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Professional Headshots and event photography
sony a9 mirrorless camera

Professional photography gear matters

My Go-To Gear

The most asked question of me is, what is in my gear bag. Well, I figured I would finally open up my bag and let everyone in on the mystery of what is inside. I’m not a gear head, but I am a stickler for good professional equipment that is fast and gets the job done at a professional level. We can talk bokeh, but if the basic criteria aren’t met, the bokeh (more on that in a different post) is irrelevant. Let’s start off talking about the Sony A9 and Sony A7rll

SONY A9 & SONY A7r2

I switched to Sony cameras after 30 years of shooting Nikon. I know that is enough to get me thrown out of a bar somewhere, but it made sense and it has been the best decision I could have made.  Finally, I decided to sell a bunch of my Nikon gear, although I still have one Nikon D3s body and some pro lenses.  The intent was to sell them, I just have not been able to pull the trigger yet.  It was a big decision to switch to Sony, especially financially.  As a professional photographer, it was tax deductible but it was still a big investment.

I am sure you are wondering, why the change, and what am I shooting with now?  It was a big leap switching to the Sony A7rII.  And I’ll admit it was a big learning curve.  There are things I wish Sony had done better on the A7rII (menus for days without any logical sequence) there was also my own familiarity with the Nikon camera system which I’ve used for all my professional career.  But, I still love the Sony A7rll !  It provides great quality. File sizes are a bit too large but they are great looking files!  The initial lens offerings were meh at best, but as the Carl Zeiss Batis lenses appeared, followed by the G Master lenses, all was fine in my world.  Then, the Sony A9 arrived!  What a great camera!  The A7rII is now my backup and I could not be happier!

My lenses

-24-70 mm G master
-70-200 G master
-28 mm 2.0 Sony prime
-85 mm 1.8 Zeiss Batis
-I am still deciding on which 135 to get.  We will see how the reviews pan out.
-Flash Sony HVL 43
Of course, there is a boatload of gear that gets added but this is the bulk of my lenses and flash.

There are two big reasons why I moved from Nikon to Sony Cameras.  I could no longer justify continuing to invest heavily in a camera system that relies on a mechanical mirror slapping up and down.  It seems backward to me.  When we used to use film we needed a mirror that went up and down.  This is no longer true.  The Sony A7rII was the first mirrorless camera that I found to be of a pro-level.  
Weight-wise, I know that Nikons and Cannons can save your life if you get mugged and need to whack a would-be mugger over the head, but they are heavy as can be.  The Sony system comes in at a fraction of the weight. Phew!

Reviews of the Sony A9. Disclaimer, I’m not associated with DP Preview, and nor do I necessarily agree with everything they have to say but there’s an exhaustive number of reviews available. Just google it