Best Camera Gear Setup for Travel Photography

Home Education
Best Camera Gear Setup for
Travel Photography
by Brent Daniel
September 4, 2019
 22 Comments
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While a quick trip to do some shooting in the city might involve little
more than throwing a body or two in a duffel bag and heading out —
an odd overlap with your average serial killer’s check list — heading
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off somewhere exotic can require a bit more planning. What else
should you throw in the bag?
The Short and Skinny of It
Whether you're off to Africa for a month or headed to a national park
for the weekend, the gear you pack can have a significant impact on
the type of images you can make and the stories you can tell. After a
few years of more missed shots and underwhelming images than I'd
like to admit while traveling, we’ve started to hone in on a collection of
camera gear that works well for us in the field. Let’s take a quick look
at what makes it into the camera bag on nearly any big trip these
days, then discuss in a little more detail why it’s that stuff, specifically,
that makes the cut:
Three lenses: a super telephoto (500+ mm), a super wide-
angle zoom (14-24mm), and a standard zoom (24-70mm)
Two camera bodies
Batteries: one for each body, plus 2-3 extra and at least two
chargers
Small laptop with Lightroom (or similar) installed
Two external hard drives
Tripod
Camera backpack
Accessories: memory cards, lens/sensor cleaner, polarizer,
lots of cables, travel adapter
Insurance (technically not in the bag, but definitely want
some of that)
Seems straightforward enough, but it took us a few years to arrive at
this configuration. There are devils in those details!
Getting Up Close and Personal
Four Reasons Why a
Fast 35mm Prime Lens
Should Be in Your Bag
What's Your Deal
Breaker When It
Comes to Buying a
New Camera?
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Galapagos Sea Lion. Isla Fernandina, Galapagos.
Camera bodies just record things. Lenses, on the other hand,
determine what we can see. The lenses we travel with shape the
experiences we will have and the stories we'll be able to tell.
Me, I am not a city person. If I’m spending the time and energy to
travel somewhere, it’s almost always in search of the natural world
and its inhabitants. The first lens I usually think about, then, is
something to help us appreciate the wildlife. My inclination is nearly
always to grab the longest lens we can manage. I’ve yet to run into too
long. That said, too big can start to have some unintended side
effects. Seven pounds is about the max I’m willing to handhold (and
that’s not fun over the course of a day). Any bigger than that and I
know I’m going to be going literally everywhere with a tripod.
Nikon’s Phase Fresnel (PF) and Canon’s Diffractive Optics (DO)
lenses can be excellent options for the travel photographer wanting to
lengthen their reach without adding on pounds. You can check out a
recent review of Nikon’s 500mm f/5.6 PF. That lens, or something
similar, will probably be on every trip with us for the foreseeable future.
The combination of image quality and size is essentially unbeatable.
And don’t forget that renting is always an option if you don’t want to be
saddled with a pricey telephoto longer term.
Story Telling
Next, we need a good story-telling lens or two. On one of our first big
trips, we took only a single camera body. Since we wanted to get lots
of bird pictures, that body almost always had a 300mm lens on it.
Anytime we took the telephoto off, a new bird would fly past, so we’d
race to put the telephoto back on. When we got home, we realized
that only 20% of the images we’d taken were on anything shorter than
300mm. Yet, when it came time to decide what to put in the portfolio or
show our friends, 80% of those shots were taken with a 24-70mm
equivalent. The take-home message was that it was challenging to tell
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a good story about the amazing places we'd visited when limited to
roughly the field-of-view of a very long toilet paper tube.
Don't you just love Colorado this time of the year? The wide-open spaces, the blue
sky that stretches from horizon to horizon, the bees buzzing about in the flowers at
your feet…
After that trip, we became far more determined not to let a good
storytelling lens or two be an afterthought. We now travel with both a
15-30mm and a 24-70mm (and both of much better quality than that
early lens). It turns out the super wide-angle is particularly good when
you wake in the middle of the night to the sound of hippos munching in
the grass a few meters from your tent platform, then notice that there
are about two billion stars draped overhead. Definitely worth a shot.
And the 24-70mm is just about perfect to keep by your camp chair —
next to a nice glass of wine, of course — while the sun sets and roos
wander out of the forest; you know, just in case something worth
snapping a photo of appears. It’s not bad for street shooting either, if
you’re so inclined.
Sunset in Grampians National Park, Victoria, Australia, as viewed with a 24-70mm
and definitely not with a 300mm or 500mm.
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Lastly, we typically throw a 70-200mm into our bag of kit as well. It
probably sees the least use for the type of shooting we do, but at f/2.8,
it can create buttery portraits of the people we meet on our travels.
Buganda child. Lugogo Swamp, Uganda.
The Right Gear at the Right Moment
It's not enough to have the right lens. It has to actually be on the
camera when you need it. Two camera bodies now go with us on
every trip. It’s incredibly useful from the perspective of having multiple
lenses always at the ready. You’ve also got a backup, then, in case a
body fails along the way. Further, it means you don’t have to change
lenses frequently, which is a doubly good thing in places where it’s
frequently dusty or the humidity is high (that is, all the fun places).
We’ve settled over time on two high-resolution, full-frame bodies for
the image quality and flexibility they offer, but that’s personal taste.
Crop-frame- or micro-four-thirds-based bodies can save a good bit of
space and weight, allowing that savings to be spent in other places.
Think a bit beforehand, however, about what role each body is
supposed to play. We took a full-frame paired with a crop-frame on
one trip. The crop frame, we thought, would be ideal for shooting
wildlife, but it turned out the autofocus system wasn’t nearly as good
as on the full frame. Swapping lenses, though, put the wide angle on
the smaller sensor, leaving us with a crop factor that took a huge
chunk out of any landscape or contextual shots. Live and learn.
Lastly, don’t forget the tripod. Even if you’re not lugging around a 10-
pound lens, magic things can happen when you immerse yourself in
the world that will make you glad you’ve got one. When we camped on
a remote bend in the Buffalo River one afternoon, we had no idea that
an amazing light show would take place later that evening. As fireflies
began dancing about the cove, I was able to just plop my camp chair
down in a shallow bit of the river and settle in for the show. And
because I had a tripod with me, I can share the show with you.
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Fireflies wink at one another over a wide bend in the Buffalo river, deep in the Ozark
Mountains.
Making Sure Those Great Stories Make
It Home
Now that we’ve set ourselves up to get lots of great images, we want
to make sure they make it home with us.
Memory Cards
Take a few of them. SD cards are so cheap you can use them as a
third backup. Just stash them away for safe keeping when they fill up
and insert another card. We usually end up using 128 GB cards rather
than something smaller. They’re slightly riskier in the sense that if one
fails, we’ll lose more images, but also less likely to get lost while
switching them out in a teetering boat or on some jungle trail in the
rain.
XQD memory cards, on the other hand, aren’t so cheap. The XQD
card gets erased every evening and reused after I’ve verified that I’ve
got two hard drive backups of the day’s take. I do have a second
backup XQD card stashed away just in case the primary fails since
they're not so easy to come by in the bush. Hope for the best. Plan for
the worst.
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“I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem to be holding air very well. Can you check it for
leaks — just to humor me — and throw a patch on it if you find anything?” Outjo,
Namibia.
Batteries
For two camera bodies, we have at least five batteries with two
separate chargers. We’ve yet to find ourselves without a fresh battery
in the field that way. If you’re headed overseas, make sure the
chargers will work at both 50 Hz and 60 Hz, and at both 120 V and
220 V. And don’t forget the appropriate travel adapter and small, multi-
outlet power strip. Oh, and be prepared to be creative. The travel
adapter we took to Namibia didn’t work in most places. It turns out
they use two subtly different plug variations. It took a couple of trips to
hardware stores to cobble together a three- or four-layer adapter
system that eventually got power from the outlet into a form we could
plug a laptop or battery charger into.
Backups
Back up frequently. Let's just say that places like this don't suffer fools well. Amazon.
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A small laptop with Lightroom (or something similar) installed will give
you a way to get files off the camera, manage backups, and do a quick
quality check each evening. The small laptop we take only has a 64
GB solid-state drive, so we also carry along two external travel hard
drives. One is a little more rugged, with a rubber shell and a rating to
withstand a sizable drop. The other has a built-in SD card reader and
Wi-Fi access so that in the event the laptop fails, we can still backup
our photographs (at least those from a camera using SD cards). Both
hard drives run off of USB power so don’t require additional cables.
They also allow us to do backups using just the laptop battery when
power isn't available. Each evening, I use Lightroom to import photos
from both cameras onto the primary external drive. I then manually
copy the images a second time to the other drive. One of the drives
usually stays in camp or at the lodge, the other goes everywhere with
me in my day pack.
If you're keeping tally, the number of cables is starting to add up. I’m
anal about them when traveling, using a couple of carrying cases to
keep them organized. Each case has elastic holders and zippered
pouches. Every cable gets stored in the same place each time we
repack, that way I know exactly how many elastic holders should have
cables in them and how many cables belong in each zippered pouch.
It’s easy to tell, then, if something’s missing when I'm packing up, even
if it’s 4:30 am in the morning and I haven’t had coffee yet. More than
once, it’s been a lifesaver. Forget to repack the laptop power cable
three days into a month in the African bush and you’re a bit buggered.
Camera Bag
Of course, now that we’ve got all this crap, we’ve got to have some
way to lug it around with us. A good photography-specific backpack
can be invaluable. We use the ThinkTank Airport Commuter. It’s got a
rugged design with bomb-proof zippers that has stood up to many
serious trips around the world at this point. It has room enough to
carry all of the above equipment, plus a tripod ball-head, SteriPEN,
and a binder with hard copies of all our travel documents.
Note, however, if you're thinking about getting something bigger than
this, stop, and seriously, seriously, think about it first. U.S. airlines are
very permissive about the size of items they will allow you to carry on.
You can basically strap a small car to your back. Once you get to, for
example, Africa, however, they will not typically let you take a standard
carry-on size roller bag on the plane. The Airport Commuter is big
enough to fit a ton of gear, but will still fit under an airline seat. Any
bigger and you may be forced to check it. You do not want that.
Insurance
On that note, just be aware that at least our homeowner’s policy only
covers up to $3,000 or so of camera equipment. It’s easy to fit many
times that much in even a small camera bag. We have a second,
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surprisingly cost-effective policy through our insurer that covers all our
camera gear anywhere it goes in the world.
Why Bother?
"Last Call" deep in the Ecuadorean Amazon.
Starting to sound like a good bit of kit, eh? Admittedly, I often have no
small sense of envy when I see fellow travelers snapping a shot, then
slipping a small point-and-shoot back into their shirt pocket.
Meanwhile, I'm usually standing there with one camera dangling
around my neck and another, a massive DSLR with a long lens,
gripped by the tripod mount in my hand.
When we get home, though, and exchange a few photos with folks
we’ve met along the way, it’s usually a different story. On a technical
level, the little point-and-shoot will always be a bit handicapped when
it comes to competing with a full-frame body and massive lens on
sharpness, noise, or dynamic range. That’s been borne out time and
again in the images we’ve seen from other folks along the road.
Me, I love a technically well-executed image, that finely honed blend
of art and science. But whether that’s important to you — whether a
little less noise or sharper details will help you tell the story you want
to tell — that’s a totally different question! The important thing is to see
the world, to have fun doing it, and to share your enthusiasm for it with
others in whatever way makes the most sense for you.
Genuinely hope to see you out there! And let me know in the
comments what lessons you've learned traveling over the years!
Posted In: Education Fstoppers Originals Gear Travel
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22 Comments
I love to travel and explore, to
share glimpses of the world
and its stories through
photography. My wife and I live
in the foothills above Boulder,
CO where we rock climb,
paddle, and hike. I have a
doctorate in physics and hold
down a day job researching
solutions to national security
challenges.
wbrentdaniel.org
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Pat OConnor - September 4, 2019
You mention the 14-24 and then refer to the 15-30 (Tamron, I
guess). I've thought about the Tamron with its stabilization but
pretty sure I'd regret losing the extra 1.5mm (the Tamron is really
about 15.5mm to 30) more often than I'd miss stabilization. How
do you compare them, in that regard?
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Brent Daniel  Pat OConnor - September 5, 2019 [Edited]
Hey Pat, yea, exactly right. Sorry about that. We did end up
going with the Tamron. The combination of sharpness
comparable to Nikon's 14-24mm with the added bonus of
stabilization seemed like the sweet spot. But .... yea, an
added millimeter or two (or three or four in the case of
Sony's 12-24mm) would be pretty awesome!
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Nicholas K - September 4, 2019
Easy to get insurance when you live in the West... almost
impossible otherwise. I spend half my time on my permanent
travels fretting about losing/breaking gear.
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Brent Daniel  Nicholas K - September 5, 2019
Fine point by you, and one that hadn't crossed my mind.
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Ed Hecht - September 5, 2019
I see this is directed at professionals. The casual photographer’s
version of this article might be called, “The Road to Quick
Divorce”. 😜
 1  0
Brent Daniel  Ed Hecht - September 5, 2019
Ha ha! Yes, there's definitely a balance one needs to
achieve, ... and a very supportive spouse doesn't hurt!
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Jim Cutler - September 5, 2019
Hey Brent, nicely written.
 1  0
Brent Daniel  Jim Cutler - September 5, 2019
Thanks, Jim. Much appreciated.
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Don Risi - September 5, 2019
I'd include a selection of graduated ND filters and maybe a
variable ND filter for the 24-70 at least, and as much of that as I
could afford for the 14-24 (which may require an adapter to mount
said filters).
Other than that, the list is about as perfect as any I've ever seen.
Very good article.
 2  0
Nils Heininger - September 6, 2019
If only the 500mm was as cheap as a toilet paper tube :'( For me,
less gear means more images, so I started using two cameras and
a few prime lenses. But I love to read about other people's
suggestions and your images are proof enough that there is more
than one way to achieve something!
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Brent Daniel  Nils Heininger - September 6, 2019
Technically, the toilet paper tube is just as good at guiding
the eye toward the important bits of an image as the
500mm --- just lacks a bit of the resolution. "Your images
are proof enough that there is more than one way to
achieve something!" As are yours, man! And it's a great
point you make. We all have different shooting styles and
may gravitate toward different subjects. What works for one
may not be ideal for another. On the other hand, it can be
worth paying attention to how other people shoot. We might
just find ourselves inspired to see things from a different
perspective...
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Alexander Parnell - September 6, 2019
Great article Brent! Thank you for the infomation.
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Brent Daniel  Alexander Parnell - September 6, 2019
Thanks, Alexander. Glad to be of use occasionally! ;-)
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Steven Hille - September 6, 2019 [Edited]
Having just gotten back from my third month long trip to Japan, I
think just important as gear is simply shooting conditions. Rain,
Wind, Dust, Humidity and just plain dirt. My wife and I travelled to
Hokkaido up to the very top to a town called Wakkani. Little known
to us it would be driving rain and strong winds, making any
photography difficult. Next came the fact we were in Summer
where you have 93 degree day with 77 percent humidity. Your
soaked in sweat, the camera is slippery in your hands, and taking
pictures feels like your in a steam bath. Next is accumulated
weight and trust me it adds up in your backpack really quick. So
you end up trying to balance weight with practical. I took just one
lens this time, RF 28-70mm. Still after lugging around the back
pack I found myself using my Samsung Note 9, just because the
feel of sweat running down my back was getting old. P.S. Yes the
RF lens 3 pounds by itself, so lesson learned. Shirogane Blue
pond (picture) taken in Hokkaido Japan.
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Brent Daniel  Steven Hille - September 6, 2019
Amen. We spent a few weeks on the equator recently,
some of it on islands, some of it in the Amazon basin. We
got to know humidity and drenching, wring-your-boxers-out
downpours well. We took two of Nikon's built-like-a-
weatherproof-tank bodies and were very glad we had them.
Nice shot!
 2  0
Vladimir Vcelar - September 6, 2019
Also, never underestimate the importance of food, water, med kit
and a cell. And always let someone know where you are and
when you'll be back.
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Brent Daniel  Vladimir Vcelar - September 6, 2019
All fantastic pieces of advice. We always carry tons of extra
water and food with us. Time and again we've run across
people with a broken down car stranded in the Namib or
elsewhere. We've given rides, left gallons of water with
people, handed over sandwiches and fruit, ... and still had
plenty in reserve for us in case we broke down ourselves.
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Santiago Olay  Vladimir Vcelar - September 7, 2019
I would also like to add a traditional map and a proper
compass (and knowing how to use it) if you are heading
into the nature. I find it useful also the city maps, specially
for planning the following day.
 2  0
Kenneth Rose - September 7, 2019
"Best" is a relative term, not an absolute. What you describe is the
best FOR YOU (maybe).
 1  0
Robert Teague - September 7, 2019
Travel is the reason I went to the Nikon Z7. Coupled with the 14-
30 f4 S, 24-70 f4 S, 50mm 1.8 S and 28-300 (hopefully to be
replaced with the 70-200 S when it comes out) has given me
almost the perfect setup. Next year, I'll add a Z6 for nighttime.
 1  0
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Santiago Olay - September 7, 2019
Very nice and useful article indeed!
I totally agree with you when it comes to a tripod. You should
ALWAYS bring one with you. Even if you are having a walk with
your compact camera, bring a small and cheap tripod in your
pocket. I would like to share what I like using when doing travel
photo, specially because I'm more budget oriented...
I shoot with a D750 some my choses are also oriented to that
particular camera.
ULTRALIGHT:
Camera body + Tamron 15/30 (or the Samyang 24 1.4 if I want to
do some astro) + AF-D 50mm 1.8 + AF-P 70-300 E + Some
extension tubes and inverter ring for macro
And for the tripod I really like the Cullman Magnesit Copter
NOT SO LIGHT:
Same as before but adding a mid-range zoom like the 24-120 or
the new Tamron 35-150 + Proper travel tripod. If I plan to do
macro, replace the extension tubes with the Irix 150.
TRAINING FOR WEIGHTLIFTING:
Add the AI-S 300 2.8 (still budget oriented as you can find the old
ones quite cheap) and the 135 f2 DC.
Most of the time I go Ultralight. And if I can only bring one lens, I
always stay with a prime: Tamron 35/1.8, AF-D 50 1.8 or the
Samyang 24 1.4 depending of what I'm planning to shoot. And the
Magnesit Copter tripod is always with me. I do not like bringing the
computer while traveling so I bring some extra pairs of SD cards.
When I'm finished shooting for the day, I like reviewing the photos
on camera and delete with no mercy the ones that I do not really
like.
 0  0
Andre Kreitlein - September 8, 2019
Thanks for the article ... My advice for travelling is "Don't forget a
multi plug" from home. It solves lot of problem at hotels, hostel and
camp sides.
Very often I buy a local multi plug as well, because sometimes it's
not possibly to connect to the power supply with an adapter,
because they are to close to the floor or other issues are
happened. As well specially at hostel or camp site there is no
argue who can use the only plug in the room :-)
 1  0
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