Hey everyone,
I thought it might be interesting for you guys to see what equipment I use for my day to day photography exploits.
I'll start with the main bag that I use to carry it all in. I've got a few bags, a Tamrac shoulder bag, a Lowepro Toploader Pro, which is great if you are off on a trek and don't need to carry much stuff as it can hang in front of you, but my workhorse is my Lowepro Protactic AW450. This is a cracking bag that lets you get to your camera pretty quickly without having to take the bag off both shoulders thanks to the zippable side entry pockets in the lower half of the bag. There's also a hard zippable top area (where I keep my drone) and the outside of the bag is covered in straps that allows you to hang all sorts off it (I have the tripod holder, drinks holder and a small rectangular pouch in which I keep my filters). Of course, the interior is fully customisable with the usual Velcro dividers and there are a few smaller pockets on the outside which can carry a compact camera and keys/phones/wallet etc. It also contains a section to slide a laptop in and is a perfect fit for a 15-inch Macbook pro
The other good thing about this bag is that it's easily convertible to a more "trek friendly" bag by removing all of the dividers in the top half of the bag and leaving the camera equipment in the bottom half. This allows you to carry coats/waterproof and food /water in the top half and still gives you easy access to the bottom half.
In the top section of the bag, I carry the Mavic Pro, controller and ND filters for it. This is relatively easy to access but I do need to put the bag down to do this. Not usually a problem as a drone session will usually last more than a few minutes. The Mavic is amazing as it folds up to the size of a small water bottle and will easily fit in the top section of the bag
Next up is my Canon 60D. My main body - it is quite old now but I am more of the school of thought that spends money on lenses and not on bodies. It's a cracking body and does everything that I need it to. Not ideal for a landscape photographer due to the 1.6 sensor crop but combined with a really wide angle lens, you can get rid of this problem easily.
.
Attached to the 60D most of the time is the 24-105L f/4, as seen in this picture. This is a cracking piece of glass, nice and sharp and a good average zoom range on it. It will probably be even more versatile on a full frame sensor as I do find myself switching to my wider angle zoom quite a lot.
When the 24-105 isn't wide enough then I'll reach for the Canon 10-22 EF-S f/3.5-4.5. This will only fit on EF-S bodies, ie, ones with a crop sensor. Even though it's not designated as an L series lens, the quality of this glass is definitely comparable to what you would expect from one of Canon's higher quality lenses. Apparently, the newer Canon 10-18mm IS STM is a better lens at half the price, but it wasn't about when I bought the 10-22. I'm happy with the results I get out of it, so don't intend to switch at any time soon.
That covers off the wide to midrange focal lengths. When I want to get beyond 100mm I crack open the bag and reach for the 100-400L. IS (Mk 1) Quite an old lens now, but one of the best selling tele-zooms of all time; when you look at the results you can get from it, that's understandable. It was only a couple of years ago that Canon decided to upgrade this and make a Mk 2 version available.
I have, of course, got a selection of filters. I haven't used filters much in the past but as I now get into landscape photography more I have started experimenting. I haven't spent as much as I would like on good quality glass here, mostly I have Hoya and less expensive brands but I would be looking to upgrade them in the future to something more professional. Currently, I have a Hoya circular polariser, Hoya 3 and 10 stop ND and a couple of ND-Grads; 3 stop hard and 2 stop soft.
The next thing on my upgrade list is my tripod. I currently have a Gitzo Explorer, and while it's a cracking tripod and is very versatile, it's also really heavy as it's made from aluminium. Looking to buy something lighter in carbon for my next trip. Same goes for my tripod head. I currently use an ancient Manfrotto 3265 pistol grip head but this weighs a ton as well and I think I'll upgrade it to a lighter ball head before I go to Nepal in October (Steem donations welcome !!)
Other stuff in my bag includes a portable power bank, battery chargers and of course loads of spare batteries and about 300 gigs worth of memory cards. I also have a portable solar charger for when we are out and about and away from electricity for quite a while. This proved quite useful on Kilimanjaro and will probably be just as useful in Nepal. Most of the time I use it to charge the power bank as we trek during the day and then use the power bank to charge phones and batteries overnight.
Hope you have enjoyed this little insight into my gear. Please upvote and re-steem if you have.
Thanks for reading