S6 E68: Inside My Camera Bag

Get the show’s transcript

“YD: The less friction I have with my gear, the more chance I have to have a great image. And that great image is going to be paying for me and for my assignments and it’s going to be developing my career and developing my reputation as a great photographer. So all of this is an investment, right? That’s how I look at it because and that’s why I was never afraid to invest into what I do.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:25.1] YD: Welcome to the Travel Media Lab Podcast. I’m your host, Yulia Denisyuk, an award-winning travel photographer and writer, entrepreneur, community builder, and a firm believer that every one of us can go after the stories we’ve always wanted to tell with the right support, encouragement, and structure. 

I’m on a mission to help women storytellers everywhere break into and thrive in the travel media space. If you’re ready to ditch your fears to the side, grow your knowledge and confidence and publish your travel stories, you’re in the right place. Let’s go.

[DISCUSSION]

[0:01:02.4] YD: Welcome back dear podcast listeners. I often get this question from people: “What kind of camera are you using? What kind of camera should I get?” So, I’m dedicating this episode to answering that question and I’ll do it by walking through what’s inside my camera bag right now and when I’m getting ready to go on an assignment.

So I want to preface this conversation with a disclaimer that the best camera is the one that you have on you, the one that you can use right away and the one that is within your budget. You know, I use Sony gear, Sony cameras, Sony lenses and Sony is expensive. It’s not the cheapest gear out there and I didn’t start out with the lens and the camera body I have now.

When I first started out, I used the first-generation Sony mirrorless camera, A7, that I purchased in 2014. Two years before I ever quit my job and decided to become a travel photographer and writer and I also used a Sony Zeiss 35mm 2.8 aperture prime lens, a pretty cheap lens as well and that was all.

So I had that small camera body and that small prime 35mm lens and that was everything that I had at that point and that was what I used to build my portfolio when I had started on this travel photography and writing path in 2015, 2016.

[0:02:34.2] So I only upgraded the lens and the camera body that I have today and then I will discuss today a few years into this career path. It was actually in 2018 when I felt like I needed to give myself more flexibility ahead of a challenging assignment I had in Mongolia that I picked up a more expensive camera body and a more expensive lens.

I was going to shoot in really challenging winter conditions with strong winds and windchill reaching negative 40 degrees, that’s negative 40 in both Celsius and Fahrenheit and that’s really, really cold. So I was really worried. I was really worried that my old small tiny camera and one prime lens is not going to be enough for me to have the breadth of coverage and flexibility I needed at that point, to get really great shots. 

Plus, I wanted to take two cameras on the trip, just in case I needed a backup because I’ve never shot in those cold conditions before. So I wasn’t sure how my cameras were going to act in that cold condition. So I really wanted to have all the backup I could so I had two camera bodies on that trip. I had four lens on that trip and my camera bag itself was a huge one and it was this whole undertaking, you know? 

So, that’s when I purchased the setup that I use today and it’s again, it’s not the cheapest setup, because Sony gear is generally expensive but I love it. I love the quality of the images, I love how small the camera body itself is and how nimble it is. 

So that’s why I continue using it but I want to just start here because I don’t want you to not go out there and start shooting just because you feel like you don’t have the appropriate gear or you don’t have the most expensive gear, right? Don’t let any lack of gear stop you because today, phones are a very powerful tool that we can use to start our photography journey as well. 

Any camera you have on you is really the best one for you to start with. It may make sense eventually to upgrade as you develop your portfolio and you need more tools but at the beginning you absolutely don’t’ need much to start with.

[0:04:47.2] All right, let’s begin. Let’s look at my camera or look inside my camera bag and see what’s in there. So I am opening my bag right now and inside, is my standard setup that again, that I use right now for any sort of both assignments and even trips that I do on my own, I always bring this setup with me. 

So inside, I have one Sony A7R3 camera body, I have one Sony Zeiss 24-70mm, 2.8 master series zoom lens. I have one Sony Zeiss 55mm 1.8 prime lens and that’s basically it. That’s basically it for the camera and two lens and why do I have those two lenses with me? So the 24 to 70 Sony Zeiss master series lens is a really, really great versatile lens. 

For the kind of photography that I do, which is travel, which includes scenery, streets, landscapes, people, food, architecture, right? It’s just wide enough at the 24mm and just zoomed in enough at 70mm to give me the coverage that I need and the versatility that I need to capture all kinds of shots with it.

Yeah, I found it to being incredibly versatile and it’s enough for me to do most of the shots and capture most of the shots that I want to, for my work and the reason that I bring that 55mm prime lens is that, that’s the lens that I use for portraits sometimes because it has a really beautiful Bokeh, it is at 1.8 aperture and it just really sharp, really beautiful lens that I use for portraits but I don’t use it all the time. 

[0:06:37.3] Most of the time, my camera body is attached or the lens that I use attach to my camera body is the 24 70mm one, the zoom and I carry the 55mm with me for those special moments here I have a nice opportunity for a portrait or I know that I need to capture a special portrait, that’s when I use that lens but I don’t take it out that often to be honest. 

I even used my zoom for many portraits as well because again, it’s just such versatile. That’s really it when it comes to the camera body itself and the two-lens setup and I won’t go into the technicalities of each of these. 

We will link to all these gear in the shownotes so you can go and check it out yourself but I would just say that I did notice an incredible step up in performance from my original Sony A7 full frame, mirrorless camera that I purchased in 2014 to the Sony A7R3 camera body that I purchased in 2018. 

So in those four years, they made a lot of progress in the performance of the camera and it remain just a small because see, that’s why I went with Sony in the beginning. To begin with, I guess I should have started here, right? Because there is also Canon, there’s Nikon, there is a whole bunch of other manufacturers as well.

But the reason why I went with Sony way back in 2014 was because, before that I had a Canon DSLR and that Canon DSLR were just so bulky and so heavy and it felt like it was just so big for my hands, you know? I never felt comfortable with it.

[0:08:09.9] So that’s when I – when I started shopping around and looking at different options out there. I actually went to a camera shop and I handled all of them and I looked at all of them and I think it’s important, right? We are so used to sort of shopping online nowadays but I think when it comes to something like a camera that you’re going to be holding in your hands a lot, I think it’s really important to hold it before you buy it. 

So I really encourage anyone who I in the market for a new camera is to really go to any camera shop, whether it’s you know, Best Buy or Adorama and go and look at and hold the camera. So when I did that and I took the Sony in my hand, I knew, “Oh, this is it for me.” This is love at first sight because it was so small, so lightweight and I just loved the way it carried, you know? 

So now, back to this camera that I – camera body that I have now which is the Sony A7R3, it’s still the same, lightweight and small dimension wise camera but it packs so much punch and one of the biggest negative things that people always complain about it with the original Sony is that their camera, or sorry, their battery life was just very horrible and it was, indeed. 

I remember that all the time that my batteries drained all the time. I used to keep recharging my batteries all the time but they did a major upgrade to their camera body and batteries so that now, it’s not a problem at all.

So I have two batteries, one that’s inside my camera and one extra that I always carry and I use Sony, it’s called Sony NP-FZ100 rechargeable lithium-ion battery, which is what Sony recommends to use with this camera and it’s amazing.

[0:09:48.3] I mean, the performance on that is amazing. It can go for several days of heavy shooting without needing to recharge my camera or my battery at all, which is really great and then let’s see, what else do I have in the bag?

So in addition to – so we have one camera body, we have two lenses, one of them is attached to the camera, the other one is extra that I use for portraits. I carry one extra battery that I just mentioned and I also carry one spare memory card. 

So the other upgrade that Sony did in this A7R3 body is that the camera used to have a slot for one memory card and then this one, there is two memory cards that are inside, so you can switch between the two of them.

And I use SanDisk extreme, 150 megabytes per second processing power card with a 256 gigabyte storage. So the storage is as big as the storage on my laptop itself, which is kind of crazy and this memory card is super-fast. It is so fast and sometimes you need that, right?

Again, like, when you’re on assignment, you really want to eliminate most frictions that you might have. Whether it’s a failing battery, whether it’s a memory card that keeps slowing you down because it’s still processing when you’re taking the shots, you want the only friction there is to be what’s happening on the outside of the camera, not the inside because you’re going to have those frictions, right? 

[0:11:16.6] Maybe sometimes you miss a shot, maybe sometimes people move in or out of frame, in a way that doesn’t make sense, you know, especially if it’s not where you’re directing, where you can say, “No, no, wait, hold on. Let’s move you up here, let’s position you in a way and let’s do it again.”

Those are great but those are not always possible, right? Sometimes you just have to act really quickly and so, you want to eliminate most of the friction as much of the friction as possible from your gear, right? So then, the only friction you have to deal with is the friction that’s happening on the outside.

So that’s why I used that SanDisk extreme memory card because they have – of course there’s many different cards on the market, less expensive cards that have slower processing power but I use that because I see all this as an investment, right? 

The less friction I have with my year, the more chance I have to have a great image and that great image is going to be paying for me and for my assignments and it is going to be developing my career and developing my reputation as a great photographer. 

[0:12:18.9] So all of this is an investment, right? That is how I look at it because and that’s why I was never afraid to invest into what I do and by the way, just a little side note here is that that’s when it also really dawns on you that you are taking this seriously when you start paying thousands of dollars for this gear, right? When I had moment in 2018 where I had to buy new gear, I had to sit down and think about it, right? 

This magazine, it was Turkish Airlines by the way, Turkish Airlines Sky Life Magazine that was sending me to Mongolia on this trip and I needed to produce some great images for them and that’s when I sat down and I thought, “Okay Yulia, are you ready to make this investment into this expensive gear that’s going to cost you thousands of dollars?” and I said yes because I knew that this is my career. 

This is what I wanted to do with my time on this planet and I said yes and I knew that this investment is going to pay off in a few assignments and it absolutely did and I am very happy that I made that investment but that’s sort of the calculation that you need to make, right? Because that’s when you really start taking yourself seriously when you have that investment made into all these gear. 

[0:13:32.2] That is also why by the way I recommend that you don’t make this investment right away, right? When you are first building your portfolio, it doesn’t make sense for you to start spending thousands of dollars into all of these gear and so you have a portfolio built and until you know that you will be going on all of these assignments and getting work and you can start building your portfolio with next to nothing. 

Really, I did it, many other people did as well. There comes a point where you need to upgrade for better gear but again, don’t let that stop you to start building your portfolio today. Okay, so I talked about the memory cards that I use. So there’s two slots in the camera and so both of those are used with SanDisk Extreme 150 megabytes, 256 gigabyte cards, which is a lot of storage you guys, by the way. 

It is like so much storage and then I do have one spare memory card that I keep but I honestly don’t ever use it anymore because I just have, you know, there is just enough in the two that come that are inside the camera itself and I also carry my, let’s see, my G-Drive Mobile, which is a hard drive. So I really love to back up my shots and my work in multiple places and I am not even that extreme because I know people who back it up in like three, four, five places. 

I only back it up in two places, so I have it in my original memory card and then I also upload it to my G-Drive, which is the hard drive, portable hard drive that I use. It is called G-Drive Mobile and it’s very sturdy, it is very small and it fits into my bag very well. So that one is also always with me and again, I’ll link to all of these in the shownotes so you can check these out and see them for yourself.

[0:15:26.3] All right, so that’s about it when it comes to what’s inside the main compartment of my camera bag but then there is also the front pocket. So let us look inside the front pocket, what’s in there. In the front pocket, I have my camera charger. I always carry it with me of course, that’s pretty self-explanatory. 

I have a lens cleaning cloth, I have a small notebook and a pencil to take notes if I need to because sometimes, well, most of the time actually I use my phone and I just put it on record because what I do and we’ve talked about this process in some prior episodes where I took you behind the scenes of some of my assignments but most of the time, I not only have to capture images, I also am going to have to write the story, right? 

For the story, I am usually interviewing people and asking questions as I am taking their photos or the photos of the process. So I am sort of multitasking there because I am acting as a photographer and a writer at the same time. So the way I sort of approach it is that I have my phone on record, so it is recording the conversation we’re having as I am taking photos. So I don’t need to focus on taking notes because I can’t do that and take photos at the same time. 

So that is one of the ways I work around that, there’s more and we’ll cover the process in some of the future episodes but I do have a small notebook and a pencil in there just in case because sometimes, maybe I am using a phone for something else, right? Maybe I am using a phone for shooting behind the scenes a reel or something of the whole process and then I use a small notebook to take some notes. 

[0:16:59.7] I also carry business cards in there because I always leave my business cards with everyone I come across when I am on assignment because you just never know who you will come across and how their paths and your path may intersect in the future. 

So I always make it a point to have enough business cards to give out to everyone when I am on assignment and I also just got this capture clip from this company called Peak Design that allows me to clip on my camera to really anything, a belt, a camera handle. 

If you imagine anywhere that a clip can be attached, you can attach it and the purpose of that clip is that then you can attach your camera to that clip. 

So instead of carrying the camera on my shoulder between shots, I can clip it on let’s say a belt and just forget about it and I couldn’t – I was like, “Wait, the camera is heavy, how are you going to clip it on to your belt and it’s not going to fall off?” but it doesn’t fall off actually. 

It is a great design of this clip. I haven’t used that in the field yet but I am really excited to try it out in my next assignment, which is going to be in the Black Forest region in Germany pretty soon here and that’s really it, you guys. 

[0:18:15.8] That’s really it for what’s inside my camera bag. I like to keep it small. I don’t like to carry too much gear with me. My back definitely doesn’t like it and this set up, one camera body, two lens, I found that that’s really enough for me. 

Now, if it is something extreme like my Mongolia assignment, I will definitely consider bringing all my gear, two camera bodies, four lenses for backup but for most of my work, this set up is really enough and I am considering getting a telephoto lens for my assignment in the Black Forest because I want to get some close ups of the forest and the landscape. 

My 24 to 70 millimeter is just not going to get me that close up that I want. You know, I want closer but I haven’t decided yet if I will actually do it because the two kinds of Sony telephoto lens I want are expensive because again, Sony gear is expensive. So I am looking at the 70 to 200 millimeter, 2.8 aperture master series lens and that one is about $2,000. 

I am also looking on their 100 to 400 millimeter 4.5 aperture master series lens and that one is about $2,400. So I am sort of deciding right now if I should invest into one of these lens and again, the conversation here is that yes, it’s an investment but I also know it is going to give me an ability to take absolutely stunning images that I can’t take right now with my current gear because I just don’t have the millimeters I need for that, right? 

[0:19:50.1] It will pay for itself and depending on the assignment, one to two assignments, it will pay for itself. So I am seriously considering getting one and also Sony, if you’re listening to this I am open to partnership. I am open to partnerships and speaking of partnerships, one last thing that I want to mention in this episode is the camera bag itself. 

I was recently in the market for a new camera bag because my old one that I’ve used for years finally feel apart and I’ve had this really love-hate relationship with camera bags ever since I started because I always want something that would fit and protect my gear of course but I also want something that would look great, you know? 

I am really not a fan of camera backpacks, I want a bag that I can put on my shoulder and it’s really hard to find a bag that checks those, both of those requirements, right? There are plenty of cute camera bags out there but most of them don’t fit the kits, the set up that I just described to you or they are not comfortable when they’re actually out there on assignment across multiple situations like cities, street, inside, outside, nature, outdoors, all of that you know? 

So I found bags by this company called F-Stop Gear and it looked like they delivered on both. They had a bag that’s spacious enough and it is going to fit all of my gear and it’s going to be comfortable for me to carry but it also looks cool. It doesn’t look like a regular camera bag. So I purchase, purchased, I wasn’t given it for free you guys, I purchased the urban series camera bag called Florentine and the color I got was royal blue and I’ve been loving it so far. 

[0:21:34.9] I’ve been really enjoying it. So that’s the bag that I am using to carry the set up I described above and I recently became an ambassador for F-Stop, which I absolutely love and I am absolutely proud of and so as a thank you to you, our dear podcast listeners, I am happy to share with you a 15% code to use on all F-Stop Gear. 

Now, they don’t normally discount their products and their products are pricey. So that discount comes in handy. You can go to shop.fstopgear.com to check out what they have and see if there is anything you’d like to try and we’ll also link to this website in the shownotes and the code to use is a bit wordy but again, it’s going to be in the shownotes too. 

So check it out, the code is “VD1781489” enjoy and yeah, we’re going to link to all the items I mentioned in this episode in the shownotes, so you can check them out and browse them at your own time and let me know if you have any questions about my gear, about my process or about any other travel photography or writing topics. 

I am always excited to hear from our dear podcast listeners and you can reach me on Instagram. You can DM me on Instagram at In Search of Perfect or Travel Media Lab. 

[END OF DISCUSSION]

[0:23:01.1] YD: Thank you so much for listening today. I hope you enjoyed this review of what’s inside my camera bag and if so, I want to ask you to please take a minute to support our show. You can do that very simply by leaving us a rating or a review on the Apple podcast app and it really, really helps us to get discovered by more listeners that would find our show helpful and it means just so much to me. 

I read every single review we get and I take them very seriously because I want to create a great show for you. So if you’ve been inspired by something you heard today or in any other episodes of our show, please take just one minute right now to support it by leaving us your rating or review. That is absolutely one of the best ways you can help us out. Thank you so much for listening again and I’ll see you next week. 

[END]