Inside My Camera Bag | Carrie Jones

My love of photography started after the birth of my first of two children. A former clinical dietitian, I used my maternity leave to not only raise two spirited kids but to learn as much as I could about photography.

I took course after course, both online and in person. I was hooked and never looked back. I am now a lifestyle family photographer, based in Adelaide, South Australia. I love photographing families in their own environment, just as much as I love a beach session at sunset on a warm summer evening.

My family sessions are pretty relaxed and a whole lot of fun. I will regularly get caught up in the action, leaving little time to think about changing lenses, so I usually keep things pretty simple and head into a session with one camera body and one of the two prime lenses that I own.

Canon 5D Mark III – An absolute workhorse of a camera. I have had this camera body for well over four years now and not once has it let me down.

Its low light capabilities mean I can walk into any situation and know that the camera will be able to handle the available light, even on an overcast day, in a house that doesn’t receive much natural light.

The camera has dual card slots, which I take advantage of for peace of mind and shoot with the 32 GB Extreme Pro SDHC Memory Card and the Sandisk 32 GB Extreme Compact Flash Memory Card loaded in.

Sigma 35mm f/1.4 – My go-to lens. Especially handy for in home sessions, where space is tight, but equally great outdoors. It is super-fast and tack sharp, allowing me to keep up with the most energetic of kids. This lens was the first prime lens I owned and was a total game-changer. It took me from hobbyist to professional.

Sigma 50mm f/1.4 – Originally I purchased the 50mm with the intention of capturing a little more detail when photographing newborns, however, I find now that I am more likely to pop my 50mm on for an outdoor lifestyle session, when I want to take a step back and put some space between myself and the family, without losing them in the scene.

It is a beautiful lens, but not quite as fast to focus as its 35mm counterpart and therefore sees significantly less game time.

My editing style is much like my approach to my camera gear, minimalist. I edit on the Apple 15″ MacBook Pro because I love being able to edit on the go and not feel stuck at one desk all day long.

As far as storage goes, I have duplicates of all my work on multiple 2TB Toshiba USB 3.0 Hard Drive and just like the Sandisk memory cards, I have never lost a hard drive (and fingers crossed I never do!).

We also have a home server as an additional backup and I copy all that to the cloud for offsite storage. Better to be safe than sorry.

Last, but certainly not least, for a lot of my personal work I use my phone. That may sound odd, but trips to the store or a swim at the beach with two little ones in tow are hectic enough without having to worry about my camera getting knocked around or dropped in the sand.

My Google Pixel 3XL is great for documenting my kids every day when I don’t have my big camera on hand.

www.carriejonesphotography.com | @carriejones_photography