Working With A Digitech

Hi WC Club members! Hope you're all having a relaxing Sunday. Or if you're like me then maybe you're organizing your entire life by cleaning your room, doing laundry, planning for the week, and so forth. No? Just me. Ok, that's fine too. Lol! Don't get me wrong, I will definitely have my lazy Sundays as well but today is just one of those days. Anyway, if you didn't already know what this blog post is about from the title, I'll be sharing our experience working with a digitech. If you're like "what the heck is a digitech?" then I'll be sure to break that down for you as well. While we've only worked with one digitech in the past, we still think it's important to share what we've learned about it because if you're planning on working on larger shoots or productions, then the likelihood is that you'll truly benefit from having one on set.

First off, what is a digitech, or digital tech? Well, a digital tech is someone on set that is facilitating all of the technical parts of a photo shoot or production. Essentially, they're the "tech" expert in charge of making sure all electronic systems are in place and your images are staying organized. By this definition, we're talking about making sure there's an entire digital workflow starting with successful tethering, image organization (sorting, filing, naming, backups), as well as processing images in real time in order to get approval from clients. Most photographers may go a long time without ever needing to hire a digitech and then there are other photographers whose lives are made easier by having one on set at every shoot. It really comes down to preference and whether you're working on large-scale projects or not.

I think it's important to point out that we often play our own "digitech" on set as we're making sure that we are tethering, processing, saving all of our own imagery AND likely managing how we communicate with our clients for image approval. So if you haven't factored that into your pricing, then I think you know what you ought to do after reading this post... 

*immediately raises prices* 

No but seriously... it's wild that this can be one person's *only* job on set and it's a rather important one. We all know what can happen when tech isn't on our side. Our hard drives fail, our tethering connection cuts out every five minutes, our files go missing, and so forth. And the pressure is even worse when you've got your client on set wondering why things aren't working. It's NOT fun and we've totally been there. That's where a digitech truly comes into play and it's honestly kind of magical.

Let me take you back to the shoot pictured above which happened in July of 2020. Right in the middle of the pandemic of course... This was definitely one of our largest and most complicated shoots that we've had to date. By large and complicated, I mean that the shoot consisted of a pretty extensive shot list (that included GIFs,) we had several child models (think about their attention spans lol) as well as one teenage model, and the sets were quite large with a couple of different colored backdrops which meant the lighting was slightly more complicated than our usual setup. On top of that, our client was very adamant about hiring a digitech because at the end of the day, they were managing their own post-production. We didn't question it and in fact, we were actually very thankful that we hired a digitech because there were so many moving parts to this shoot, that it ended up alleviating some of our problems. It was honestly so cool to be able to just focus on the lighting and helping Elle style or just be an extra hand when it came to getting all the shots and knowing that all the tech stuff was getting taken care. Not only was our digitech a total wizard at file naming and sorting but he was making sure that things were getting backed up as we moved along through the shoot. It was honestly life-changing, haha!

It's important to point out that we had a discussion with our digitech before the shoot to go over some specifications. This included what system we work with (Capture One and whether he worked with that or not), what equipment/set up we had for him to use, or if he needed to bring his own gear, and so forth. From there, we figured out that he was well-versed in Capture One and because we had a rolling cart with a monitor and our entire tethering system down, all he really needed to do was come with extra camera gear like batteries, hard drives, cables, etc. as a "just in case." Obviously, both our previous studio and our current cart are kind of tiny but we made it work. I highly recommend having a larger (more heavy-duty) cart though if you plan on hiring digitechs often because it was definitely looking a little cramped there as you can see. 

Overall, I would definitely recommend working with a digitech if your budget allows it. It's such a game changer and while we haven't "needed" one recently, it's definitely something we'll consider the next time we have a larger project that requires more of a team. Have you ever worked with a digitech? Definitely let us know in the comments or over on Slack. I'd love to hear your experience as well. Thanks for reading guys and I hope this was helpful to any of you!

Is it the weekend yet?
Arabela