“What should be in our bag to shoot?” is one of the most frequently asked questions from beginner bloggers. If you’ve bought a camera and think that’s all it takes to vlog effectively, think again! Purchasing a new and expensive camera doesn’t mean that you have immediately become a photographer or vlogger. Being a travel photographer is not difficult, but it needs to be backed up with skill. Although, acquiring new gear and playing with it motivates you often to learn better and improve.
Here we will detail the gear that we chose to master and carry with us, and we will provide our opinion on it. It doesn’t mean all of these items are essentials, but indeed each item has its own function in the tool set to provide ourselves flexibility and creative options when trying to create eye-catching media.
Our Travel Photography Gear
1. Camera - Sony-a6600 (Mirrorless)
Our event-friendly partner, the Sony-6600a, helps us meet the quality requirements while capturing photos or shooting videos. This mirrorless camera is lighter than a DSLR, making it an easy-to-carry option.
2. Kit Lens
To accompany our camera, we have a kit lens that runs between 35mm and 180mm. It is good for beginners who don’t want to carry a specialized lens for every situation, as this range covers most popular use cases.
3. Drone - DJI Mavic-2 Pro
One of our most proud purchases is a DJI Mavic 2 Pro drone that serves us very well for taking amazing video and stills footage from above. Another function of the drone is the ability to take group selfies without needing to set up a tripod. Very convenient!
4. GoPro Hero-9
The GoPro HERO9 helps us to make videos or to take shots underwater or even in bad weather. This is our favorite piece of high-quality gear. The obvious advantage here is the device’s small size and weight, making it a no-brainer when deciding what to pack for a day trip.
5. An iPhone 13
An iPhone with a high-resolution camera is also a part of our everyday equipment. It helps us to capture those moments that don’t allow us to wait and take out the camera. To be honest, in some cases, the footage from the smartphone out-performs footage from professional gear.
6. Memory cards and storage devices
It doesn’t matter which memory cards exactly, as most of them function similarly. The most important piece of advice is to buy from credible places, and to make sure your gear is compatible with the card. The increasing need for storage makes this item an inevitable purchase.
7. A simple tripod
When we want to take pictures of ourselves but no one is there to help, we quickly set up our tripod (a generic, cheap one), set the camera to interval shooting, and go to pose. It is also good for cases where you need your camera stable, like time-lapse and long exposure. We think cheap tripods are probably the best for us as they get wet and rusty pretty easily–cheap tripods getting destroyed hurts less.
8. A Laptop with Editing Software
The final piece of gear in our camera bag is a laptop with all of the essential editing software. This helps us to write blogs and carry out editing tasks. We use the following photo editing software:
Adobe Premiere Pro for editing videos.
Adobe Lightroom for editing photos.
Final Verdict
As self-taught travel photographers and travel Instagrammers, we use the above-mentioned gear to shoot videos and to capture our photos. However, your camera bag doesn’t need to be identical to this one. Yours may have some unique gadgets that may help you shoot quality shots in your own way.
Our next purchase? A gimbal of some sort could help a lot in making more stabilized videos, so maybe one of those! 🙂
