How to carry gear while wearing a harness? (wedding photography)

Question

Wondering if anyone could help.

I'm getting into wedding photography and am trying to figure out how I want to carry my gear for the day. I want to get either a dual or single leather harness (I'm just deciding if I wanna shoot with only my canon r6 and sell my 5d mark iii or if I wanna dual shoot. I'm torn because the r6 was a big purchase for me and I'd prefer having all the photos taken with it) but am unsure how else to carry a few other things on me (probably two more lenses). I'm trying to keep things minimal and am wondering if anyone has any suggestions incase I need to quickly change lens'? I'll likely be wearing a single leather harness across my body, so should I think about a fanny pack of sorts for my lenses? a messenger bag? (not sure I'm into that idea).

I've been having a hard time finding anything online about how people carry extra gear when using harnesses. All suggestions welcome!

Answer 1

There is no single answer to this question... but for your specific scenario the basic formula is to carry the two lenses in a shoulder bag with three slots. When you want to change a lens you take the lens off the camera and drop it into the open slot and grab the next lens (I use lens hoods but not lens caps).

For lighter kit I would probably use a lightweight shoulder bag like the ThinkTank Retrospective series.

My personal solution is to use a (now discontinued) ThinkTank Speed Racer V1 waist pack with shoulder strap in a similar manner. I would not suggest a waist pack w/o a shoulder strap if there's going to be any real weight in it. Something like a Kinesis Reporter's Pack, or PortaBrace Lens Case, might be an good current option; but I would really suggest buying used instead (you'll probably go through a few iterations before settling on your personal choice)... there's quite a few choices in the ThinkTank Speed series and they are all very good depending on your exact needs (S-L > demon, freak, racer, V2/V1).

But I don't use a shoulder strap at all. Instead I use a Spider Holster clip on the waist pack, a compatible arca swiss plate on the camera (Carry Speed F-2), and a SpiderPro Hand Strap.

Answer 2

I often wear an open front double sling from OP/Tech when shooting events. I almost always have the "short" lens and camera body on the right side of my body and the "long" lens and camera body on my left.

Typically I use a Canon 5D Mark IV with an EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L (or EF 24-105mm f/4 L IS if the weather is a factor or I'll be in a rowdy crowd, or an EF 17-4mm f/4 L if I need the extra angle of view) and a 7D Mark II with an EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II. In low light I'll put my older 5D Mark III on the right side with the wider angle lenses mentioned above and use the 5D Mark IV with the 70-200mm on the left.

In extremely low light I'll go with something like an EF 35mm f/2 or 50mm f/11.4 on the 5D Mark III and an EF 85mm f/1.8 or, more often, an EF 135mm f/2 L on the 5D Mark IV on my left side.

Sometimes I might carry an extra lens in a pouch on my belt, but I usually leave all of my other lenses in my backpack bag. I'll switch when there's a break in the action or the activities move to a different venue, like weddings tend to do. I tend to not change lenses during the middle of any particular segment. I have, on occasion, carried a third body with a third lens on a more traditional neoprene neck strap (The one I got from Canon when I first joined CPS 'Gold") if I think I really need three different lenses. Four out of five times, though, when I do that I only use one of the three camera/lens combos rarely if at all. So I've learned to resist the temptation of letting that third camera get in the way.

Lately I've seen more wedding and "upscale" event photographers who use leather harnesses. I guess it sets them a bit apart from the crowd of other photogs? Some of them do look really nice, but I've never trusted slings/harnesses that only have a single attachment point into threaded tripod sockets that were designed to have compressive, not tensile, strength. Even if the tripod socket holds, most such design's weakest links are the little swivel pin that can loose the flattened head and dump your expensive camera and lens on the ground.

I wouldn't be willing to sacrifice the comfort, security of redundancy, and configurability of my OP/TECH Double Sling Neoprene harness. But that's me.