I'd stick with the 80 and 50 and shoot everything you can with one lens maybe 2. Think of the fixed camera and lens like a view camera and how you can stretch or compress a subject just from the angle you shoot.
Hell I'd weld the camera on a heavy tripod so that way you want walk around searching for a photograph, you learn to make a photograph.
This is all subject, but I think first you learn why you do it, then figure out how to do it.
We're all different and come at this in different ways.
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I really like the 66 degrees north ads, stern looking models in rough surroundings.
Then I found how the shot was made:
(Guy in the coat, in the snow, click the image to enlarge then click again to see the composite) http://www.pixelfinity.com/#10
Green screen and photoshopped to all hell. And there was me thinking it could be put together in one shot.
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(and if anyone can help me with this snow effect I'm all ears)
Sorry to go off topic tough a lot of people shooting medium format do so with photo manipulation in mind.
This has been going on for a long time and sometimes it's excellent, sometimes it's too manipulated, sometimes it's not cost effective.
I did a shoot in the Moscow train station where two people are walking. Permitting this location was hell, very restrictive and honestly the train station is pretty in parts but not from any one perspective, so I shot the talent on location and then shot 10 background plates where we built our own train station.
It looked ok, but the time in post far outstripped any costs savings.
The idea of we will do it later loses something, though everyone does it, including our studios.
There is a video on the Wall Street Journal this morning showing how H+M used virtual models for their Web catalog.
Actually they are real models shot in a lot of poses, the clothes shot later and put into the system that's 1/2 cg 1/2 organic.
H+M caught some heat for this, but I guess they ran the numbers and it worked out. It's hard to tell if the models are real or not but some projects require so much client directed retouching it's hard to tell if an organic image is also real or cg.
Not to go back in time, but I've always felt that the only reason to shoot a photograph is to show some degree of believability, if the reality is cleaned up or manipulated.
This is a self promotion spread going out today and I don't think it would have had the same feel had I shot the locations separate from the talent.
Maybe, I dunno because locations, talent inspire and frame the context of an image. I may be fooling myself but when I shoot in Paris I feel like I'm in Paris and when I shoot in Dallas, I feel like I'm in Dallas and I think it shows, for better or worse.
There is a saying by movie DP's that (in the latest PDN) that DP's make the light, photographers find the light (not an exact quote), but in a way that's true.
Even on large projects, photographers work small compared to even a lower budget movie. We don't build complete rooms that stay up for a month, we don't have to shoot 22 scenes in that room and we don't have to worry about sound so not that we're more talent than film DP's we just work from a different mind set.
Regardless, there is no stopping the march of technology so maybe the H+M way is where it's going.
We'll see.
IMO
BC
P.S. To make the snow organic, rent a snow machine from an event rental company. It comes out as snow flakes and actually melts.
Depending on your image and post production skills you can put it on green screen, though usually on black works better and set the snow layer to screen. On an ad like you linked to you'll probably find nearly all of the snow flakes are placed but that's normal (if anything about post production is normal.