A quick honest gear check with what you brought
Okay. Bring out whatever you brought tonight and put it on the table in front of you. Camera, lens, any accessories you weren't sure you needed but packed anyway. We're going to go through it together, and I want to be upfront about the goal here: I'm not trying to talk anybody into buying anything. I'm trying to get you comfortable with what's already yours.
The camera itself
Whatever you have is fine. DSLR, mirrorless, a phone with a good camera on it, the entry-level body your brother-in-law sold you for cheap because he upgraded. It's fine. I said this last week and I'll keep saying it because it matters: you don't need the expensive lens yet, and you don't need the expensive body either. Learn to use what's in front of you first. Most people buy their way around a skill instead of learning the skill, and then they're still stuck, just with a bigger receipt.
Find these three things on your camera before you leave tonight:
- The mode dial or menu setting. Find where it says Manual, Aperture Priority, or Auto. If you don't know which one you're in right now, find out.
- Where the battery level shows up. Sounds dumb. Half the "my camera died mid-session" stories I hear are from people who never checked this.
- The memory card slot and how full the card is. Same idea. Check it now, not when you're forty portraits into a shoot and it stops taking pictures.
Lenses
If you brought more than one lens, lay them side by side and look at the little numbers printed on the barrel — something like 18-55mm, or a fixed number like 50mm with an f-number next to it. That f-number is the smallest number the lens can open up to, and smaller numbers mean more background blur available to you, generally speaking. You don't need to memorize the whole system tonight. Just know which lens you have and roughly what it's capable of, so you're not guessing later.
If you only brought a kit lens, that's genuinely fine. That's most people. We'll do plenty with it.
The stuff people bring that they're not sure about
Reflectors, little tripods, a flash unit still in the box because someone recommended it once. Bring it out, tell your neighbor what it is, even if you're not sure yourself. Half the value of tonight is just naming what you own out loud so it stops being a mystery object in your bag.
One honest caution on flash units: if you've got a hot shoe flash you've never fired, don't just start testing it pointed at people's faces up close, especially kids. It's brighter and harsher than people expect, and at close range it can genuinely startle someone or leave them blinking spots for a minute. Point it at a wall or bounce it off the ceiling for your first few test shots. We'll talk about this more when we get to lighting, because honestly, studio flash is not my strongest area and I'll say that plainly now so it's not a surprise later. I'm a window light person at heart.
Why this matters more than it seems like it should
Here's the thing about gear checks. It's not really about the gear. It's about not fumbling with your equipment while a real person is standing in front of you getting more self-conscious by the second.
I think about this a lot because of a shoot I did years ago for my daughter Kaylee's school project. She had braces at the time and did not want to smile, would not smile, was actively working to not smile every time I lifted the camera. And I was so busy fussing with my own settings and recomposing that I wasn't paying attention to her at all. She just stood there getting more rigid while I sorted out my exposure like an idiot.
What actually saved that shoot was that I finally stopped messing with the camera, just kept the settings I had, and started talking to her instead. Her brother William said something dumb off camera, she laughed for real, and that's the frame we used. Not one of the posed ones. The one that happened while I wasn't trying so hard.
The lesson I took from that isn't really about lighting or camera settings at all. It's that you can't be present with your subject if you're still figuring out your gear in real time. That's the whole reason for tonight. Get the fumbling out of the way now, on your own, with nobody watching and nobody getting more nervous while you do it.
A few small practical things to check at home this week
- Charge your battery fully and figure out roughly how many shots you get out of a full charge with your camera.
- Format or clear your memory card so you're starting clean.
- Take ten photos of literally anything in your house — a lamp, your dog, your own hand — just to practice finding the shutter button, the mode dial, and the zoom without looking down at the camera.
- If you have a case or bag, make sure everything actually fits back in it. Sounds silly. You'll thank yourself later when you're not stuffing things in at a shoot.
Before next time
Bring your camera fully charged with an empty card, and if you've got a willing person at home — spouse, kid, roommate who owes you a favor — take five minutes and just point the camera at them without asking them to pose. See what you notice.