Traveling Light with your Photography Equipment

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

With photography equipment being so affordable these days, we can capture the most of our travels with digital cameras such as DSLR or Mirrorless cameras without destroying our budget. Choosing the right equipment for our journey can be annoying since we don’t want to end up bringing equipment we don’t need that can be heavy and taking too much space in your backpack. The following advices will help you choose better gear before you travel.

DSLR or Mirrorless

Choosing the right camera before traveling will help you on how much weight you carry around. DSLR or Digital Single-Lens Reflex cameras tend to be bulky and heavy, also the lenses for a DSLR camera are heavier. Mirrorless cameras are thinner and significantly lighter with really small and light lenses.

I personally have both types of camera, and their performance it’s almost identical, the only difference it’s the sensor frame size. My DSLR is full-frame sensor and the mirrorless have a cropped sensor. Since their performance it’s almost identical, I choose my camera on preferences, for example, when I’m working on the field doing photo-shoots I prefer to use the DSLR, but when I’m traveling and want to travel light and small, I’ll use the mirrorless.

Now, use whatever camera you feel more comfortable taking photographs with because it doesn’t matter what camera you choose, you can still travel light. You just have to be mindful on the extra accessories you carry, for instance, both cameras have interchangeable lenses, so you will be carrying multiple lenses around but choosing the right lens and how many lenses will be a big factor on weight. That brings me to my next tip.

Don’t carry more than 2 lenses

There are an almost infinite amount of lens options out there that we can buy but choosing the right one for our travels can be challenging. Depending on the lenses you choose they can get very heavy, so selecting the right one is crucial. It all come down to two different type of lenses, prime lenses and zoom lenses.

Prime lenses are heavy due to having larger crystals and are usually built with outstanding quality but the only problem it has, is that you can’t zoom with it. Zoom lenses have become quite popular and they offer the incredible advantage or getting close to the subject without moving. Due to their movement used for zooming, the quality isn’t are great as a prime lens but lens manufacturer have come a long way and zoom lenses can be either as good or better than some prime lenses.

For our traveling journey the best option is to carry no more than two zoom lenses. Those two lenses have to cover a wide range of focal lengths so you can capture things that are very wide, and others things from up close. A good rule of thumb is to try to cover anything from 25mm to 300mm, because that way you have anything from a wide-angle lens to a telephoto lens.

There is even a possibility that you can carry only one lens like the Sigma 18–300mm f/3.5–6.3 or the Tamron 18–400mm f/3.5–6.3 for both Canon and Nikon cameras. These are both great option for traveling very light.

A small camera bag

A camera bag is just as important as the equipment because that bag will be protecting all your gear and just like the lenses, there are a ton of options out there. It’s important to emphasize that you should buy a quality bag that will look aesthetically pleasing while protecting your equipment.

Since we are carrying small amounts of equipment, we want to get a small backpack or shoulder bag. I prefer a shoulder bag since I can place the bag under my dominant hand, making it easy to grab the camera and start shooting.

This bag should be lightweight and comfortable for you to carry at all time. You shouldn’t even consider leaving it at you hotel or Airbnb, no matter how secure it looks, since it can get stolen. I’ve have seen on social media a lot of photographers loose their equipment by leaving it on the car or hotel room. As a good rule of thumb, always carry your bag everywhere, no matter how tiresome it gets, you have to remember that your equipment can be replaced but not the memories you capture.

I’ll always recommend Manfrotto bags since their product is of high quality. I currently use the Manfrotto NX CSC shoulder bag for mirrorless cameras and I have taken it everywhere, from Peru to anywhere in the USA and it still looks like I bought it yesterday.

Carry a lightweight tripod

A tripod is a must for travel photography because is perfect for low light scenarios or night time photos but again, trying to choose a tripod that is lightweight, and compact enough to carry in a backpack can be a challenge when choosing the right one. Tripods can be made from a variety of material, from plastic on the cheap end, to carbon fiber on the high end but they are extremely pricey and plastic being the one you should avoid most.

Plastic tripod are indeed the lightest tripods you will ever have but they are made really poor and tend to break easy, and as of now, none of my friends that are photographers have ever used a plastic tripod.

Aluminum is the cheapest and sturdiest tripod that can be light weight, and extremely common on sites such as Amazon or Ebay but be mindful of brands you don’t know, because even they are made of aluminum, is cheap weak aluminum that is all shaky and not stable for your camera.

Manfrotto is a good place to buy a cheap aluminum tripod but they also have nice quality carbon fiber tripods that are worth every penny invested in them. I started with Compact Action aluminium tripod with hybrid head at around $70 and was extremely good, but make sure you don’t loose the button piece because it will easily get lost. Aside from that, is an amazing tripod. Now I’m using the 290 LIGHT Kit, Alu 3 sec. tripod with foldable 3W head at around $160 and is a significant better, but it’s still pretty new, so I can’t give out a good review. Haven’t taken it to remote harsh places.

Now on the extremely nice quality, high end carbon fiber tripod, that I would love (and dream every day) to have is a Gitzo tripods. Their gear is of extreme high quality, but be mindful that the tripod head is sold separately.

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Is extremely important that before traveling you plan the trip thoroughly so in case you forget something, or something happen while traveling, you can act swiftly without loosing much time on the memorable events you want to capture.