Maciej Suwalowski
Wedding | Last Updated: February 16, 2021
Hello! My name is Maciej Suwalowski, but please just call me Magic. I come from space but live on planet Earth with my human Wife and four kids. I travel across the planet to capture the love of other human beings, people call it destination wedding photography.
I’m a Sony Europe Imaging ambassador so all of my main cameras are Sony cameras, but I do use a handful of adapted lenses to mix some things, and looks, a little bit. I shoot with two Sony A7R III cameras.
To keep things simple (with post-processing and ergonomic reasons), I always use two of the same cameras. Why Sony A7R III? I love bigger resolution files, it gives me the ability to crop, plus photos are crazy sharp.
With lenses, I like playing with different ones depending on the type of wedding I’m shooting, but in general, you’ll always find a 35mm lens in my bag and for the last few months, I’ve been using Sony Zeiss 35mm f/1.4 which I love for its compact size and sharpness. I still have its bigger brother Sony 35mm f/1.8, but almost stopped using it in favour of the 1.8 one.
The second main lens in my bag is Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8, which I always keep on my second body for a longer reach. It’s also compact, sharp, and has super-fast autofocus. These two lenses will be used for 75% of images (that’s actually my stats from last year, which you can see in the photo below).
The third most used lens would be Sony 24mm f/1.4, which I used mostly for party photos and I couldn’t be more happy with its amazing build – super small for 1.4 lens, and super sharp.
Except for these 3 main lenses, I also have a few “fun” lenses to play with during wedding portraits, and these are Leica 50mm f/1.4, Canon 45mm f/2.8 Tilt-Shift, and Canon 24mm f/3.5 Tilt-Shift via adapters.
The last lens that would find its way to my bag, from time to time, is compact Sony 85mm f/1.8, but I’m not a big 85mil guy, so I barely use it.
The flash unit that I use is Profoto A1X and it’s, hands down, the best flash I’ve ever had. Super reliable, always fires, has an amazing battery, and is very intuitive to use. I also love using its LED modeling light to light up some dance action. My backup flash unit is a little Sony HVL-F45RM.
My other accessories worth mentioning are Sony Tough cards, which are unbreakable and that gives me additional peace of mind, and Instax square printer SP-3, which I use for printing a couple of photos for my clients to hand them on the wedding day in a little Wooden Banana box branded with my logo.
How do I pack all of it? I have a backpack made by German company Compagnon, and it does fit most of my gear when I travel. On a wedding day, I use a HoldFast Camera Swagg Strap with an additional pouch called Small Sightseer to keep my essentials (like cards, batteries, and additional lenses for quick changes) on me.
My main machine to edit is Macbook Pro 13 (2018 model with 4 core processor and 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports). At home, I connect it to eGPU unit – Razer X Core with Radeon RX580 8GB and it powers my Eizo CG2730 monitor.
I also connect it via USB-C to a dock called Hengedocks and it has my audio connection to speakers, ethernet connection for faster internet speed, and an ethernet connection to my archive NAS unit Synology DS1618+.
When on the road, I just use my Macbook alone with external SSD drives – Sandisk Extreme Portable SSDs and card reader from Prograde with dual SD slots. I cull my images using Photo Mechanic and edit in Lightroom.
I also use the rest of Adobe software for various other projects (Premiere for video, Audition for Audio, Indesign, and Illustrator for some brochure for clients, etc). I design wedding albums in SmartAlbums, deliver slideshows using SmartSlides, build blogs with Narrative, and deliver photos via Pic-Time gallery.
Cameras
2x Sony A7R III
Lenses
Sony 24mm f/1.4
Sony Zeiss 35mm f/1.4
Sony 35mm f/1.8
Sony Zeiss 55mm f/1.8
Sony 85mm f/1.8
Canon 45mm f/2.8 Tilt-Shift
Canon 24mm f/3.5 Tilt-Shift
Leica 50mm f/1.4
Lights/Triggers
Sony HVL-F45RM
Profoto A1X
Bags/Straps
Compagnon Backpack
HoldFast Camera Swagg
HoldFast Small Sightseer
Accessories
Sony SF-G UHS-II 64GB
Instax SP-3
Wooden Banana boxes
Sony WX1000M2
Apple Powerbeats Pro
Hardware & Software
MacBook Pro 13 (2018, Touch Bar)
eGPU Razer X Core with Radeon RX580 8GB
Prograde Dual-Slot USB-C card reader
Synology DS1618+ (+ Synology Router RT2600AC + 2x MR2200AC)
Eizo CG2730W
Sandisk Extreme Portable SSD
Adobe CC plan
Camera Bits Photo Mechanic
Pic-Time
Narrative
SmartAlbums
SmartSlides
www.magicweddingphotographer.com | @magicweddingphotographer
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