Shooting with two cameras: how, why and when you need it | Articles | Photo, video, optics

A pho­tog­ra­ph­er needs a cam­era — every­one knows that. But some­times one cam­era is not enough. Why do some pro­fes­sion­als shoot with two cam­eras at once, in what sit­u­a­tions you can’t do with­out it, and how to orga­nize work with two cam­eras — read about this in our mate­r­i­al.

Pho­to: www.unsplash.com

When you need to shoot with two cam­eras
How to choose cam­eras for par­al­lel shoot­ing
Pro­cess­ing mate­r­i­al from two cam­eras: syn­chro­niza­tion and renam­ing to light­room

When you need to shoot with two cameras

Shoot­ing with two cam­eras at once is used in dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions. The most com­mon appli­ca­tions:

• In case one of the cam­eras breaks right on the set. This is the most obvi­ous way to use two cam­eras on a shoot. This is how wed­ding peo­ple often work, this is how peo­ple film­ing pro­fes­sion­al sports work. Because, for exam­ple, a fam­i­ly or indi­vid­ual pho­to ses­sion in the event of a cam­era break­down can still be resched­uled and re-shot, and the wed­ding one will already be irre­triev­ably lost. It will be both a ruined day for the new­ly­weds and a dam­aged rep­u­ta­tion for the pho­tog­ra­ph­er. So it makes sense to take two cam­eras for respon­si­ble shoot­ing, the moments on which will def­i­nite­ly not be repeat­ed.
• When there is no time or desire to spend time chang­ing optics. There are times when, for exam­ple, dur­ing the same wed­ding, you plan to shoot both large por­traits and full-length por­traits in par­al­lel. Zoom lens­es can be used in this sit­u­a­tion. But if, for exam­ple, you have two decent fix­es and one not very decent zoom, you should shoot with fix­es. In this case, you will have to either change the glass­es end­less­ly, or run back and forth (they say that the best zoom is the pho­tog­ra­pher’s legs). It takes time to con­stant­ly change optics, plus, if it’s rainy out­side, it’s bet­ter not to remove the lens once again so that rain­drops don’t get inside the cam­era. In this sit­u­a­tion, it is very con­ve­nient to work with two cam­eras. As a rule, a reg­u­lar lens or a wide-angle is hung on one, a tele­pho­to or por­trait lens on the sec­ond.
• When you need to first shoot in the cold, then in the heat. Two cam­eras are very use­ful if shoot­ing takes place in win­ter. If you first need to work in frost at ‑20, and then move to a heat­ed room, you sim­ply can­not work for one cam­era. After the cold, the lens of the lens will def­i­nite­ly fog up. And if you can still fight this by wip­ing them with nap­kins, then if con­den­sa­tion falls inside the cham­ber, this is already fraught with seri­ous repairs. So, if you need to shoot at two points with a tem­per­a­ture con­trast, it’s bet­ter to do this: shoot a part on the street, pack a frozen cam­era so that it slow­ly heats up to room tem­per­a­ture, take the sec­ond one out of the back­pack and shoot it indoors. In the oppo­site direc­tion, there is no prob­lem — you can go out of the heat into the cold calm­ly.

Read more about win­ter safe­ty here.

• For shoot­ing video for sub­se­quent mul­ti-cam­era edit­ing. A very com­mon tech­nique in video film­ing and film pro­duc­tion. In this case, one cam­era stands on a tri­pod, writes a con­tin­u­ous plan, and you can work with the sec­ond one in dif­fer­ent ways — it can also stand on a tri­pod, it can be sus­pend­ed, for exam­ple, on a sta­bi­liz­er.

• When shoot­ing dig­i­tal­ly and film simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

How to choose cameras for parallel shooting

The most com­mon and con­ve­nient option for the appear­ance of a sec­ond cam­era in the arse­nal of a pho­tog­ra­ph­er is to upgrade equip­ment. Let’s say you’ve been shoot­ing with the Fuji­film X‑T30 for sev­er­al years, then you decide to upgrade — buy, for exam­ple, the Fuji­film X‑T4. If your first cam­era does­n’t crash and still works sta­bly, con­grat­u­la­tions, you’re the proud own­er of a handy two-cam­era kit.

It is eas­i­er to work when both cam­eras are on the same sys­tem /unsplash.com

Why is it con­ve­nient?

• First, you know your old cam­era well. All its advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages, you know how to work with it. And the sec­ond cam­era is bet­ter in terms of tech­ni­cal indi­ca­tors.
• Sec­ond­ly, both cam­eras are of the same sys­tem, which is con­ve­nient in terms of sort­ing and pro­cess­ing pho­tos. Light­room pre­sets will fall on them plus or minus the same way.
• Third, your inter­change­able lens­es fit both cam­eras. The same applies to bat­ter­ies, cards, syn­chro­niz­ers and oth­er equip­ment.

If you start shoot­ing with two cam­eras, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that you will also need bat­ter­ies and mem­o­ry cards in a dou­ble set. To a greater extent, this applies to the option when you shoot exact­ly from two cam­eras in par­al­lel. If the sec­ond cam­era is in the back­pack as a spare, it will most like­ly not need an addi­tion­al card. How­ev­er, it is bet­ter to play it safe and car­ry a spare card with you.

Anoth­er impor­tant detail is the total weight of the equip­ment. Actu­al­ly, the process of shoot­ing with two cam­eras is not very dif­fer­ent from shoot­ing with one, except that the pho­tog­ra­ph­er has dou­ble the weight hang­ing around the neck.

If you have two DSLRs, you will have to car­ry sev­er­al kilo­grams on your­self. And with two mir­ror­less cam­eras, the back and shoul­ders can also get tired. Espe­cial­ly if, in addi­tion to cam­eras, you car­ry a lot of optics and flash with you. So, it is worth tak­ing care of the selec­tion of unload­ing or com­fort­able belts and a large pho­to back­pack.

Shoot­ing with two cam­eras with­out straps will not work: you just don’t have enough hands. You can hang both cam­eras on your neck, but it is fraught with pain — the neck can get very tired. The best option would be unload­ing, which redis­trib­utes the weight through­out the body. Or a shoul­der strap for one of the cam­eras.

Read more about how to choose a pho­to back­pack here.

Processing material from two cameras: synchronization in Lightroom

When shoot­ing with two iden­ti­cal cam­eras or two cam­eras of the same sys­tem, as a rule, there are no prob­lems with work­ing in Light­room. The only thing that can be encoun­tered is time desyn­chro­niza­tion. This hap­pens if the time is incor­rect­ly set in one of the cam­eras, due to which the shoot­ing time for the frames dif­fers.

This can get in the way if you pre­fer not to work with pic­tures from each cam­era sep­a­rate­ly, but to parse pho­tos as a sin­gle shot. For exam­ple, you are shoot­ing a wed­ding, and the time in one of the cam­eras is knocked down by an hour. In this case, dur­ing the selec­tion, the pic­tures will be mixed up: on one of the cam­eras, the guests are still gath­er­ing near the reg­istry office, on the sec­ond, the new­ly­weds have already gone for a walk, suc­cess­ful­ly exchang­ing rings.

Most like­ly, you have slight­ly dif­fer­ent set­tings for devel­op­ing pic­tures from the reg­istry office and from a walk. So it will be incon­ve­nient. Light­room has a use­ful fea­ture that will help solve the prob­lem — shift­ing the date of all pic­tures of one of the cam­eras.

To use it, you need to find two pic­tures from dif­fer­ent cam­eras, tak­en plus or minus at the same moment. In the case of the same wed­ding, this may be the moment of the exchange of rings. We open one of the pic­tures and look in Light­room for the date and time of shoot­ing to the near­est sec­ond.

To do this, in the Library tab, raise the right pan­el and scroll to the bot­tom / Illus­tra­tion: Alisa Smirno­va, Photosklad.Expert

Remem­ber this time or write it down. Then we find a sim­i­lar frame on anoth­er cam­era. And (an impor­tant point) turn on sort­ing and use the Light­room fil­ter to leave frames only from this sec­ond cam­era.

To do this, go to the Meta­da­ta tab and select the desired cam­era /Illustration: Alisa Smirno­va, Fotosklad.Expert

Next, click on the select­ed frame from the sec­ond cam­era and then click Ctrl+A (com­mand “select all”). This is nec­es­sary to change the date and time not for one frame, but for all at once. After that in the top menu Metadata/Metadata choose a team Edit cap­ture time.

In the dia­log box that appears in the col­umn, put a check­mark on the first item in the list and in the low­er col­umn for the time enter the val­ue that we wrote down at the begin­ning /Illustration: Alisa Smirno­va, Fotosklad.Expert

Every­thing, the pic­tures are syn­chro­nized in time, there will be no more con­fu­sion and hash.