X-Equals – Click. Download. Smile.

Ok listen up, this is what it takes to keep our studio, and our workflow, running smoothly and without problems.

We’ve always made it clear we are an open source shop when it comes to disclosing how we do what we do, the gear we use, and the tools we can’t live without. So, we figured we’d lay down a nice handy listing of all the things we would put into an X-Equals Survival Kit. Heck, you could take this list and start an entire digital studio from scratch!

The only component missing from our list is the physical studio space necessary to house all of this, which we’ll leave up to you.

Last but not least, if you have questions regarding any of the items below, or just want some advice on how to get started with a particular component (setup, strategy, ideas, etc.) just shoot us an email and we will help you out. The best part of this offer … it won’t cost you anything! Let’s connect!

Computing

Apple Macbook Pro – 17 inch – Next to software, nothing happens without some solid computing power. We generally have under the hood of these babies:

• 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor
• 1TB hard drive, DVD/CD SuperDrive, 4 GB DDR3 RAM
• NVIDIA Geforce 9400M + 9600M GT Graphics Card
• Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard Operating System

We moved away from desktop systems a few years back. The portability and power of the Macbook Pro has never let us down, or left us wishing we had more juice. Your situation and mileage may vary but we’re standardized on this platform and we’re rocking into the future with smiles on our faces. If you’re a PC-centric studio, that’s  equally as viable a platform. For many of our clients, Dell rules the landscape regarding the power/price/performance ratio.

Input Devices

Razer Copperhead Wireless Laser Mouse – For a wired mouse, you can’t beat the price/performance on the Copperhead. Included are some super smooth teflon feet that go onto the bottom of the mouse and it feels like butter all day long.

Mamba Wireless Laser Mouse – We were convinced that a wired mouse was the only way to get the fast response times and DPI we were used to, then Razer dropped the Mamba onto the world. This mouse is insane!

Wacom Intuos3 6 x 8-Inch Pen Tablet – This pen, tablet, and mouse combination is pretty hard to beat – specially when you are spending long hours in the editing chair.

Camera

We switched from a Nikon to a Canon shop this year. But we’ll probably switch from a Canon to a Nikon shop someday again. We love both.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II – A 21 megapixel full-frame sensor is just plain massive. Add in full capture HD video and you have yourself one heck of a capture device.

Canon EOS 7D – At 18 megapixels, but not full frame, the 7D still swings a big stick and the HD capture is superb. We drag these around outdoors quite a bit too – a rock solid workhorse of a camera.

Nikon D3x – This camera is insane, and we loved shooting with it. 24.5 megapixels … ’nuff said.

Glass

Primes and Zooms, we use both.

Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM Ultra-Wide Angle – For those wide shots, this lens is hard to beat. Yeah it’s pricey, but when you see this lens in action you’ll understand.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L USM – The absolutely, hands-down – perfect lens for portraits. At f/1.2 there is nothing else to say … this lens is insane.

Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM – We know what you are thinking: zoom lens, un-sharp, noisy, and crappy f/ stops … uhh … wrong.

Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Telephoto Zoom – See previous commentary.

Nikon 50mm f/1.4G SIC SW Prime Nikkor Lens – For you Nikon shooters, this is a fantastic portrait lens.

Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S VR Zoom Nikkor Lens – Oh my goodness, the vibration reduction (VR) on this lens makes it worth twice the price.

Bags

Crumpler 7 Million Dollar Home Shoulder Photo Bag – Lightweight, full of pockets and velcro. This is our pack-and-run bag.

LowePro Outback 300 AW – This bag is perfect for use outdoors in the rain and snow, more so than the Crumpler.

Storage

Data Robotics Drobo 4-Bay USB/FireWire Storage Array – We used to say software RAID was a bunch of garbage, then I setup some Drobo’s around the office. Two years later and not a single failure that didn’t require more than switching out a bad drive for a new one. These folks got it right.

Our best advice to you, use good quality SATA drives from vendors like Seagate and Western Digital. Also, don’t go the cheap route and buy refurbished or like new drives on eBay or other sites unless you’re just begging for an “Oh sh*t” moment.

SanDisk 8 GB Extreme III CF Card – We run these babies through both our Nikon and Canon bodies. 30 MB/s read/write speed, a lifetime warranty, and rated for -13º F to 185º F! Why would you use anything else?

Kingston 19-in-1 Flash Memory Card Reader – At only $12.00 (USD) we have these little gems all over the Place. they’re plug-and-play, PC and Mac Compatible, and the just work!

Light

We’re strobists at heart, and we haven’t used a big fancy strobe kit in years. Personally, we’d shoot natural light whenever possible. But when we must, here’s what’s in our kit.

Manfrotto 7302YB Tripod with Ball – There are hundreds of different  tripods you can throw in your kit. We like the 7302 because it’s lightweight and folds up nice and small.

Westcott 750 Light Stand – Remote light stands on the cheapy cheap.

PocketWizard PLUS II Transceiver – There are cheaper solutions to the PocketWizard, but they’re so darn easy to use, and we’re lazy.

Sekonic L-358 Flash Master Light Meter – We still use a light meter, and when we do, it’s a Sekonic.

Canon Speedlite 580EX II Flash – Need we say more?

Nikon SB-900 AF Speedlight Flash – Need we say more … more?

Opteka 5-in-1 Collapsible Reflector – A must have for the natural light shooter.

Vivitar 285HV Auto Flash – Cheap, durable, quick recycle time, and perfect for sequence shots. We also love this flash because when it falls off a tripod, gets wet, or just plain poops out, we don’t cry.

Color

ColorMunki Photo – Monitor, Printer & Projector Profiler – Simple, easy, and accurate. You can go cheap and not get the results you need, or go expensive and pay for more than you need, ColorMunki fits right in the middle.

X-Rite Color Checker Passport – A nice set of color targets to help you target your RAW color workflow from camera to monitor to printer.

X-Rite Color Checker – Want to do it on the cheap? Just get the color target card and dial in your camera capture profile.

Power (UPS, surge, etc.)

CyberPower 9-Outlet UPS – Every laptop, server, USB/FireWire Drive, and critical system is plugged into one of these. It only takes one outage or brownout to make you realize what a good choice a UPS is.

APC Back-UPS 8 Outlet – For non-critical hardware like printers, modems, etc., this UPS outlet does the job nicely and on the cheap.

Software

Nothing happens without software around here. Here are some of the obvious and not-so-obvious software we use to get it done.

Lightroom – We hang our hats on Lightroom every day and night – seemed suitable to start there.

{FREE} Lightroom Presets – We have our own set of production presets that we use daily. We do, although, recommend a set of film emulation presets available from LifeInDigitalFilm for only $10 – the best money we ever spent on presets.

RPG Keys – This comprises a software and hardware solution but delivers one important thing: speed. No need to drag sliders around and work your mouse when you can assign buttons to do the work for you. On the conservative side, using RPG keys with Lightroom saved us over 1,000 hours of post-processing time.

Photoshop – When it comes to doing some heavy lifting, accept no substitute. ‘Nuff said.

Kubota Production Tools – Don’t fool yourself into thinking “Why would I buy Actions, I can create them myself”. Kevin’s already figured out most of the important stuff. This is especially true when it comes to sharpening in Photoshop.

{FREE} Adobe DNG Converter (Standalone) – We’re not going lecture you about using DNG, we already did that here, and here. For large-scale batch DNG conversion, we love the standalone DNG converter.

Dreamweaver – We run our entire blog with WordPress and PHP, but when it comes to getting under the hood of your blog or website we think Dreamweaver is the bees knees. Don’t like Dreamweaver? That’s cool. Check out Panic CODA – equally as delicious!

InDesign – InDesign is the 800 Pound Gorilla of page layout packages. We love it though, since it’s where we layout and write all our books and printed materials. You could get away with OpenOffice if all you need to do are some basic page layout tasks, so there’s a free solution to this as well.

{FREE} Gmail – Seriously, if you use some old-school mail client that downloads everything to your computer, isn’t available anytime from anywhere, you’re in the stone ages. We manage all our mail from 8 different accounts and 4 separate domains using 1 common interface – available from anywhere. It’s like having your own personal unicorn.

{FREE} Google Docs – Create, edit, share, collaborate, and access from anywhere. From client proposals to studio documentation, we use Google Docs everywhere. If you’re concerned about security and all that stuff use OpoenOffice in house.

{FREE} Google Spreadsheets - Create, edit, share, collaborate, and access from anywhere. We work up price quotes and manage our general ledger in Google Spreadsheets. It’s just so darn easy to use. As always, if you need more horsepower OpenOffice has you covered.

{FREE} Google Calendar – Create, edit, share, collaborate, and access from anywhere. See a theme here? One thing I will say is Google Calendar is a great shared calendaring system for organizing people and events. Sure there are more robust scheduling and calendaring applications out there, but we don’t require that much horsepower.

{FREE} OpenOffice – Without question, we are never purchasing Microsoft Office if we can avoid it. OpenOffice reads all Microsoft Office formats, and writes back to those formats if you’re hung up on cross-compatibility.

{FREE} Filezilla – Need to fling files back and forth via FTP on the PC? Filezilla is free, full featured, and more stable than most commercial clients. Make sure you donate some dough to the project though, giving back is important.

{FREE} Cyberduck – For the Mac, the Cyberduck FTP client just kicks butt. Again, make sure you donate some dough to the project though, giving back is important.

Amazon S3 – We’ll be discussing a lot more about how we use Amazon Simple Storage (S3) in 2010. For archival backup, it beats the heck out of managing an in house storage server for files we rarely access. They even have a handy pricing guide to help you gauge costs.

Jungledisk – For backing up files incrementally to Amazon S3, nothing beats Jungledisk in our opinion. It runs on both Mac and PC Platform(s), and it costs us $4 (USD) a month. Yes you heard that right – $4 (USD) a month.

Carbon Copy Cloner - Need to create a bootable copy of your Mac? How about scheduling incremental backups of your working files to a USB or Network Drive? Carbon Copy does it all, easily.

Syncback – Our PC solution to Carbon Copy with a twist: Syncback can also sync, copy,  and backup directly to Amazon S3 … score!

{FREE} Twitter – Twitter rocks. Realtime conversations with all you fine folks, and an endless supply of great tips, tricks, and business lessons. If you’re not using Twitter to engage with others, it’s time to get out of the stone ages.

{FREE} Seesmic Desktop – We’re going to steal a quote from TechCrunch: “Ok, Seriously. Seesmic is just waaaaay better than using Twitter.com”

{FREE} WordPress – If your business plan for 2010 doesn’t include a blog or website you’re missing a huge opportunity differentiate yourself from the multitude of other photographers and studios out there. We’ll be writing more about leveraging WordPress in 2010 to make it easy for you to take advantage of this amazing content management system without breaking the bank. We run our entire site with WordPress. There are so many themes that can be used to turn WordPress into a portfolio, blog, or page-based site you’d be hard pressed to consider going with any other solution. If you’re still cracking open your site to edit individual HTML files, save yourself the headache and automate with WordPress.

And … while we’re on the topic of WordPress, here’s a single list of 350+ resources to get you rocking with WordPress. Nice!

{FREE} Sendspace – When we have a large file, or set of files we need to send via email, Sendspace saves the day. We don’t like using the web interface so we use their handy desktop client which runs on Mac, PC, and Linux, and gives you much more control over where you send your files as well as a file-by-file progress indicator.

Freshbooks – If you bill less than $300,000 a year, Freshbooks rocks. Their application takes care of all the important business processes and back office duties required to keep us running smoothly and efficiently: invoicing, expense tracking, time tracking, and contractor management. Boom, click, done.

Hosting

Media Temple – Over the past 10 years, we’ve worked with and we’ve helped others work with dozens of hosting providers. We gauge hosting companies on 1 component – transparency. If they’re down, having performance issues, changing their pricing, or working on a support issue we want to know quickly and honestly what the f**k is going on. At the end of the day, we settled on Media Temple. There are hundreds of hosting providers you can work with, just make sure whoever it is, they treat you like gold.

Printing (in house)

Epson R1900 Large Format Photo Printer – for $400 (USD) the price/performance/total cost of ownership  ratio for this printer is astounding. We generally print 8×10 inch prints from this printer but when we need 11 x 14 inches this machine delivers every time.

Ilford Paper, Classic Pearl – Hands down the best paper for 8 x 10 inch prints. The consistency and durability we get from this paper is astounding.

Printing (outsourced)

Kodak Gallery – Great for 4 x 6 or 5 x 7 inch prints and amazing for 20 x 30 inch prints. Most people don’t realize they use Archival Kodak Paper with a 100 year fade rating!

Adorama Prints – Easily the best 16 x 20 inch prints I have ever seen.

Adorama Books – We love Photo Books, and Adorama makes creating and printing them easy. We ‘re not saying this just because they’re an Ad Sponsor, X-Equals’ resident guru Mike Gray explains.

Whew!

Hopefully this gives you an idea of what we’re up to, and how we get down to business over here at X-Equals. As as we said before, if you have questions regarding any of the items above, or just want some advice on how to get started with a particular component (setup, strategy, ideas, etc.) just shoot us an email and we will help you out. The best part of this offer … it won’t cost you anything! Let’s connect!

|Brandon Oelling
X-Equals – image, workflow, technology, business