Hi, everyone. I am Jamie Delaine Watson. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I am really excited about what I’m going to share with you guys, because I’m going to walk through every piece of equipment in my camera bag. Well, at least all the lenses today. Just a little bit of background information. I use all prime lenses. I don’t use any zooms at all. What prime lenses are is it means it’s a fixed focal length, so there’s no ability to zoom. But the benefit of prime lenses is they work better in lower light.
The aperture of these prime lenses can be as low as 1.2, 1.4, 1.8, which is much better than most zooms, which would be at 2.8, and some are even to aperture. So that’s a huge benefit for the changing lighting conditions in weddings. Now, I want you guys to stay tuned till the very end, where I’ve give you guys an opportunity to download a free list of all of the lenses and gear that I use on a wedding day, so you have that to reference in the future. The first lens I’m going to talk about is the Canon 24 mm FL series lens.
All of the lenses I use are L series lens, and you can tell by this red ring around, and I don’t even know what L stands for, which might be embarrassing, maybe professional, but it just means it’s a professional quality lens. So the 24 mm is a very wide angle. I’m going to put this down now. It’s a very wide angle lens. I use this just in very limited times on the wedding day. It’s very helpful if you’re doing a really wide ceremony shot. Say, I’m thinking of this one wedding venue around here with a beautiful ballroom and tall windows, so during the ceremony, I really want to get an overall picture of the entire space. Sometimes it’s hard to do that with just, say, a 35 mm lens. So I’d use the 24 for that. I’d also use it for a really wide shot of the ballroom area, or if it’s an outdoor wedding, the reception space, basically. The one other thing I would use the 24 … Two other things would potentially be the dress shot the morning of the wedding. If I’m in a really tight hotel room and there just isn’t room, I’m right up against a wall to photograph the dress, and the window right in front of me, sometimes I’ll need that 24.
But most of the time, I’d say you could do without it and use the 35 or the 50. And the last time I would use the 24 would be if there’s a bridal party with quite a few people in it. If there’s any more than five or six bridesmaids and groomsmen on each side, it can be really hard to find a location where they can go far enough away from me to fit everybody in the frame with, say, a 35 mm. So that’s what I use my 24 mm lens for. The next lens I love is the 35 mm lens. The 35 mm is also a 1.4. It’s also a Canon L series lens, and I use this lens for so many things. I love this perspective. I really feel like it’s very natural to what we see with our eyes, so if you’re looking at a room right now, you look around the room, you stare straight ahead, what details can you see in the corner of the frame.
Feel like that’s very similar to what the 35 mm delivers. So I use this lens for a whole bunch of things on the wedding day. I’ll use it for the dress shot in the morning, ’cause I think it gives enough of the overall landscape. That’s not really the word I want to use, but anyway. Of the environment of where the dress is hanging, and so I really love that. The other thing I use the 35 mm for is the bridal party portraits, as I mentioned. It’s one of my favorite lenses for that, ’cause if I have 10 or 12 people in a line, the 50 mm can be a little bit too tight if I don’t have adequate space to back up. The 35 is really, really good for that. The other thing I would use it for is during the reception, if I want another wide shot of the room but I don’t need as wide as the 24.
I also love the 35 for bride and groom portraits, as well. It’s really cool to include more of that environment than a traditional portrait lens, and I really love the shots that I can get with my 35. So that is s wonderful lens, and I also use it a lot on engagement sessions. The third lens I want to talk about is my Canon 50 mm F1.2. The means this lens is amazing in low light. It’s one of the two best lenses I have for low light shooting. I’ve used this lens for so many different things. It really is the most versatile lens, I feel, for wedding photography, and if I was ever posed the question, “What’s the one lens, if you had to shoot a wedding with one lens, which would you use?” I would use my 50 mm, just for its versatility. What I mean by this is I’m using this lens almost at every point in the day. I can use it for dress shots, I can use it for, excuse me, detail shots. The flowers or the shoes, those sort of things in the morning.
It’s great for candid imagery. It’s also my go-to ceremony lens. I am always using this lens as the bridal party and the bride comes down the aisle, and I’m standing at the front of the church. I love using this lens for that. It’s a really good perspective. I’m also using it for as the bride and groom exit the wedding, and all of the bridal party members, ’cause I find that’s a good focal length as well. It’s definitely my go-to lens for family portraits. Any group smaller than about 12 people, it’s really what I prefer.
Anything more than 12, I’d be looking at the 35 mm that we just talked about. I also love it for bride and groom portraits. It’s a really, really flattering focal length and perspective. And then I also like to do individual bridesmaids shots with it, and groomsmen shots, ’cause it’s just a really good focal length for that. It’s really flattering. I’ll also use it for all reception details. Centerpieces, place cards, invitations, anything … Not invitations. Stationary on the reception tables. All those sort of details.
It’s also a great candid lens for during the reception and the first dance, as well. So there’s really nothing this lens can’t do, and I love it. I definitely think it’s one that’s worth investing in. I just want to pause right here to let you guys know that at the end of this video, I’ll be letting you know how you can download a free list of all of these lenses I’m talking about, and the best places to buy them, as well as a few additional resources. So stay tuned for that. The next lens I’m going to talk about is the Canon 85 mm F1.2. That’s the same as the 50 mm in terms of the ability to have a very low aperture. As you can tell, this lens is very heavy and wide and bulky, and heavy duty, and there’s a reason for that, because it’s a beautiful lens. It’s so, so beautiful in low light.
85 mm means it’s getting into more of a telephoto lens, so I can have a subject farther across the room and still get a lot closer than I ever could with the 24, 35, or 50. I use this 85 in pretty specific conditions on the wedding day. It’s not something I reach for a lot, but when I do, it really does its job well.
I would use this for a few bride and groom portraits, ’cause I really love the compressed, almost film-like quality that you can get when you stop this lens down to about or 1.8. Really think it’s beautiful. I’d also use it for maybe a few detail shots at the reception of centerpieces and that sort of thing. But most of all, I would say I use this for reaction shots during the speeches. What I like about it is you can get a little bit closer than the 50.
What I also love about the 85 is during the reception, during the speeches, I find it can be difficult to get close enough to the head table if there’s guest tables in front. So rather than using my 50 mm, I’ll put on the 85 on my camera, and it allows me to stand a little bit further back from the head table, and that way I can capture the reactions I need without being intrusive. The next lens I want to talk about is unique. It is the 100 mm, Canon as well, F2.8. It’s a macro lens. It’s also an L series, as you see from this red lien around. So, macro lens means you can get a lot closer to your subject than you would be able to with a traditional lens. I use this macro for any really small, small details. I would use this for the ring shot. I try to do that in the morning, during the bride’s prep time, but sometimes I’ll do it during the reception as well. So I’d use it for my ring shot. I’d also use it for place cards or any small details on the reception tables.
Those would really only be the two times I would use it. Occasionally, maybe I’ll pass this lens to my second shooter, and they’ll use it during the ceremony to get the vow reactions on either side. But it’s not something that I personally use. I will use my next lens for that, which I will introduce right now. The next lens, and the final lens in my collection, is the 135 mm. It’s the F2.0, also a Canon L series lens. What I use this lens for is primarily during the vows, like I mentioned. A couple will be facing each other and I’ll rotate from one side to the next during the ceremony, trying to capture these up-close shots, just a really tight shot, head and shoulders, of the reaction and of speaking their vows. I think it’s really special to have those up-close moments captured that, really, no one else on the wedding day saw except for maybe the bridal party, who was standing right there.
I think it’s really special to capture that. So this lens really allows me to do that. I love, love, love using it. Occasionally, I’ll also use it during the reception. Once again, for candid images. It’s just really hard to be close enough to the podium, but I want an up-close shot. Sometimes the 135 can be really great for that. I can put a flash on my camera and stand a ways back and still get a really tight shot that I really love. So, these are the six lenses in my collection. On a wedding day, how I carry this gear around is I use a lens bag called a Shootsac. You can find that at shootsac.com. It’ll also be on my list of free resources at the end of this video. So I keep two lenses in that bag at all time, and one lens on my camera. So I’m free to switch lenses throughout the day, and I’m always thinking in advance, which lenses will I need for this ceremony? So I’ll go back to my main bag, which is a rolling suitcase, it’s by Think Tank.
I’ll also include the link to that on that resources list. And so I’m switching from my main bag to my side lens bag throughout the wedding day. I’m always thinking one step ahead, what will I need then? And I take little breaks to return lenses back to my main bag, and then transfer them to the bag on me. I hope this information helped you. As I’ve been mentioning throughout the video, you can download a free list of my equipment and all the details of these lenses, as well as my camera bodies, the flashes I use, the rolling bag I use, the lens bag I use, and you can find that link in the video description right down below. So be sure to not miss that. Go down to the description and there’ll be a clear link saying download the free list here. And I hope you find that really helpful. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I would really appreciate it if you would subscribe if you loved this video, if you’d share it with your friends, and if you’d follow me as well on Twitter, on Instagram, you can find me @JamieDelaine.
And I look forward to hearing more from you in the comments below. Have a great day. .
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