Hasselblad H5D-50c
New York City Fashion, Portrait, and Beauty photography require a high dynamic range of tones that simply can not be captured by full-frame sensor cameras, such as Canon and Nikon’s flagship cameras. Medium Format cameras (Hasselblad) have a much larger sensor, allowing more light to be captured. Thus, this allows the medium format sensor to pick up details in shadows and highlights that would be impossible to catch on a full-frame DSLR. More details gives the photographer, and retouchers more room and possibilities to be creative, achieving the creative director’s vision.
Lenses used are Hasselblad’s HC 80mm f/2.2 and HC Macro 120mm f/4. The use of lenses that do no zoom stem from my mentor, Chip Maury who told me to zoom with my feet, not my hands. For fashion, portrait, and beauty I use longer lenses as wider lenses tend to distort the subject or make the subject look larger than what they really are.
Medium format cameras are typically used in a studio and large budget situations.
Nikon z7
Nikon introduced the z7 model in 2018. It comes with one of the best sensors in the full-frame Mirrorless Digital Camera market, producing beautiful 47-megapixel raw imagery. The amount of detail and sharpness will make any retoucher’s ducky quack. While this is typically a backup for the Hasselblad H5D, it is more than capable of producing beautiful imagery.
Lenses used are Nikon’s award winning 85mm 1.4g, and 50mm 1.4g lens. The use of lenses that do no zoom stem from my mentor, Chip Maury who told me to zoom with my feet, not my hands. Additionally, the use of prime lenses features richer skin tones, better bokeh, and sharper imagery with little distortion, & chromatic aberrations.
Full-Frame DSLR cameras are typically used on outside shoots or shoots on a tighter budget.
Software
Raw Processing, and ensuring that the imagery is produced under the manufacture’s standards goes a long way. Along with each beautiful image shot, there is a sizable amount of metadata hidden within the file. Programs, such as Adobe’s Lightroom are not capable of deciphering all of this information, thus rendering an image with inaccurate colors, and lens correction.
While shooting with a Hasselblad, I tether the camera into a Macbook Pro, where Hasselblad’s native software, Phocus quickly calibrates each image on the fly and renders perfect colors with little calibration needed.
If shooting with Nikon D810, I tether the camera into a Macbook Pro, using Phase One’s Capture One software. Capture One features one of the industries’ best RAW processing engines, resulting in brilliant skin tones, and color. I also use Capture One on shoots for clients who prefer to use Phase One Digital Backs on the Hasselblad body.