We get a lot of questions about what camera and gear we have on hand, so here’s the low-down on our favorite lenses. We don’t bring all of these all the time, each lens has it’s purpose and we pick accordingly.
Camera
Canon 5D Mark IV
A personal preference, but I’m absolutely in love with this camera!
When I was picking out a camera two years ago after deciding I needed to upgrade from the 12 year old camera body my dad handed me down, I wanted to make sure the camera I got could handle low light well. Really consider what your purpose is and what you plan to use the camera for and then look at the specs vs the price range for cameras that have those specs.
Since I wanted to be able to shoot the night sky and generally low light landscape shots, I needed a camera with a large sensor (Full Frame!) and be able to handle high ISO values (even though you should try to keep this as low as possible through other means like increasing your aperture on the lens)
24-105mm f4.0 Lens
With two kids and one always on me in the carrier, it can get pretty challenging having to swap lenses. Picking an incredibly versatile lens like this lets me avoid having to swap at all! It has exceptional performance for landscapes, is more than acceptable for portraits, and is not too heavy either! I’m always temped to bring a telephoto for our adventures, but this lens is honestly much better for travel and a lot more realistic with two small kids!
70-200mm f2.8 lens
This is hands down my favorite lens for portraits, especially when the kids are running around and I need to be shooting from a distance. It has incredible depth of field and creates beautiful background blur for portraits when shooting at the widest aperture. It’s also a great lens for wildlife photography and you could get an extender if you want to have bigger zoom for a particular wildlife trip without paying for a bigger lens.
Sigma Art 35mm f1.4
This is a pretty versatile lens and I use it for night photography, portraits and landscapes. The wide aperture is perfect for low light situations or getting bokeh at close range (indoors for example!).
Sigma Art 14-24mm f2.8
This lens is great for landscape shots, as well as night sky shots. The wide angle helps capture some interesting perspectives and the wide aperture helps a lot with shooting the night sky. It’s also good for shooting indoor spaces.
Remote Camera Shutter
This is only necessary if you’re going to be doing a lot of low light shots or long exposures. I honestly don’t have time or enough hands to set this up, so I only bring this if I know I’ll be doing astrophotography. In a perfect world I would set up a tripod and plug in the remote shutter for landscape shots too, but kids don’t always give me that luxury.
You can often find a natural tripod (rock, fence, ground, etc), and then just crank up the aperture to make sure everything is in focus and click. You can set an additional 2-second timer on your camera to remove any jitter.
Drone
DJI Mavic Air
DJI is king when it comes to drones, and you’d be hard pressed to find a better drone to travel with than the Mavic Air. 4K photos and video, easy to setup and fly, as well as lots of range and fly time. Most importantly, it is super compact: both the drone and the remote controller it comes with easily fit in our camera bag- and that’s after all our regular camera gear!
Camera Bag
Lowepro Camera Backpack
You really can’t go wrong with Lowepro. It’s large enough to hold everything on this list, with room to spare. We’ll often pack a water bottle, snacks, and charging cables, as well as a portable potty and diapers for the kids.
Essentials
Camera Batteries
These don’t last as long as the original Canon battery that comes with the camera (which lasts several days), but at a third of the price, they’re great to have on hand as backup.
External hard drive
We usually have anywhere from 10-30G of photos saved after a day out, so carrying an external drive is crucial for offloading photos.
Power Converter
AKA the only converter you’ll ever need. Seriously, this thing is so amazingly versatile and acts as the perfect charging station for all 24059204958 of your devices.
Memory Cards
We always have several SD cards as well as some micro SDs for the drone. Make sure you have a few in case one gets damaged, corrupted or lost!
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5 thoughts on “A Peek Inside our Camera Bag”
Thanks for giving us an inside look at what camera essentials you carry! We’re looking at getting a drone soon!
This is an interesting looking inside your camera bag. PS I really want a drone…
Thanks for the tips! Right now we are shooting everything with out iPhone SE’s … and this is it! We do have a nicer camera though we haven’t been using it lately. I also bought a GoPro I am excited to test. The drone shots are so cool but not sure if I have the patience for it…
Thanks for the great info! The drone link goes to a battery. Would love to order from your link so you get credit 🙂
Oh thank you so much for letting me know! I’ve updated the link 🙂