Inside My Camera Bag | Anthony Phung

G’day everyone. My name is Anthony Phung. I am a wedding photographer based in Melbourne, Australia.

I have been working as a professional wedding photographer for eight years. Back in the 2000s, I started photographing as a hobbyist. During those years, I took pictures of landscapes, flowers, friends and pets.

After being asked to shoot at my best friend’s wedding in early 2010, I realized that I was born to become a wedding photographer. All the happy tears, the aisle walk-up, the vow sharing, etc, are so beautiful. I love to capture such beautiful moments.

Cameras

Canon 5D Mark III and Canon 5Ds are my main camera bodies. After a few years of consistent use, I still find these bodies great. They provide high-quality images with perfect colour tones.

They are the bodies that I started with and I am really comfortable operating them. As a photographer, getting agile with the cameras is crucial because no-one wants to miss any invaluable moments of wedding day couples.

Lenses

Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L II USM: This is my favourite lens for the wedding day, especially for the tea ceremony, the garden ceremony and the dance floor. The wide angle it provides makes it the best lens for wedding day photographing. I always use it along with the Canon 85mm f/1.2.

Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art: This lens is very good for its fast silent focusing. The build is also very solid which makes it the first choice for pre-wedding photoshoots. I love it for its perfect quality of image.

Canon EF 85mm f/1.2 USM II: I bring this lens along with me all the time. It can be used as a companion to my 16-35mm f/2.8 lens for the pre-wedding shoot and my Sigma Art 35mm f/1.4 for the wedding day shoot.

This lens makes great portraits without distorting the image. It also helps me create really good background bokeh at wider apertures. Even though the speed and the accuracy of the lens lag behind other lenses a little bit, it makes great combos with the other lenses.

Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 L Macro IS USM: This macro lens allows me to shoot every detail of the wedding with the same quality as advertised products in magazines. I love to use this lens to capture rings, flowers, decorations, etc.

Flash

I use three flashes. The first one is a Canon 600EX-RT, whose built-in radio transmitter is essential.

I also have two Godox V1s. They work well – as if they were born for long weddings. The features are quite awesome. I can rotate the round-headed flash up to 330 degrees and tilt it 120 degrees. The battery lasts long; it allows me to get more than 600 full-power flashes, which gives me peace of mind when shooting. Additionally, the recycle time is fast, too.

Bags & Misc.

After changing my bag so many times, I ended up using a small one – the Lowepro M-Trekker Bp 150 Compact Backpack. Though categorised as small, I can still pack my 2 x Canon bodies, 4 x lens, 2 x flashes and other small things within it.

All the editing is done on my Macbook Pro Retina 15-inch. The 32-GB RAM that came with it is more than enough for my photo editing needs. The software I use is quite basic, just Lightroom and Photoshop CC. I prefer using my own presets, AW presets and DVLOP presets.

Finally, all data is kept on my portable SSDs – the Samsung Portable T5 and Sandisk Extreme Portable.

www.anthonyweddings.com | @AnthonyWeddings