People occasionally ask what kind of equipment I use to take my photographs when I’m out in the field. Obviously, a camera is required, but to get the most productivity there is a lot more that goes into making a good photograph than just a camera.
Most of the time I carry a backpack with me that has the necessities. Below is a picture of the bag, what is in it, and how it is organized.
- Flash – I rarely use the flash and try to avoid it if at all possible. I don’t care for the look of the artificial light it produces. However, in some situations there is simply no alternative. So I bring it along just in case.
- Empty – This spot is for my 70-300mm lens that is currently attached to the camera. When I want to put the camera in the bag, I don’t always want to change out the lenses just to make thing fit, so each lens has it’s own spot.
- Leatherman – My Leatherman multi-tool goes in the side pocket. I use this tool in all kinds of situations, while rarely necessary for photography, it’s very often comes in handy for hiking/backpacking/camping.
- Filters – These old filters in this pocket are from the ’70s, but they fit just fine on my 50mm lens, so they occasionally see some use. The three filters here are a UV, Polarizer, and Warming filter.
- The junk pocket – This pocket holds all kind of random things, spare memory cards, spare batteries, lens caps. Basically anything that doesn’t neatly fit in some other pocket goes here.
- Lens cleaning supplies – Everything in this pocket is for cleaning lenses. It contains a cleaning cloth, cotton rags, dust blower, lens brush, lens cleaning fluid, and cotton swabs.
- Camera – This is where the camera goes. Ironically though, it’s almost never there. Usually I leave it attached to the tripod and this spot gets filled with something else, like an extra shirt, or my lunch!
- Lens pouch – This spot is to accommodate the lens when the camera is in the bag. Since my camera is rarely in the bag, this spot usually has my 70-300mm lens in it as shown. Often, my 1.4x teleconverter is attached to this lens making it too long for it’s designated spot at #2, so it sits here instead.
- 1.4x Teleconverter – This little spot is for the teleconverter. The teleconverter is useful for zooming in on subjects far away.
- Remote shutter release – You can’t see it in this picture as the flap covers it up, but this little device is used to get the sharpest pictures and to prevent camera shack.
- 50mm Lens – This little lens is my favorite lens that I own. It is very sharp and much faster than my other lenses. I use this lens whenever I have the chance and under normal conditions, it is the one that is attached to my camera.
- 18-55mm – Although this is a zoom lens for wide to normal range, I use it exclusively at the wide angle end. Otherwise, I use the much sharper 50mm lens.
- Filters – This is where I store the majority of my filters. The filters here are: Neutral Density (0.6), Circular Polarizer, UV Haze, Infrared, Closeup +5, Red. Of these filters, the Circular Polarizer is probably the most used. I don’t use the red filter anymore as I do black and white conversion through software. The UV/Haze filter is often on the 18-55mm lens mainly because I don’t have a lens hood for it and I use this filter for protection. The Neutral Density filter gets occasional use. The Infrared and Closeup filters see fairly limited use.
- GPS and Compass – This is the navigation pocket. In this pocket I have a hand held GPS unit and a compass.
- Outer Pocket – This pocket is mainly used to put my water bottle. I just through it in there and pull the draw string tight to keep is secure.
- Front Pocket – In this pocket I keep a notepad, a few pens and pencils, and electrical tape.
- Main Pocket – The front of this bag opens up to a large area where I keep a tripod extension piece of about 8″ for extra height, a handmade depth-of-field calculator, and a piece of white foam-core poster board for setting white balance.
- Bottom Straps – The straps on the bottom of this bag are intended to attach a tripod, but the amount of effort to mount and unmount the tripod makes it useless. Instead, this becomes a nice place to carry my pullover when the temperature warms up during midday. When it gets colder at night, I’ve got my pullover handy.
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