Travel Photography Tips: Gear for the Road

Traditional Singers, Ladakh, Northern India

Going on the road with your camera requires special considerations that are not always necessary when you’re shooting at home. In this post, we’ll explore some of the essential equipment of the travel photographer and some useful tips that will help make your photography experiences more successful when you’re out there in the world.

Camera Gear: The most important consideration is deciding how much gear to take with you. Since you’ll likely be carrying everything yourself for multiple days on end, you probably don’t want to take too much. But what is too much? What is too little? I’ll put together two possible equipment lists and list the particular gear I’d include in each list. Your own needs may fall in somewhere in between.

The Short list: (The ultra fast, and light setup.) One camera body, a wide-angle lens or zoom, one telephoto or zoom. My short list would include:

Gorillapod table top tripod

• -Camera body
• -Wide angle lens, in the range of 17 to 24mm
• -Normal or short telephoto lens, such as a 50mm or an 85mm f1.8 lens
• -Longer telephoto, such as 80-200mm f2.8 lens
• -Gorillapod tabletop tripod

The All-around List: (The package that I’d normally take on most trips.)

• -Camera body, (Second body for an extended trip)
• -14mm f2.8 lens
• -24mmf2.8 lens
• -50mm f1.8 lens
• -85mm f1.8 lens,
• -80-200mm f2.8 lens
• Flash
• -Lightweight backpacking or travel tripod
• -Pocket Wizard wireless remote triggers or cable release

Camera Bags: The best camera bag is the one that will work for you and your own particular needs. Before choosing a bag, you must first determine your own needs and the requirements of your trip or your traveling style. For example, how much gear will you be carrying? Do you have some gear that you don’t use very often but like to take for certain applications, such as a flash or a specific type of lens? Is your style light, fast and inconspicuous, or slow, methodical and prepared for anything? Shoulder bag or backpack? Black or tan?

Over the years, I’ve used a number of different systems, but I usually try to keep everything with me at all times. I often prefer an old backpack or shoulder bag that I fill with my gear (the extra lenses go in soft lens cases inside the bag). This setup doesn’t look too conspicuous and it allows me to carry other items as well. Sometimes, I’ll just carry the camera around my neck, or walk with it slung over my shoulder and tucked to my side, especially if I’m using a larger lens. When I put it all away, I can move quickly and look just like another guy with a backpack. I also have a dedicated camera backpack and in the past I’ve used everything from more traditional camera bags to a chest pouch with lens cases that attach to my belt.

Mike Panic just wrote about camera bags last week, so I’ll refer you to his post for additional information and recommendations.

Sensor Cleaning Tool: Like the occasional scratched slide, dust on the digital camera sensor has become a fact of life for the digital photographer. If you shoot with a digital SLR, this can be a necessary tool, especially when traveling in some of the more windy, dusty places of the world. Fortunately, many digital SLRs now feature self-cleaning sensors. For stubborn dust particles, or if your camera doesn’t have a self-cleaning function, brushes made by Visible Dust are small enough to fit in your bag and provide the solution to those unwanted tiny black specks on your images.

Epson P-6000 Media Storage Drive

Storage- Memory Cards or Portable Hard Drive? While on your vacation, you may very well shoot thousands of images, and you need someplace to store them. Portable Hard Drives, such as the Epson P6000, have capacities from 80GB-160GB and allow you to store and view the images that you’ve already shot. The downside? Another piece of gear to carry, more batteries, and if you drop or lose it, you can potentially lose all those images.

While the same amount of memory in compact flash cards may cost more than a portable HD, memory cards are small, extremely durable and if you lose a single card, you’ve only lost some of your images. I prefer to carry a number of 4GB cards and store them in watertight, shockproof cases made by Gepe that hold four cards, each. In either case, you should never let your shot images out of your sight, or else store them in a secure location.

Redundancy is never a bad thing in the digital world, and having both CF cards and a portable HD/viewer adds storage security as well as a handy way to view images that you’ve already shot.

Spare Batteries: Most cameras these days use proprietary rechargeable batteries, which is good for the our environment, but it requires you to carry the battery charger if you want to keep shooting. Always carry at least one or two spare batteries with you, if not more, and remember to take along an international power adaptor if you’re going overseas.

Second Camera: It’s often a good idea to carry a second camera as a backup. This can either be a spare SLR body, or a point and shoot. Point and shoots are a great option when you are either unable or simply don’t want to take along your big bag full of gear, like going out on the town for dinner, drinks and dancing, or to an event. A camera that fits in your shirt pocket can sometimes be a very liberating option!

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Dan Bailey is a professional adventure, outdoor and travel photographer based in Anchorage, Alaska. You can follow his own blog at danbaileyphoto.com/blog and see his daily Facebook updates at facebook.com/danbaileyphoto

Tagged as: Photographer, Photography, photography tips, Tips, travel photography