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What's in my Camera Bag?

"You're gonna need a bigger bag…"

Ready to photograph the Iguazu Falls in South America…

What equipment do you need to be a professional wildlife photographer? Well, I pack light, so all my camera gear fits in a Tenba Hybrid Roller 21—apart from my 400mm lens, which I carry in a separate dry bag. If I’m visiting a lodge in Africa, there’s usually a free laundry service, so I pack a change of clothes in my jacket to avoid checking any luggage. And that’s it…!

So what’s in my camera bag? Here’s a list of what I’ll be taking to Botswana next weekend…

The List

What I used to have in my camera bag…

Sony ⍺1

With the help of various bank loans and trade-in discounts, I’ve been lucky enough to afford the very best cameras on the market. I went through three Nikon DSLRs (the D800, D810 and D850) before switching to mirrorless. I used to have two Sony ⍺1s, but I’ve since traded in one of them and my 12-24mm, 400mm and 600mm lenses for a Nikon Z8 and a NIKKOR Z 600mm f/4 TC VR S lens with pre-release capture.

Having two camera bodies is incredibly convenient. It allows you to switch focal lengths at a moment’s notice without all the hassle of switching lenses—which is especially important if you’re shooting with primes rather than zooms.

It also limits the number of times you have to expose the inner workings of the camera. Even if you set the automatic shutter to close when powering off, there’s still a chance of introducing dust, sand and other impurities. And that might lead to annoying sensor spots.

If you want to know all the reasons why I opted for the Sony ⍺1, feel free to read this article. However, the short version of the argument is that it has a high-resolution sensor, a fast frame rate and a powerful autofocus system, plus a huge variety of customisation options.

That combination of features is ideal for wildlife photography, and I’m very glad I don’t still have my old DSLRs…! The ⍺1 beats the D850 in almost every possible way, and the same goes for the Canon R1/R3/R5—apart from the R1’s higher frame rate.

There were two reasons why I replaced one of them with my Z8 and NIKKOR 600mm lens:

  • pre-release capture

  • built-in 1.4x teleconverter.

Pre-release capture is a must for bird-in-flight photography as it lets you capture the crucial moment when the bird is just about to take off from its perch. The built-in teleconverter is almost as important as it means a single lens can do the job of two (see article).

I’ve also recently bought a couple of eyecups to make the EVF more comfortable and block any sunlight from getting in. They’re small and light and don’t cost much, but every little helps…

Batteries

FZ-100 battery

I have several spare batteries, but I hardly ever end up using them. Before buying my first ⍺1, I’d read that it could only take 430 shots (using the EVF) on a single battery charge, and that seemed to make sense given that mirrorless cameras have to power the EVF all the time rather than using an optical viewfinder.

However, spending time in the field quickly taught me that those figures were way off. In practice, I can shoot over 5,000 frames on a single charge, and I once filled up two 160GB memory cards with shots of little bee-eaters in Botswana before my battery ran out!

Apparently, the official CIPA rating is so low because it’s based on a mixture of single-shot and continuous shooting. That’s simply unrealistic for wildlife photography. If you shoot almost entirely at the maximum frame rate of 30 fps (as I do), you won’t have a problem with battery life.

The only exception comes if you visit particularly cold climates like the Arctic and Antarctic. When I went to Arviat in the northern Canadian province of Nunavut, I had huge problems with battery life, and recharging batteries wasn’t easy given the difficulty of moving camera gear between the warm moist cabins and the cold, dry tundra!

The only reason I take all many spare batteries with me is as a precaution. However remote the possibility, I might forget to recharge my batteries or lose them, or one or two might stop working properly. It’s never happened yet, but there’s always a chance I’ll get obsessed with little bee-eaters again…!

Memory Cards

I’m a great believer in buying the biggest and fastest memory cards you can afford. Unfortunately, that does mean upgrading from the normal SD cards if you have a mirrorless camera capable of 30 fps. SD cards are simply too slow to keep the buffer from filling up too quickly and generally can’t hold thousands of Raw files.

Sony forces ⍺1 owners to use Type A CFexpress cards, which are slower and more expensive than Type B cards, but my 320GB Lexar versions with a read/write speed of 900MB/s are as big and as fast as I can reasonably afford.

I initially bought four Sony cards, two for each of my ⍺1s. However, I replaced them with the Lexar cards as soon as I read they were faster and had twice the capacity.

Unfortunately, my Z8 doesn’t accept Type A CFexpress memory cards, so I had to buy a another one. My new 1.3TB Type B 4.0 Delkin Black CFexpress card cost another chunk of change, but it’s much bigger and faster than the Type A cards, running at 3,550MB/s!

Lenses

Sony f/4 600mm lens

You need a mix of long and short focal lengths for wildlife photography, but it’s always a complicated trade-off between size, weight, maximum aperture, optical quality and price. The very best long primes cost thousands, so you might have to compromise on one or two features if you don’t have that kind of budget.

I try not to compromise if I can help it, and my workhorse used to be my Sony 600mm G Master. It was light enough for me to shoot handheld and had a wide enough aperture to use during the golden hour. The only reason I replaced it with the NIKKOR 600mm was the built-in 1.4x teleconverter. Sony didn’t make one, and I couldn’t wait for ever…!

I also traded in my old 400mm prime because it fell between two stools: it wasn’t long enough for bird photography or close-ups, but it was too long to use with mammals if they were closer than around 20 yards. I bought it because it was so fast and light, but I get most of those benefits with my 600mm—and I didn’t know until recently that I could take it on board planes as my ‘personal item’…!

Wide-angle lenses and zooms are much more affordable, and it’s easy to cover a huge range of focal lengths with just one or two lenses. I have a 24-70mm and a 70-200mm, and I pack them both so that I can pick and choose depending on what I’m shooting:

  • The 24-70mm is also good for elephants, especially videoing them on boat rides.

  • The 70-200mm is a good companion to my 600mm, allowing me to fit the whole animal in the frame if it gets too close for the big dog.

I also used to have a 12-24mm and a pair of 1.4x and 2.0x teleconverters, but I just didn’t use them enough.

  • The 12-24mm was great for photographing or filming elephants at close quarters—and there were plenty of those in Botswana. It did show some distortion at the wider end, but that became a feature rather than a bug if I was up close and personal with a big tusker!

  • The teleconverters were useful for the extra reach, but I lost confidence in them when some of my images turned out much too soft. However, I think that was actually due to heat haze rather than equipment failure!

I think I have the very best Sony and Nikon lenses for wildlife photography, but I’m always happy to trade in my equipment if something better comes along. Let’s see what happens…

Filters

Hoya polarising filter

I used to have a Cokin filter system with plenty of graduated ND and polarising filters, but I traded them all in for my first mirrorless camera. I now just have a couple of variable ND and polarising filters in various sizes, depending on the lens.

I find I don’t need any coloured filters any more because it’s so easy to make the required adjustments in Lightroom or Photoshop. However, the ND and polarising filters are important for slow pans.

The light in Africa is so bright that it’s often impossible to take a slow pan in the middle of the day. Even if you shoot at the lowest possible ISO (50 or 100) in shutter priority mode, the aperture value gets pushed beyond the maximum for the lens—which is usually between f/22 and f/36.

However, if you fit an ND filter, you can bring the aperture down to a more sensible value— avoiding any diffraction effects caused by high f-stops. The polarising filter can do the same job, but it only cuts the light down by one stop, which usually isn’t enough.

The problem is that all my lenses have different filter sizes and my long primes have drop-in filters. That makes it impossible to buy variable ND and polarising filters that work with all of them! In fact, there isn’t a single ND filter that works with my new NIKKOR lens.

What I’d really like is a camera with a built-in ND filter. That would solve all my problems, but none of the big, full-frame camera manufacturers offer that, and I don’t want to switch to a Micro Four Thirds or APS-C camera made by OM System, Fujifilm or Panasonic. Come on, guys. Get your act together…!

Computer

As a rule of thumb, I generally spend an hour rating pictures on my laptop for every hour I spend on game drives—to say nothing of all the hours I put into editing, posting on social media, entering competitions and running the rest of my business.

Because I spend far more time working on my laptop than actually taking pictures, I refuse to compromise on performance. I don’t want to waste time waiting for my computer to complete a task or waste money on external hard drives, so buying a cheap laptop is a false economy.

I currently have an Apple MacBook Pro with the maximum possible specifications. It has an 8TB hard drive that has enough space to store all my existing files plus room enough for whatever shots I take in the field. It also has enough RAM and a fast enough processor to let me work quickly in Lightroom and Excel, and it’s portable enough to take with me on all my photographic trips.

When I get home, I can plug my laptop in to my Studio Display, which lets me use 16” and 27” screens at the same time.

Phone

iPhone 15 Pro Max

The modern smartphone is the equivalent of a computer in your pocket. It’s small but incredibly powerful with a built-in camera and the ability to download thousands of different apps to take on almost any possible task.

When I’m abroad, I regularly shoot 4K videos with my iPhone 15 Pro Max, and I’m a regular user of bird apps for identification purposes. I also keep a diary and a species list in Notes and occasionally check the depth of field using SetMyCamera.

Finally, it’s handy for various other tasks, such as watching films on the plane or even making phone calls…!

Cables

Losing a cable while you’re on a photographic trip can be pretty catastrophic. If you’re in a remote place such as the Serengeti in Africa, there’s no way you can just nip to the shops for a replacement, and there’s no guarantee any of the staff or other guests will have exactly the one you need.

I once left an iPhone cable behind when moving from one safari lodge to another, and I had to ration my phone usage for three days until it arrived on the next supply run!

That’s why I’m glad the iPhone and almost all my other devices use USB-C cables these days. All I need to do is pack however many I need (plus a couple of spares), and I’m good to go. The only exception is my AirPods, which still use the old Apple lead, but I can cope with that.

Tripod

Manfrotto tripod

On game drives, a wildlife photographer needs a tripod like a fish needs a bicycle! However, if you want to take slow pans of birds or animals from a standing position, it makes life so much easier—especially if you can afford a damped gimbal head.

Having said that, it’s not easy to carry around. I once had to put mine in the hold when a security guard at Buenos Aires Airport told me it was ‘an offensive weapon’!

Monopod

Monopod

A monopod is easier to use than a tripod in a vehicle, but it’s not stable enough for slow pans. One possible advantage is that you can turn it upside down and hold your camera over the side to shoot from a low angle using a remote trigger, such as a smartphone app.

Protection

As the old saying goes, “There's no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.” The same goes for protection for your cameras and lenses. If you’re going to go out in rain, hail, sleet, snow or dust, you’ll need something to protect your gear.

Many modern cameras claim to be ‘weather-sealed’, but no camera is waterproof. There’s a big difference…!

Cleaning Kit

Keeping your camera kit clean while on a shoot is an important task. The last thing you want is to be worrying about sensor spots or dust clogging up the zoom mechanism of your lens.

I always carry a lens cloth with me on game drives, and I also pack a sensor cleaning kit. It’s a tricky business trying to clean a sensor yourself, but it saves a whole lot of time editing out sensor spots later, so it’s a necessary evil.

Other

Here are a few other items that I might take to a different destination:

Verdict

My camera bag

You might not pack as light as I do, but it’s obviously important to have the right kit in your camera bag—and that probably means having a packing list. It’s no good owning a polarising filter if you end up leaving it at home!

As with almost every decision in photography, there’s always a trade-off when buying and packing cameras, lenses and accessories. Almost by definition, there’s no right answer to what goes in your camera bag. It’ll depend on budget constraints and the particular demands of each trip.

This picture shows what I packed for a three-week trip to Botswana. As you can see, it IS possible to pack light, so you really don’t need two suitcases, a carry-on bag and a personal item…!


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