4 Quick Tips to Get Ready for Shooting

These 4 quick tips are meant to be completed the day before.  When it comes to making sure your batteries are charged, you likely will not have enough time to do that the day of.

1. Test Your Gear & Check Your Batteries

Look through your camera viewfinder and fire off a few shots.  If you are using a flash, test that as well.  Be sure all of your re-chargeable batteries are fully charged and you have back up regular batteries of AA, 9Volt, etc.  It doesn't take long to do any of this.  As a professional, I have back up everything including lots of batteries.

2. Pack Your Bag & Double Check It ... Actually Triple Check Unless You Have A Checklist

You may want to create a system pending how much equipment you have.  Even if you only have one camera and one lens, you will still need all the little things that count like batteries, something to clean your lens, a plastic bag to cover your camera bag in the event of rain, etc.  It's frustrating to get out an about only to find out you left something simple behind that you could have used to save the day.

3. Check Your Lens Focus

If you have a setting on your lens for AF (AutoFocus) and MF (Manual Focus), you should make sure to notice what it is set on.  I gabbed my camera in a hurry and started shooting images by holding up a mono-pod only to find out a few minutes later the lens was set on MF (Manual Focus).  Fortunately, it was something I was doing for fun and trying to do it quickly.

4. Format Your Cards & Pack Your Laptop

Make sure your SD (or Compact Flash) Cards are formatted and ready to go.  Make sure you have one in the camera and that you have backups.  Finally, depending on how critical the shoot is for you, it may be a good idea to have a laptop along with you to be able to backup files before you get back home or to your office.  For a recent corporate video shoot, we backed up all files to a PC laptop, an external hard drive and a Mac Book Pro before leaving the property.  We simply used their conference room for a few minutes to accomplish all of this.