whats all this hes got on his camera?

[iPhoto17]

a photographer came in the other night to take pictures of my dad working on his train set he does every for susan g komen foundation, so i took a couple pictures of him taking pictures, so i was wondering what he had on his camera, all i know is that its a nikon D90, with a flash ontop of some red thing (is that a thing to help focus when you use autofocus?) he also showed me a few things with my d3000, and i took a peek into his bag, he had a d60 body a tripod some color square things and a bunch of lenses

 

[iPhoto17]

hes even got rubber handles on the sides of the display, i guess the camera is heavy with all that equipment on it

 

[fokker]

Colour square things will be filters

The flash appears to mounted on a bracket, the point of which is to move it away from the main axis of the lens to give a bit more depth and subtlety to the lighting. the red light on the flash is the AF assist light.

 

[iPhoto17]

thats what i thought about the red light, he showed me how to turn off that bright spotlight on my d3000 thats used for the autofocus assist, so does the red light work better or its just not as noticeable than the one that comes on the camera?

how does the filter work? i saw him put a clear one up to the lense, but it was really a distorted white-ish clear

 

[iPhoto17]

thats what i thought about the red light, he showed me how to turn off that bright spotlight on my d3000 thats used for the autofocus assist, so does the red light work better or its just not as noticeable than the one that comes on the camera?

how does the filter work? i saw him put a clear one up to the lense, but it was really a distorted white-ish clear, heres a picture of him with the camera and his wife holding it up to the lense

 

[Sinister_kid]

Looks like a kit lens in the first picture.

 

[musicaleCA]

Colour square things will be filters

Sounds more like Munsell colour cards to me. Filters should be, er, round. Unless we're talking about flash gels (which would be pieces of plastic).

thats what i thought about the red light, he showed me how to turn off that bright spotlight on my d3000 thats used for the autofocus assist, so does the red light work better or its just not as noticeable than the one that comes on the camera?

how does the filter work? i saw him put a clear one up to the lense, but it was really a distorted white-ish clear

That clearish thing, I'm guessing, is used to set white balance. I've seen other photographers use similar devices. Personally I don't see the point, as I want to WB for the reflected light coming from my subject, not a mush of the light that's in the room.

The red light from the flash works better because it won't trigger blinking, for starters. Blinks are bad enough with ETTL/iTTL pre-flashes, so using a stroboscopic flash to assist AF can compound the issue. That, and the red lights coming from the flash are actually arrayed in a grid pattern, which makes them optimal for the AF sensor to focus on.

Also, flash brackets let you keep the flash easily above the optical axis when turning the camera to a vertical position.