If you’ve ever worked in a photography studio or seen how studios work you will probably understand how useful grip can be. In case you don’t know what grip equipment is let me give you my definition of it.
Studio grip equipment is the hardware that is used in a supporting role in a studio. Things such as light stands, clamps, magic arms, super clamps, boom arms, etc.
The main equipment that a photographer uses would be a camera, lights, reflectors, etc. Grip equipment is used to place and hold that equipment where needed. Let’s say you need to place a flag to stop some light from spreading out or let’s say that you need to attach a flash head to a door because of space restrictions. In these scenarios, you would use grip equipment to solve these problems. The role of the person that performs this job is the grip.
I’m making it sound like this only applies to large studios but the truth is that grip equipment can help anyone.
Grip equipment tools exist to help you solve a problem. A lot of the time you can solve that problem with common household items, but, having a tool that is specifically designed to solve that very problem is an efficient way to solve it.
Grip equipment is not something you buy in one go. Most of the time, it is a collection of items that you acquire over a period of time. You purchase these items as you need them and they become part of your grip kit.
Depending on the type of work that you do, your grip equipment collection is going to be different from other photographers because your needs are going to be different. In some cases, there are multiple tools that can do the same thing and you might choose one over the other just because one works better for you.
As mentioned before, I don’t recommend anyone to go out and purchase large amounts of grip equipment. However, there are some common items that you see in all studios no matter what type of photography they do. In this video, I show you my 5 most essential grip items that I use on most of my shoots.
In reality, there are a couple of items that I should have included but didn’t. In hindsight, if I were to put this list together again, I would probably include these items as my most essential grip equipment items.
MY ESSENTIAL PHOTOGRAPHY GRIP ITEMS
- Apple box
- Superclamp
- Magic arm
- Gaffer tape
- A clamp
- Boom arm
- Justine clamp
I think that if I was limited to owning just these items alone, I would be able to shoot most of the work I do. I should also point out that sometimes you will need to come up with your own solution when it comes to grip equipment. In some cases, what you are after does not exist so you need to get a little creative.
One example of this is my spinning plate. One of my jobs was to photograph a water desalination unit. These units are very heavy and the brief required me to get 360 shots of the product. 8 shots in total. I built this base so that we would be able to simply move the items in specified degrees and still have the product in the same position in relation to the other items. Since then, I have used this solution for many other shoots. I simply place 2 apple boxes on top of each other with the spinning plate between them. I now have a spinning tabletop that solves many problems.
So as you can see, you can purchase your own grip equipment or make your own to save money or just because what you are after does not exist. Grip equipment items are often tools that have no specific use. They are general-purpose tools that are used to solve problems. There are hundreds of uses and it is up to you how you use it to solve a problem. The photographer’s lego.