Diptych #29: Bad Takes and Battery Grips
"there must be some kind of misunderstanding"
While the overwhelming majority of comments and emails I receive are positive, there’s a few every once in awhile that just really eat away at me. Today I’d like to talk about two of these instances, in the most positive way possible. Both are camera gear related, and I promise to intersperse some really pretty photos so y’all don’t get too bored. I’ll also be keeping all parties (besides myself) anonymous, though I’m sure some of my readers will be about to figure out who or what publication I’m speaking of. Please don’t bother them. I mean it.
Last week, I received a few emails from a much larger Substack that showcases photographers and videographers. They’d found my work through Twitter initially, but found my Substack link in my bio, and sent me an offer to be featured on their blog. I was happy at the prospect of gaining a little exposure through their much larger readership, but things quickly devolved.
They had a look through my Instagram and I sent them a handful of full resolution photos that they thought would fit their article well, as well as these four photos from a cool walk the morning of the tweet that initially caused them to message me. They approved these full resolution files and complimented my editing a little (hey thanks!).
Part of the interview was to ask me about the gear that I use and the process of picking what works best for me as a photographer. As all the photos they were interested in publishing on their blog came from the same camera, I sent them a gear list including my Canon 5D (2005) and the three lenses I use the most.
Unbeknownst to me, as I’d left my home to run my little errands for the day, they’d replied immediately asking for a correction. See, as newer iterations of the Canon 5D came out, the manufacturer would delineate each version of the camera with “Mark” and a roman numeral ex. Canon 5D Mark II (2008). The emailer asked me to provide them with a version / mark number for my camera.
I assured them that I was using the original one in my reply, which I sent just before 5pm that evening. That’s when things got less complimentary.
Wow. So, according to the representative of a publication that contacted me based off of my work, I couldn’t possibly be “serious about photography” with the gear list I sent to them. They went as far as to say that it was “laughable” to them and that if one of their clients saw my gear, they wouldn’t be able to take me seriously.
I decided that was plenty. I didn’t reply, nor will I reply (I guess I’m replying now), however they have continued to send emails (3 more in total so far) to remind me that my work looks unprofessional and even suggested some gear I could purchase (all Sony stuff) complete with Amazon affiliate links. What a nice guy!
I own newer gear than the nearly 20 year old Canon 5D (some of which you will see shortly), but I choose to use that camera. I own a Canon 6D Mark II and an Olympus OM-D EM-1 Mark II, and both cameras serve their purposes in my job and sometimes in my personal work, but for the past two years, I’ve fallen back in love with the original 5D. Heck, I’ve even gone through the trouble of replacing the mirror when it fell off.
There’s something special about the files from this camera. I’ve talked about that in both of my What’s In My Bag articles, but it’s true. If resolution or dynamic range isn’t the most important factor in a shoot, it’s likely I’ll use the 5D. If it is, I can just as easily use something much newer.
I’ve spent time with dozens of cameras, and I’ve learned what each one has to offer. What the 5D lacks in resolution it makes up for in pure v i b e and great ergonomics.
As unbelievably exciting as new camera gear can be, growing with and really learning the ins and outs of a camera can be much more rewarding. I’ve prioritized finding cameras and lenses that I like the files / look of the photos from first, and everything else second. This does often cause me to lean towards accessorizing my cameras and lenses quite a bit, which leads me into the second part of this article…
In Defense of Battery Grips
This next portion is a little more anecdotal, and is something I get asked about much more in person than online. For a long time, I’ve eschewed using a camera strap in most instances, in favor of a battery grip. Many photographers I’ve talked to have expressed that this is just completely unsafe for my gear, that one day something bad will happen. To me, though, relying on camera straps can be just as dangerous.
I just feel much safer trusting my own hands to hold on to expensive gear than I do trusting all the different points of failure in a camera strap system. Too many times I’ve had the strap of my camera snag on something and nearly pull the camera off my shoulder or get caught while I’m taking it out of the bag or become loose on one end suddenly while around my neck. In 2015, my camera strap got caught on a door handle while I was walking backwards filming inside of a small apartment, and my camera hit the floor so hard it broke the lens off at the mount (R.I.P. to my Canon T2i).
Since then, one of the first accessories I grab when I find a camera I love and plan to spend a lot of time using is a battery grip. The added weight is negligible in most cases (and even a benefit on video cameras), and on stills cameras, being able to shoot in vertical / portrait mode is one of the main benefits for me. On any given shoot, I will often shoot less than 20% in horizontal / landscape mode. I tend to prefer either vertical or square crops, and both lend themselves to using the extra set of controls on the grip.
There is, of course another huge benefit to using a battery grip. The batteries!
In cases like the Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro, one battery = one hour of footage, and the battery grip makes it so much easier to get through a long shoot. Three hours is a solid amount of time to not have to worry about finding a chance between takes to switch out the spent batteries, and in cases like with the 5D and the Olympus OM-D, when I’m not packing out the cameras for a paid shoot, the extra batteries allow these cameras to run for over a week of taking personal photographs without any power anxiety.
And to wrap it all up, I think all three of these cameras look rather professional with their battery grips, especially the 5D. I do keep a camera strap for all my cameras around, usually in my bag or my car, as I find that there are times when they are beneficial, usually when I’m not carrying any sort of bag at all (i.e. house shows / museums). What about you? Do you use a camera strap?
Thanks for reading this week! Go say something nice to someone. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message right here or drop a comment below. If you haven’t already, please check out this set of photos I took with my favorite camera, the Canon 5D or any of my other previous posts here. Thanks so much for checking out this week’s edition of Diptych!
See you soon!
—Forrest
My favorite kind of asshole; works in the industry and still doesn't act right.
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