Whats in the bag and what I do with it..

I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to start a new blog. A lot of new blogs start with a post called "Welcome" where some vague promises are uttered about content without anything much following up for a long time.  I say this because I've done this myself in the past.  Well, no more, my website is now the core part of my online presence, supported by twitter, and as such the primary location for all my content will now be here.

I wanted to make this first post, something useful and I figured the best way to do that was to share a little about by basic setup and workflow. It feels like a good place to start.

Shooting

Whether it be a stills gig, a behind the scenes video or a photoshoot, I photograph most of my work on a Canon 5D Mark III Full Frame SLR.  I have various lenses that I use, but my main ones are:

Canon 35mm 2.0

Canon 50mm 1.4

Canon 85mm 1.8

Canon 24-70mm 2.8 L

Canon 70-200 2.8 L IS

Sigma 15mm 2.8

I shoot these days 70% RAW, 30% JPG.  The only time I switch to JPEG is if I see myself needing to shoot a long extended burst for any reason and I want as many frames as possible. For video I shoot using the Magic Lantern Firmware extension, as it gives me more control over the video quality and supports features like focus peaking etc.

Processing

I process all my photos in Adobe Lightroom.  I rarely use photoshop, and when I do, its simply for a quick edit or preparing an image for print.  One key manner in which I use Lightroom differntly to many people is that I give each project / shoot a new catalog.  This is to ensure safety of my work and to maximise the speed at which Lightroom operates. 

Backups

Its all very well taking photos, but if you don't backup your work it can be all for naught in an instant.  I use a double approach for maximum safety.  All my photo & video work is kept on external drives.  In turn that work is nightly backed up onto secondary external drives.  Finally, The content of all those external drives is stored on BackBlaze.com. I have personally tried Backblaze, Carbonite & Crashplan and have found Backblaze to both be the most reliable and have the fastest upload speed by a massive margin in my testing.  The unlimited plan allows me to backup all my data on all my externals and my mac for a fixed fee of only a few pounds a month.  Please note, this is a personal recommendation, and not an advertisement.