Collard Studios

Our photography business is Collard Studios and Stam and I make up the whole team and work on all our personal projects and client assignments together.

Our personal projects are always focused on people and we have done various assignments recently where we stayed with a remote hill tribe in Northern Thailand. Their way of life and culture is disappearing as they integrate more and more into Thai society, and it felt like a final opportunity to capture their unique way of life.

We have also worked on projects in the Amazon Rainforest in Brazil, and travelled and photographed extensively locations in South East Asia where we are based, Europe, USA and South America.

For our clients we create stunning on location, travel and lifestyle content for some of the worlds luxury brands, including Four Seasons Group and BMW. We are also destination-wedding photographers and have worked in 15 different countries over the last five years.

Our Kitbag:

We like to travel light so normally select some of our equipment for each assignment depending on the requirements. I use the Sony a9 now and take 90% of my images with two main lenses, the Sony Zeiss 35mm f/1.4, and the Zeiss Batis 85mm f/1.8, which is mainly used for portraits. For wider angle shots I use the Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2, which is a wonderful little lens.

I do also have the Sony Zeiss 35mm f/2.8 as it’s really lightweight and has great image quality. On a more general walkabout in a new location this is my go-to lens, alongside the equally compact Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8.

We also own the Sony RX1R, which has one of the best lenses I’ve ever used and is so small and discreet. It focuses a little slow especially in low light, but has captured some of our best images on our travels around the world.

Stam still uses Canon on all our paid work and has a Canon 5D Mark IV as her main camera body. Like me, she likes to use the Canon 35mm f/1.4 L Mark I for most of her work and has the stunning Canon 85mm f/1.2 II as her portrait lens.

To add to her set of options she also carries the Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L Mark II lens which covers a lot of the things we like to photograph and has stunning image quality, and the beautiful Canon 135mm f/2 L prime lens.

Lighting is hugely important to us, and using two systems we want to have the best possible lighting solution that we can both use.

For us, Profoto are the only serious option here, their products are incredibly well made, easy to use and they sell a TTL compatible remote trigger for both Canon and Sony, meaning we can share the same lighting on our location shoots.

We carry the Profoto B2 Flash with some grids and an octabox with us so we have the flexibility to create beautiful lighting when we need to. We have just added the new A1 Profoto flash to our kitbag to give us more options.

List of Kit:

Canon 5D Mark IV – review here
Canon 135mm f/2 L
Canon 85mm f/1.2 L II
Canon 35mm f/1.4 L
Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L II
Canon 600 EX

Sony RX1R
Sony a9
Sony Zeiss 35mm f/1.4
Sony Zeiss 35mm f/2.8
Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2
Zeiss Batis 85mm f/1.8
Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8

Profoto A1 Flash
Profoto B2 Flash
Profoto TTL-S Trigger
Profoto TTL-C Trigger
Profoto Air Remote

Mavic Pro Drone by DJI
Go Pro Hero 4

www.collardstudios.co.uk

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