My Gear.
One of the things I constantly hear at shows is "Woah, that looks expensive". A lot of people ask me what I use out of interest and because they too want to get into photography. I have no problem helping someone out with this or letting them in on what I know and have learned from my own experience. I'm going to be using this post to talk mainly about the gear that I use at shows.
Being that I only shoot Canon, that is the preference I lean towards when recommending cameras to someone.
Here's my full setup:
Canon 7d
Rokinon 8mm f/3.5
Sigma 20mm f/1.8
Sigma 35mm f/1.4
Sigma 17-50 f/2.8
Canon 28-135 f/3.5-5.6
Canon 85mm f/1.8
Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6
Canon Speedlite 600Ex-RT
My main setup is the 7D, 20mm, and the 600ex-rt flash. The reason behind me choosing my 20mm as my main lens is that, its a wide angle lens. It doesn't have nearly any zoom to where I need to take the time to step back from people, and it has a nice aperture of 1.8 which makes it really good in the low light settings of a show.
Depending on which venue I am shooting at, or the restrictions I am facing there, determines which other lenses I bring with me. If I have never been to a venue before the first thing I do is research. I'll go on Google images and look for pictures of the place so I know what to expect without being blindsided when I walk in. One of the biggest restrictions I face when shooting a show is the artist simply doesn't want anyone on stage with him, or shooting pictures during his set. To counter act this I will either still try to sneak on stage and grab a couple quick shots, or bring my 85mm or 70-300 zoom. The 70-300 is great at The Armory for me to just go to the back upper booths and get some nice crowd shots of the whole area. I prefer to use my 85mm for this instead due to the fact it is a lot more crisper.
Stage setups are also key in which lens I decide to use. If the stage is very dim and the supporting lighting doesn't hit it too often, I tend to use my 35mm f/1.4 . Even though it is a little bit more zoom than my 20mm, it has a much faster aperture which will allow me to bring more light into the lens, resulting in a visible picture as appose to pitch black.
Hopefully everyone finds this insightful into my thought process on what I do in preparation for a show and my thought process during that show.