Hello, Hello! We are Ben and Sirjana, a husband and wife combo of wedding aficionados, students of love on earth and of course photographers for friends in love – Collectively known to the world as Tinted Photography!
These days, we are wanderers, though our styles are routed in the oh so beautiful New Zealand and in the cosmic colors of India. We have been photographing weddings, elopements and love stories for 7 years now and it never gets old! With each and every couple we gel with we learn something new about our life together and we think it makes photographing love the most rewarding endeavor out there.
So that’s what we do and what makes us tick but what do we use to create our art? Well, read on and you’ll find out …
Our Cameras – Here’s what we’ve got and why:
2x Sony a7 III
‘s – These are the beginnings of our move to an all Sony kit, so we will have to update you all when that is complete! We have been watching Sony closely as an option for a few years now and with the a7 III
they finally ticked all the boxes we needed in a wedding camera. We have been using them for 3 months now and love, love, love them! They are sharp, responsive, light, hearty, packed with technology and do amazing things in low light! Not to mention they give us the ability to branch out with amazing video quality. The EVF is fantastic for creativity too, aligning things like lens flare in a shot and knowing exactly how it will look before you hit the button is really gratifying.
1x Canon 5D Mark III
– The last of its brethren in our kit :/ We loved the 5D Mark III
‘s and owned 5 of them over the years. They are like a sledgehammer and sure took a beating in our hands! The Mark III’s are everything a pro body should be – if it was still 2012!
1x Canon 5D Mark IV
– What can we say? This camera was the main reason for our move into the Sony ecosystem! The Mark IV
was a delicate little flower after the rock-hard abs of the Mark III
. The focus system was faulty right out of the box on the first two bodies we received and the upgrades over the Mark III we just not enough to make it an exciting and creative prospect like the Sonys. Sadly Canon (our camera maker of choice for over 15 years) was doing a little too much resting on its laurels to make staying with them an option for us.
We also have a cute little Fujifilm Instax Mini 8
camera that we use to surprise our couples with some keepsakes at the end of our shoots. It’s never easy keeping it a secret, but to date, we have only been busted using it once (“ok guys, just close your eyes and listen to each other’s heartbeats… CLICK, FLASH, GRRRRRZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…. OK, we got it!”).
Our DJI Mavic Pro
is a pretty new addition to our kit and we love using it. Its still photos are not too stellar, but by stitching a few together you can get something with a higher, more usable resolution :)
Lastly, in this list, we have our DJI Osmo Mobile gimbal
– not exactly a camera but we throw our iPhones in it quite often while we are traveling to create social media content and some short travel vlogs.
Our Lenses – What we’ve got and why:
Let’s start with our newest addition, the Sony 24-70mm f/2.8 GM
. We love this focal length for its versatility and wouldn’t want to shoot a wedding day without it. The Sony version is very fast and crisp. It has less color in its flare than the Canon version and the fly-by-wire focus makes manually focusing in video mode a little different. That said neither of these things is exactly an issue for us, just something to get used to. Its big party piece, however, is the programmable button on the lens its self! We use it to toggle Eye Focus and we love it :)
We still have our Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L II
too. Although it is a little redundant now that we have the Sony, it’s just very hard to part with as it’s been our best friend for the last 6 seasons – amazing lens!
We love our Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L II
but this is mostly a focal length thing. We love the close-ups and the emotion we can capture through this lens on a wedding day (and Canon and Sony are the only 2 companies out there that don’t lose heaps of zoom to focus breathing so we love it more for that). The lens itself has not been very well built however and the little screws holding it together are constantly coming loose. The lens in the photo is the 3rd version we have owned to try and correct this problem but in the end, we just had to use lock tight on each of the screws to keep it together. Can’t wait to get our hands on the Sony version of this lens, to be honest!
Now, when it comes to something like the ring shot, why fix what ain’t broke? We bought a Sigma 105mm f/2.8 Macro
lens in our very first season for closeups of the rings, etc., mostly because we could afford it. It’s not the fanciest bit of glass and it was cheap as chips, but it consistently gives us great results so we are keeping it!
Next up is our second favorite lens, just behind the 24-70mm focal range. It’s our Sigma 50mm f/1.4 Art
. It is so creamy and sharp and we love the versatility of this focal length – we just need to get the Sony version now, as when paired with the Metabones adaptor it struggles to focus into a bright light.
Our Sigma 85mm f/1.4
is a solid performer and is just the right size for us so we are keeping it for now and ignoring the insanely large art version :)
Lastly, we have our Tamron 15-30mm f/2.8 SP VC
. This wide angle, super sharp, image stabilized behemoth is the master of the dance floor on a wedding day and can transform a tiny hotel room into the size of an aircraft hanger at 15mm. Dangerous in the wrong hands but a secret weapon when used right.
Everything Else – What we’ve got and why:
Our bag is a Peak Design Everyday Backpack 30L
. We recently upgraded from an older LowePro as we travel so often and the old bag always drew attention from flight attendants (it looked big and heavy) and the new bag is more streamlined and sexy looking and fits everything we need in it (also it seems to be working for us at the airport thus far).
For lighting, we use a mixture of Canon 580 EXII
‘s and Godox TT685
‘s for the Sonys. We went for Godox as they have some great reviews and Sony speedlights are out of this world expensive by comparison. We are loving the Godox flashes BTW :) For off-camera setups we are in the process of switching to Sony capable transmitters/receivers – Will keep you posted.
We keep our cameras well hung with Black Rapid Double Breathe
slings! So comfy and so well made, these are much nicer to wear over the course of a five-day-long Indian wedding than the trendy leather options available out there. Also wearing two cameras may be heavier but it’s more balanced and your back and shoulders will thank you for it after a long day.
All our work is saved on Sandisk Extreme SD cards
, Lexar Professional CF cards
, and Sony XDSC
cards. We use Seagate and Western Digital drives to back everything up at least 2 times! And have a QNAP TS-431X NAS
server plugged in at the family home in NZ to keep our finished work safe while we travel.
Lastly, we have our tripods, our large bulky Benro (currently residing 3500km away in New Zealand so we’ll get that model number to you next time we rotate home) and our awesome little Manfrotto Compact MKC3-H01
. This one travels with us everywhere and is invaluable for self-portraits (Instagram marketing) and long exposures (creative awesomeness).
We also use 2x Apple MacBook Pro 15in
lappy’s with Adobe Creative Cloud to edit our work and get it out there in the ether for awesome peeps like yourself.
Stay rad and keep shooting!
Ben and Sirjana
www.tintedphotography.com
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