Holidays are a time to enjoy, relax and be with loved ones. Choosing what camera gear to take for your holiday can be tough decision. What you don’t want to do is carry your entire kit of lens with you. After all, on a holiday with family or friends the last thing you want to do is lug around a backpack with all your lenses and accessories in it. Also it can make you an easy target in some locations for thieves. Because you will stick out like a sore thumb in the crowd yelling, “look I have lots of lenses and gear in my backpack, come steal me”
Ok so here we go let’s list our picking list for holidays.
1. Good Quality Zoom range lens
You should ideally have a lens that gives you a good focal range. Something that ranges from 15mm to 300mm. Although there is no such lens in the market so you need to get what works for you, either price wise or zoom range wise. Almost all manufacturers have such lens.
2. Memory Cards and Card Reader
Make sure you take enough memory cards to cover majority of you stay away from home. Card readers are very compact and power from USB or FireWire. So use them to download your photos instead of draining your camera battery.
3. External Hard drive
If you plan to take lots of photos such as for HDR and Panoramas you will fill up your cards quickly. Even quicker if you shoot in RAW. So having an external drive is handy and you can go to any Internet cafe to backup your photos to external drive freeing up your memory cards for more photos. If you don’t have a memory card you can also use your trust iPad to backup your photos. See how here.
4. Tripod
Tripod is very essential but you want to travel light so take your lightest tripod when you travel. The only time you will be using your tripod will be at dawn, dusk or night. So you don’t want to lug it around with you all other times. But if you want to take the better and probably heavier tripod you can. My choice would be to avoid it. A Gorrilla-pod would be another option so you can use it in many circumstances. The Gorilla-pod will also come in handy when you wish you could setup your tripod in difficult locations for example, edge of a fence, tree branch or small ledge etc.
5. Wireless remote or Cable release
Wireless remote or cable release is a great, small and essential part of any kit so make sure buy one before embarking on your vacation. This comes in handy in group or family shots and also for low light shots as you don’t need to press the shutter release button on the camera which introduces vibrations.
6. Extra battery and Charger
Last thing you want to do on your holiday is look for a charger in camera shops, so make it part of your checklist. If you have additional battery then take it with you. If you don’t then buy one. It’s a worthwhile investment. I use a camera battery grip which has a cartridge for 6x AA batteries, this acts as my second battery, as my camera is now 5+years old so not worth investing in it for this one. But will definitely get this for my 7D or 5D Mark II, decision pending.
7. Filters
Take your Circular Polarising and Neutral Density filters with you. They come handy on most holidays and are lightweight.
8. Second lens
I might also pack a prime or fixed focal length lens such as 50mm f1.8 or 35mm f?? for low light and indoor situations so you don’t need to use the built-in flash.
9. External Flash
If you currently own an external or off camera flash, make sure you take it with you. This flash can be very useful as it’s much more powerful than you built-in flash. You can use it in low light, back lit, fill light and indoors when taking photos of your family and friends.
10. One last thing – Camera Body
Last but not least you need to take your favourite camera body, if you have more than one. You didn’t think that without this your Lens could magically take photos and transfer them onto memory cards. Did you?
Are there other items that you pack on your travels? Please leave a comment below.
