big group shots like wedding party and family, as well as during the ceremony so we can unobtrusively get tighter shots of our couple.

 

 

The other two lenses that we have with us on wedding days are ones that are more of a luxury. They’re expensive and have pretty limited use, so we don’t think they should be high on the priority list of a newer wedding photographer. But if you can afford a macro lens like Nikon’s 105 mm f/2.8 for tight detail shots, or an ultra-wide lens like the 14-24 mm f/2.8 for those extra tight spaces, when you DO need them, you’ll be glad you have them.

 

 

Finally, we did want to briefly mention that in addition to all of this digital photography equipment, we also have a couple of film cameras and their lenses, extra rolls of film, and a light meter. But since we know most beginner wedding photographers are taking photos exclusively on digital, we won’t spend any more time on our film equipment.

 

 

Flashes and Other Misc. Wedding Photography Gear

While our camera bodies and lenses are the most important pieces of wedding photography gear in our bag, we’re still far from done talking about what we carry with us on a wedding day! The next essential item are our flashes. Since we have 3 camera bodies that we may be shooting with at any given time, we also have 3 Nikon speedlight flashes, as well as a fourth as a backup. We’re natural light photographers, so we really only use our flashes while photographing the reception. But a flash is essential for good reception photography — and especially dancing photos — so one plus a backup is a great place to start for any newer photographer.

 

In addition to the flashes themselves, we also keep plenty of extra AA batteries, and Hunter even has an external battery pack that he wears sometimes. This will attach to his camera straps or his belt, and plugs directly into his flash. Suddenly, rather than being powered by 4 AA batteries, the flash is powered by 16 AA batteries! While this will quadruple the battery life, that’s not why we use it. It drastically reduces recycle time, so when we’re getting creative with flash photography — doing slow-sync images with a slow shutter speed or some direct flash portraits with a high flash output — this battery pack makes a big difference.

 

 

Protecting Our Camera Gear

Another thing we keep in our camera bags are our dual-harness camera straps, and Storm Jacket rain covers. Obviously if we’re going to shoot with two cameras, we need a harness that can hold two bodies. But even when shooting with one camera, this kind of strap distributes the weight better across the shoulders, rather than across the neck or a single shoulder. And the rain covers really come in handy on rainy wedding days when we need to keep shooting, despite the weather turning against us. We talk more about our camera straps, our rain covers, as well as our camera bags in a blog/video called “Everything you need to protect your camera gear”, which you can access here.

 

 

Other Essential Wedding Photography Accessories

Finally, in addition to all of these items, there are a few smaller wedding photography accessories that make a big difference on a wedding day. For starters, we have a lot of extra camera batteries and memory cards (both CFExpress cards and SD Cards), as well as a memory card carrying case to keep them all organized. If you’ve seen our video on backup systems for wedding photographers (here), you know that we don’t format (or wipe clean) a memory card until everything on it has been delivered to our clients. So that means we need enough cards to shoot basically an entire wedding season on without deleting anything!

 

Speaking of backup, we also like to use the quiet moments of a wedding day — usually during dinner while our couple is eating — to backup everything we’ve photographed so far that day onto our computers. That way, if something were to happen to our cameras or our memory cards during the later part of the evening (usually when drinks can get spilled on an unsuspecting photographer and their camera), we still have the most important part of the day backed up. But this obviously means a laptop and a card-reader need to be in our bag.

 

We also have a multi-tool and a roll of electrical tape in our bags. You never really know when you might need a screwdriver, a knife, or a few pieces of tape! And along those same lines but on the wardrobe side, we also keep a sewing kit, lots of safety pins, a tide-to-go stick, and a lint roller as well. It’s been a few years since Sarah had to sew a bridesmaid into her dress when the zipper broke, but you never know when you might have an opportunity to save the day 😂

 

 

For Our Own Protection

And finally, for our own protection, we’ll keep some decibel-reducing earplugs in our bags, so we don’t have to worry about being deaf by the time we turn 40 after decades of shooting right in front of huge DJ speakers 😂

 

And we also keep a container of mace or pepper spray in our camera bag. Ever since we heard about a string of wedding photographers being robbed on wedding days because people figured out that we carry around a lot of expensive gear, we’ve kept that in a side pocket where it can be easily reached. Hopefully we never have to use it, but especially for all the single female wedding photographers out there, it certainly can’t hurt to bring it along!

 

Again, we’ve spoken a bit more extensively about all of these essential accessories and a few more in a past video called “10 Essential Wedding Photography Accessories You Didn’t Know You Needed”, which you can access here!

 

 

Want More?

 

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SHOPPING LIST!

If you’re planning to purchase anything that we talked about today and we helped you make your decision, it would mean SO much to us if you purchased it through the links below! You’ll pay the same price as you normally would on Amazon, but Amazon would share a small slice of the profit with us. You’ll get what you need, support a small local business (us), and show us that our advice really has been helpful! Thanks! [Prices shown as of date of publishing, and are just for comparison/reference]

 

Cameras & Lenses:

• Nikon Z6ii (Body Only) [$1,700]
• Nikon Z 50 mm f/1.2 S [$1,900]
• Nikon F-mount 85 mm f/1.4 [$1,450]
• Nikon FTZ Mount Adaptor [$250]
• Nikon Z 35 mm f/1.8 S [$700]
• Nikon Z 24-70 mm f/2.8 S [$2,100]
• Nikon Z 70-200 mm f/2.8 S [$2,400]
• Nikon Z 105 mm f/2.8 Macro [$1,000]
• Nikon Z 14-24 mm f/2.8 S [$2,300]

Flashes, Memory Cards, & Storage:

• Nikon SB-5000 [$600]
• External Battery Pack for Nikon Flashes [$80]
• Sony 120 GB CFExpress card [$200]
• SanDisk 128 GB professional SD [$30]
• Sony XQD/CFExpress Type B Card Reader [$100]
• Hard-Cover CFExpress/XQD/SD/MicroSD Card Holder [$10]

Bags & Other Accessories:

• Storm Jacket Cover for Small/Medium Lenses [$58]
• Storm Jacket Cover for Large/Extra-Large Lenses [$50]
• C Coiro Leather Dual-Camera Harness (Holdfast Knockoff) [$100]
• Think Tank Airport Commuter [$220]
• Think Tank Streetwalker Harddrive V2.0 [$240]
• Small Reflector (with handle) [$20]
• X4 UV Filters by Breakthrough Photography [varies]
• Reusable Noise-Reducing Earplugs [$30] 
• Emergency Sewing Kit [$10]
• 16-Pack Rechargeable AA Batteries with 16-Slot Battery Charger [$65]