Although we love Nikons, Teddy and I have chosen to pursue our craft with Canons in hand.

This post will serve two purposes, the first to express how much my mind has been blown with our new Canon 5D Mark IIIs, and the second to respond to emails from old friends and new about what gear makes its way into the camera bag. This will just be a brief description of my experience with each piece, nothing too technical.  If you have any questions about any of this send me an email, I would be happy to give you my thoughts.

Let’s start with the bodies.

I thought that the 5D Mark IIs were great, until I got my hands on this beauty.  I honestly can’t believe how wonderful these cameras are, the focusing in backlight and dark settings is incredible; perfect for weddings. The way it feels in my hand (ooooo), and the best part, the way it sounds when the shutter snaps.  There is a high speed shutter setting that literally sounds like a machine gun when pressed, but a silent one.

The 5D Mark III was very easy to get used to and navigate through and we are really excited for wedding season.

Our 5D Mark IIs will be on our person as back up in the event that we need them, or need to have two cameras (different lenses) to switch between.  We have had them for 2 years, and they have never let us down (knocking on wood as I write this).  We also will be using one of these bodies for our photo booths.

Now on to discuss the lenses; our favourites, the ones we hardly use but bring anyway, and how we use each one.  75% of our lenses are fixed lenses (they don’t zoom) and we would love to only shoot with fixed lenses, but sometimes you just need to zoom, rarely, but sometimes.  I will start with the favourites and work from there.

This my friends, is my faithful sidekick (next to Teddy of course) and it rarely leaves my camera body; the 50mm f/1.2L USM is a very versatile lens and I use it for everything wedding, from prep, ceremony, family formals to first dance.

It is just that good.

Its beefy, but lightweight and it gives me the exact focal length I like from a composition perspective.  It gives the feel of being right in the middle of everything on a wedding day, or any event for that matter.  I love it for shooting concerts because I can crank the aperture wide open and let in all the ambient stage lighting (as I am not permitted to use flash during these shows), and the bokeh is killer; as is the depth of field.

This little guy is the next best thing to the 50mm f/1.2.  It is the 50mm f/1.4 USM and is often the lens that Teddy uses at a wedding when I am hogging the other 50mm (which I tend to do most times), this was the first good lens we bought after equipping ourselves with our 5D Mark IIs two years ago and we thought it was incredible, and still do for that matter.  It is lighter in weight than the other 50mm and really comes in handy when I have to climb something to get the perfect shot (while Teddy frets watching me) and I don’t want anything too heavy.  This lens usually makes its way onto one of the 5D Mark IIs in the photo booth, it is top. Like the other 50mm, the bokeh and depth of field that this lens gives is really nice when shooting wide open.

The newest member of the camera bag is the 35mm f/1.4L USM.  Although surprisingly lightweight, this lens gives such a crisp, “in the moment” perspective and I am hooked.  We bought this lens last week when we got the 5D Mark IIIs, and I can’t wait to use it this summer.  It will make those tight hotel room, getting ready shots a little less tight, and we can shoot with it wide open to hide the clutter of the background (we all know, get a group of excited girls in a room together and it will look like Armageddon). I really can’t comment much more on this just yet as I need more experience with it, but I will provide an update mid summer.

The 72-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM is a really reliable and versatile lens;  it is perfect for the ceremony shots when you don’t want to ruin the intimate mood of the vows, but you want to capture a tear down a cheek or an eye twinkle.  I LOVE this lens for concerts, I don’t always have the benefit of being in the pit at a show and this lens comes in handy in order to get up close and personal shots of musicians, plus a most times I am shooting at 1/100 of a second at f/2.8 in order to let as much light in as I can (and avoid hiking up my ISO) and the image stabilizing feature is so useful.  We even use this lens sometimes when we aren’t shooting from a distance, it has such nice portrait quality, but it can get a little heavy to lug around if you are on a mission.

This Behemoth is the 85mm f/1.2L II USM, super fast, sharp as a tack (once focus is locked), but heavy as heck;  I honestly think you could use it for bicep curls.  We bought this lens a little over a year ago and rarely use it.  But, when we do take it out and use it, it takes such beautiful portraits.  I had reservations about this lens for a long time, that was until I snapped it onto the D Mark III, holy what a difference.  I often had focusing issues with this lens while on the D Mark II, but with the upgrade to the D Mark III, I can’t wait to take this lens out more often; I might even get a workout in the process.  I have a feeling this lens might become one of the top 3 favourites really soon.

The trusty macro, how would we get the ring shots and venue details without it, the 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM.  There really isn’t much to say about this lens other than it sometimes comes in handy during the ceremony when Teddy is using the 70-200 and I need to get a little closer.  It is also really nice for portraits, mind you, you have to be a small distance back from your subject, but sometimes that is best for those intimate moments.

This is the 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM, I would often use this lens in a small room at the 35mm focal length in order to just get a little more of the scene.  Now that we have the 35mm fixed, I am not sure we will use this lens too often as our style is not “wide angle”, but it would be handy in a pinch and it does open to f/2.8 which is helpful for low light situations.  This lens is also useful for the occasionally requested group shot.

The 24-105mm f/4L IS USM came with the 5D Mark IIs when we bought them, we gifted one to a family member who loves photography and we kept one as a back up for moments when we needed to have the option of a wider view, and zooming capabilities.  This is a really nice lens, but because we are more keen on the fixed focal lengths we tend to rarely take this one out of the bag either, but it is really good to have in case.

As for flash, we have a 430 EX II, a 580 EX II and now 2 600 EX-RT speedlites.  The 600s were just purchased and we have some testing to do, we use these rarely, but they do come out with the pocket wizards transmitters during receptions, and the dance in order to evenly light up a room, and create nice backlighting for the first dances.  Again, we are looking forward to working with the new speedlites and will have the other two on hand as back up.