PDN : What's in Your Cart?

DigitalFusion Lead Digital Tech, Justin Ruhl, in PDN's Tools & Technique's Issue

PDN recently asked Justin Ruhl of DF·Pro what the most important tools of the trade are for a professional digital shoot.

Justin Ruhl

Lead digital tech, Digital Fusion, Culver City, CA

The number one indispensable tool would have to be HardFilm, our name for our portable hard drives, which are anywhere from 20 to 120 GB. They're incredibly rugged, shockmounted inside, sleek and cool looking. We found a guy who was creating these for use in the military. I've been doing a shoot with CocaCola in 18 countries this year, and I've had to mail the HardFilm back to home base. Sometimes I was in places without bubble wrap or anything so I just had to mail them in an ordinary envelope. They were fine.

We shoot to the computer's hard drive, then after the images have been edited and color corrected, we copy them to two of the portable hard drives, which are mirrored and configured as a RAID, so at the end of the shoot, I have three copies of all the images.

A second tool would be my Macbeth Color Card. I give this to the subject to hold, and that allows me to see what's neutral in that setting. We're working with a lot of major shooters making the switch to digital, and they're learning that their Polaroid is now the Color Card test.

I use a grip called Really Right Stuff. You can use it as a handle if you're shooting handheld, or you can mount it on a tripod and it lets you turn the camera from horizontal to vertical without taking the camera off the tripod. Taking the camera off only takes a minute, but on a celebrity shoot, a minute is a long time.