Upon seeing all of our, “What’s in the Bag?” features, photographer Lester Jones contacted us wanting to share what he carries. Lester is the creator and owner of, I Dig Your Sole Man: a website where he showcases the some awesome street style of urban footware. “While I love the beautiful work of The Satorialist, Garance Dore, Scott Schuman, and Jak & Jill I always felt a bit alienated as I do not understand and appreciate satorial fashion that well, so I decided to fill a massive space in the street blog community by starting the world’s (to the best of my knowledge) first ever sneaker based street blog. My work looks at how sneaker style is something we can all relate to, with our footwear representing a clear story about who we are, and in a short space of time my work is developing a big global following,” says Lester. “The body of work has evolved from mere sneaker shots to become a credible destination for people who like a unique take on all forms of urban style, which includes portraiture, reportage and videography of people, events, products, places and more, and I do it all with quite a modest array of kit!”
I got to talk to him a bit about what’s in his gear bag.
Lowepro Passport Sling: My beat is the street so I need to be mobile at all times, wherever I am in the world. When I’m shooting I need mobility, ease of use and comfort and I’ve tried a couple of bags over the past couple of years, and this has become the one I’ve stuck with; the Lowepro Passport Sling. It’s cheap, easy to carry, easy to access and has room for all of the kit I need, plus it expands, so all up this bag gets a big thumbs up from me.
Canon 7D: I’ve been using the 7D for about 15 months, and I really think that this camera is very undervalued in some quarters.
Yes, it doesn’t have the full frame of the 5D or above, but the picture quality is still great, and it does have one key feature that the 5D is missing, which is the ability to shoot video at 50p, which is something I am using more and more of.
I plan to go full frame soon, but for now I love my 7D.
Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens: This fantastic lens offers a great balance of price/final product and is my one-stop lens for everything. From portrait and reportage stills, to commercial store shoots, parties, product launches, gigs and more the lens is light, fast and gives great results so in my mind is the perfect all rounder.
With that large aperture fully opened up it’s fantastic for video too. Here’s a video that Lester shot and you can read more about it here. We also reviewed and loved the 50mm f1.4.
Canon Speedlite 430 EX: Although not in my kitbag at present as I don’t shoot with flash too often, I sometimes carry a Canon Speedlite 430 EX. Useful for parties and events where you need to make sure you can control things, this is a useful and handy piece of kit. Picked up off eBay it unfortunately isn’t remote, but which is a bit of a draw back so I might upgrade soon.
Canon s95: A recent purchase that I can carry around at all times, this no nonsense point and shoot is a fantastic little camera with full manual control, the ability to shoot with designated focal lengths, the ability to shoot in RAW, HD video and more, this is the camera to use when a bulky DSLR is too big or heavy. My fave feature at the moment is an inbuilt Tilt Shift video mode which is a lot of fun.
iPhone 4s: The newest iPhone gives great camera based results in camera and video model. It’s always in my pocket giving me the chance to shoot and post produce shots on the move (my Apps of choice are Pro HDR, Snapseed, and Photo Forge), and I’ve even recently shot a couple of professional standard images with my phone; https://www.idigyoursoleman.com/2011/12/isnap-iaddicted-sydney.html
Zoom H1: This lightweight, reasonably priced, and easy to use portable mic is a must have for any DSLR video shooters who want to by pass the terrible sound quality from built in mics. Again it’s a new purchase but something I have fell in love with in a big way!
Memory Cards: I carry a number of cards as I don’t like to delete images too quickly so rotate between 3. My main card is a Kingston 32gb which I have been very happy with.
Moleskin Notebook: Invaluable for documenting everyone I shoot, and info on their look, style and story. My work isn’t just about images, but also the story that people and their style represents so I am always making notes, taking down quotes, writing down ideas, and trying to keep my life in order in this little black book.
Other items I include are a filter, business cards (the subjects I shoot always like to get in touch once I’ve shot them to find out when their pics will be online), pens and possibly the most important thing to keep fresh when meeting new people – chewing gum!
To see more of Lester’s work, head on over to I Dig Your Sole Man.
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