My wife was watching some kind of modeling show last night and I was observing some of the equipment they were using for a photo shoot. Can anyone tell me what kind of cameras are commonly used in very high end fashion photo shoots? It did not look like the standard professional series Canon or Nikon lines I am familiar with.
If they weren’t shooting with Canon or Nikon SLRs or dSLRs, my next guess would be either a Hasselblad, Mamiya, or perhaps even a 4x5 camera of some type.
I’ve heard of Hasselblad, they are renoun for their equipment. Do you know of any specific models I could research online? I’ve always been curious about the higest end photography equipment and the quality pictures they produce.
Well, people certainly use the Canons and Nikons on the highest ends, but medium format was the traditional format of choice for a lot of magazine fashion. They’re very simple cameras, for the most part. You could look up the Hasselblad 500 series. Also, the Mamiya 645 and the Mamiya RB 67. Also, Hasselblad has a line of digital cameras (the H1, H2, H3), and you can get digital backs for the Mamiyas. You can also check out the medium format digitals from Leaf.
Awesome, thanks for the assist!
The Mamiya 645 series is my favorite camera ever. I’ve had four of them over the years; they shoot on 120 or 220 format film. This film is about 70mm wide, or twice the width of your standard 35mm SLR film. You can shoot a lot of different formats on 70mm film, such as 6x4.5cm, 6x6cm, 6x7cm, 6x9cm, etc. The M645 shoots (duh) 6x4.5cm images.
Despite my love for my current digital equipment, nothing quite compares to slapping a 6x4.5 chrome on the light box. That’s four times the area of a 35mm image; it’s like you stuck a slide holder on reality itself.
Ugh, you’re killing me! I just started looking into medium and large format cameras, nearly drown in my own fluids, then saw the price…oh well, it would have been nice. I could buy a new truck with the money it would cost to get one of the higher end models!
If I were doing it professional I’d probably go for it but as an amateur its hard to justify. Still, it would be nice to be able to capture images like a pro with that kind of gear, maybe someday.
Depends on whether you want a digital back. You could pick up a Mamiya RB67 kit for about $300, or a 645AF for $700. Check out www.keh.com
Like I alluded to in my post above, a lot of fashion work is done with 35mm body-based dSLRs, as well.
With really nice lenses coupled with an optimum lighting setup.
Yeah, I liken it to buying a high end sports car. You pay more the car, more for repairs, more for maintenance, etc etc etc
No sense in buying a high end camera and slapping on a crappy lens, using poor lighting and so on. So now I just need about $100,000 in equipment and I’m set!
Buy yourself a Canon XSi or Nikon D90. Buy yourself an 85mm f/1.8 lens. (Not even $1500 there.) Learn about lighting, focus on the eye, shoot very shallow depth of field (like wide open or f/2), fill your frame with your subject. You can take magazine-quality photos with just that gear if you know what you’re doing.
Working on that now, I’ll probably go Canon since I already have a digital rebel and a couple of lenses. I’ve read and read about technique and have taken about 6000 photos so far…getting there. I think I will do better with a full frame sensor and good lighting.
I have been having great fun with my Speed Graphic 4"x5". I think I only spent about $200. So now I have a hand-holdable large format camera that also has a ground glass back and rise, fall, tilt and shift.
The main thing the full frame sensor will give you is shallower depth of field (since you’ll be standing closer to your subject for equivalent apparent focal lengths.) I have one piece of Canon gear to compliment my Nikon gear, and that’s the 5D. It’s a fantastic camera, and will drop precipitously in price when the 5D Mark II comes out later this month.
As for lighting. Have you seen The Strobist blog? It specializes in small light (portable flash) photography, but all the same lighting principles apply:
I would recommend a beginner to start by taking portraits using window light and then progress to artificial lighting.
You want reality in a slide holder? Gaze upon a 4x5 inch chrome and try not to melt. And try not to reach into the image and touch it - you’ll just get fingerprints on it.
Wait 'til you see a 10 x 8" then
GAK! I will use this thread to try and justify the mortgage of my home to my wife for the purpose of buying these cameras!
Oh man, I have to agree 100%!
Shooting chromes even in my old Yashica TLR gives amazing results, and looking at them on the light box is very cool.
But even better, I’ve got an old 4” x 5” Speed Graphic which I’ve never used much. But several years ago my dad found some ektachrome 100 in 4x5 sheets. We went out and shot a couple of pictures, and those are absolutely breathtaking to look at on the light box. You really would swear you’re looking through a hole into the actual scene. Made damn nice prints too, but we had to make a special holder for our enlarger, it wasn’t actually made to rack anything bigger than 120 roll film.
The real fun starts when you own the lab and you get these doofuses (doofi?) with all the toys and they still do the same stupid stuff as rank amateurs. You know: finger in the lens, opened the back, shot with the cap on etc. You’d think that when it costs $20-$30 a shot they would be more meticulous, but no.
Just FYI when there are four or more photogs getting out of a vehicle with their shooting vests, fedoras, multiple cameras, light meters etc. hanging off their persons, we call that a ‘Hostage Rescue Team’.
The absolutely best thing you can do to improve your shooting is to ask question to other people that are shooting the same thing.
That, and ‘Lens Babies’ are stupid; there, I said it.