Sara Rogers

Hi! I’m Sara Rogers a wedding photographer based in Vancouver, Canada. I stumbled upon photography after a job as an Interior Designer and have been shooting weddings for the past three years. I’ve finally found something I’m super passionate about; I love shooting weddings, elopements and adventures and couldn’t imagine myself doing anything else!

During the past three seasons of shooting weddings, my gear bag has slowly evolved and now I carry everything I need for a wedding day in a Think Tank Airport Roller Bag.

I like to keep things simple, especially in terms of lighting, preferring to work with ambient light whenever possible. Things really changed for me when I started shooting with the Nikon D750. The Dynamic range and performance in low light is so good that I can bump my ISO and still shoot without a flash until the dancing portion of the evening. I’m interested to see what the D850 has to offer, that will be my next purchase (when I can afford to buy two)!

I’m always studying the light and seeing the way it changes throughout the day. Some of my most interesting photos have come out of difficult lighting conditions.

I work better under pressure, so I try and use challenging situations to influence and draw out my creativity. This also helps with clients, especially on a wedding day. If you can stay calm it helps to relax them and allows them to trust you to do your job.

Because of my background in design I am also constantly inspired by architectural details like stairs, repetitive features and different textures so you’ll often see these things in my work.

My comfort zone is generally shooting wide with a 35mm to capture a lot of the landscape behind a couple, and I love the documentary quality of that lens. I also recently purchased a 58mm and it’s become my go-to second lens, because of the bokeh and its low light capabilities.

I’m so humbled to be featured on Shotkit alongside so many talented photographers whose work I really admire, thank you so much for asking me!

My Kit

Cameras:

Nikon D750 (x 2)
I’m so happy with the performance of this camera, the AF is super fast and the dynamic range is amazing. I used to shoot with a D800 but the file sizes of the D750 are much more manageable. I like the dual SD card slots – no more buying super expensive CF cards – plus I have an SD slot in my MacBook so I prefer to upload that way.

Lenses:

Nikon 105mm f/2.8
Occasionally if I’m inspired I’ll pull out this lens for a macro detail shot but I also use it every once and a while as a portrait lens if I want a lot of compression.

Nikon 85mm f/1.4
I use this lens mostly during the ceremony or if I’m doing a stitched image pano.

Nikon 58mm f/1.4
One of my favourite lenses and rarely ever leaves my camera. The dreamy bokeh and softness of this lens give it a quality I love!

Nikon 35mm f/1.8
My most used lens, it’s great for a documentary feel. I opted for the cheaper 1.8 version as it’s a fraction of the price of the 1.4 and way lighter. I generally don’t go wider than 2.2 anyways so this lens makes sense for me.

Sigma 24mm f/1.4
I always use this lens on the dance floor to get a little bit more of the action into the frame. I use a shutter drag technique where I shoot manual focus at f/11 so the Sigma calibration issues haven’t been an issue with this lens as most of the problems with Sigma are with the wider apertures.

Lighting:

Nikon SB-700 Speedlight (x2)
I use on-camera flash mostly during the dancing. Sometimes I’ll pop it on in a dark reception space.

Magmod Magsphere
Great addition to the speed lights, the MagMod diffuses the light nicely and you can introduce some direct flash without blinding people.

LumeCubes (x2)
These are super handy little LED lights that I recently picked up, they are really lightweight and you can just stick them in your pocket or lens bag if you need an extra punch of light during the first dance or if you’re doing night portraits. They come with different CTO’s and coloured gels and you can easily rig them up anywhere with some small Gorilla Pods.

Other:

Holdfast Money Maker Dual Camera Harness
Super handy strap, keeps the weight of the cameras nicely distributed on both shoulders. I have at least one guest per wedding comment on my strap so it’s a good conversation starter. My only complaint is that if you have the old model with the d rings and long hair you always have to wear your hair up or it gets pulled out.

Think Tank Airport Roller Bag
Great bag and super durable, easy to travel with as well. The Airport model has backpack straps, but I’ve never once used them. I would probably get a model that doesn’t have the straps if I were to buy another one.

Eneloop Rechargeable Batteries
I have lots of these rechargeables in my bag for my flashes. I find they last longer than the traditional non-rechargeable batteries, plus they are better for the planet :)

32 GB Sandisk Extreme Pro SD Cards 95mb/s
My cameras had buffering issues before I switched to these cards, now I can shoot on continuous with no problems.

Shootsac Lens Bag
I like this bag because it fits nicely against my hip and is great storage for an extra lens and all my back up cards and batteries. My only complaint is that the weight isn’t evenly distributed so you have to keep switching shoulders throughout the day.

Think Tank Battery and Card Holders
I have several Think Tank Pocket Rocket SD Card wallets because when I’m shooting multiple weddings in one weekend I like to bring a new wallet and cards with me for each one, just to make sure everything is properly uploaded at the end of the weekend before I format any cards! They also make handy battery cases that keep everything together.

sararogers-photography.com