Inside My Bag | Daniel Lopez Perez

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Hi! We are Daniel & Melissa, a couple from Spain & United States that have been shooting weddings for the past 5 years. We are based out of Guatemala (which we love!), and shoot 90% of our weddings here, but we also shoot a number of destination weddings every year in the summer.

Guatemala is a wonderful place to be a photographer, we feel very lucky! The natural beauty (with tons of mountains, volcanoes, beaches and jungles) is out of this world, and the colonial and colorful architecture of the town of Antigua, where we are based, provides a huge range of beautiful backdrops for photos.

We try to keep our gear somewhat minimalistic, although some of the weddings here can be demanding in terms of light. Melissa shoots with 2 x Nikons D750´s and Daniel uses a Nikon D850 and a Nikon D750. We love Nikon cameras for their great dynamic range, autofocus capabilities and reliability.

We also have a Fuji X-T2 (not pictured, we used it to take the photo!) for traveling and everyday use. We wanted to make the switch to mirrorless cameras after hearing great things about Fujis, but for us the X-T2 didn´t really do it. While it´s really good, we didn´t find the autofocus system and the dynamic range as reliable as Nikon’s. We love the X-T2, but the Nikons will stick with us for our wedding work for now :)

We recently got a DJI Mavic Pro, which we have been enjoying a lot for how it has expanded our possibilities to take photos and get cool angles.

As for lenses, we use the 35mm + 85mm combo almost all the time. We have a Sigma 35mm f/1.4 ART + a Nikon 85mm f/1.8G each. We love the quality (even wide open) and speed of the Sigma, the quality and weight of the Nikon, and how both are very affordable. We also have a Nikon 24mm f/1.8G for when we need a wider angle, and a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G mainly for the reception, and when we like to have the versatility of this lens to capture wide shots and details of people dancing in a split second. For our Fuji we have a Fuji 23mm f/1.4, a Fuji 35mm f/2 and a Fuji 18mm f/2. The last two are great for traveling light!

We have two speedlight flashes, which we only use for dark reception venues, a Nikon SB-700 and a Nikon SB-5000, each paired with a Magmod Magsphere. Melissa uses the Holdfast Money Maker double camera strap, and I use the SpiderPro Dual Camera System holster to get some weight off my back.

To carry our gear for weddings we use two Amazon Basics backpacks. We need to move a lot on wedding days and they are honestly everything we can ask for to help us to keep our gear light. For traveling and storing cameras we have a Pelican 1510 and a Lowepro Pro Runner RL x450 AW II rolling case.

Our Kit:

Cameras

Nikon D850
Nikon D750 (x3)
Fuji X-T2

Drone
DJI Mavic Pro

Lenses
Sigma 35mm f/1.4 ART (x2)
Nikon 85mm f/1.8G (x2)
Nikon 24mm f/1.8G
Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8G
Fuji 23mm f/1.4
Fuji 35mm f/2
Fuji 18mm f/2