Landscape Photography - Traveling with photo gear

When traveling with photo gear you just want to bring what you need.  Bringing your complete camera bag isn’t always ideal. First determine what you want to take photos of landscape, wildlife, street photography or sports to name a few.  This article focuses on landscape photography.

Packing for landscape photography and what you need.  

Camera body 

-Camera body (full frame camera is ideal, but not a must). A good DSLR or mirrorless camera would be great with interchangeible lenses. 

Lens choice

-Wide angle lenses 24mm for full frame camera or 17mm or wider for a crop sensor camera

-Fixed focal length lenses (prime lenses) are great for quality, but can be limiting. 

-Full frame camera lens options 16-35 and 24-70 are a great combo or a 24-105mm

-Crop sensor cameras lens options 10-18 and 18-55  work well together or 18-135mm

Tripod 

Keeping your camera steady helps create great shots

-a full size tripod is worth taking if you fit it in your bag

-using a mini tripod (pocket size) can work well, but you will be on the ground or need a table to mount.  Just remember to turn off any stabilization on the camera and/or lens.  Stabilization will try and find movement and adjust, not good when you have a tripod that is steady.

Camera Bracket
Making a secure mount to the tripod is key.
-Kirk L Bracket gives options for mounting horizontal and vertical

Filters

Bringing a filter or 2 can help create great photos

-polarizer helps bring out the blue skies or minimize reflections

-a graduated neutral density filter can help when the sky is brighter than land or the opposite

Media cards

Pack your camera media cards and extras enough to take the estimated amount plus 50% of that

-Extra cards 

-Lens clothe

-Wired or wireless remote trigger

Batteries

Pack extra batteries and charger

-Packing at least 2 batteries is necessary so you can swap power on the go.

Compass

A compass is great to use when scouting out an area for a sunrise or sunset shot

Camera bag

Although you may not bring your normal camera bag you need to bring a bag to use for you time while traveling

-A medium size Backpack is my option.  I get the benefit of convenience for camera gear, extra stuff for the day and it is easy to carry by hand, one shoulder or 2 when the load gets heavy.

Bonus

If you have the room and the time on your trip, a laptop computer or iPad are great to bring to see what you are capturing.  Just remember your power cord, card reader, enough free space, and favorite software. 

Here is a list of what I bring on a photo vacation:

-Backpack medium size

-Canon 5D body

-3 extra batteries (no charger)

-Extra media cards 32G

-Media card case

-4 32G media cards

-Canon 24-70mm 2.8

-Polarizer filter

-Graduated Neutral Density Filter

-Gitzo tripod with 4 sections for reduced space when collapsed & folded up
-Kirk ball head
-Kirk L Bracket

-2 Lens clothes

-Suunto Compass

Thanks for checking out this article !!

Eric

Strohm Photography

www.ericstrohmphotography.com