What's in your camera bag?

gentle lemur

gentle lemur

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
. . . . apart from the camera and lens(es)?
Our thread about African hunting dogs in the Chester Zoo forum went off at a tangent, which was largely my fault, so I have decided to widen the discussion here.
I always carry a spare, fully charged, camera battery with a lens cleaning cloth and a blower brush. But I think the most important extras are my four spare memory cards (4, 4, 2 and 1 GB) to back up the 8GB card that I load into my camera at the start of the day. I reason that if something extraordinary happened, like a bird of paradise courtship display or a giraffe birth or a cub emerging from the den for the first time, I might want to take 200 shots in 15 minutes, so not having plenty of space could be a very false economy as memory is so cheap now.
In the old days of film, I could only afford to take 70 or 100 shots in a day, even if I had spent a lot of money travelling to the zoo, paying for admission and so on, so I had to think carefully and judge the moment for each shot as exactly as I could. All amateurs were in more or less the same position: only professionals could afford to take hundreds of pictures in a day, so they could afford to take chances and they got many more knockout photos than amateurs could.
Now I am in that position too. I can take 800 shots a day if I want to and I can pick out the half dozen best ones with a supercritical eye. It's wonderful :D
I shoot in RAW format, so I do need more memory than someone who is only shooting jpgs, but the same principle applies. I am convinced that an extra memory card and a spare rechargeable battery could improve anyone's photography.

Alan
 
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At current I have (and I shall include lenses and camera otherwise my list will be short :p)

Canon 350d
55-250mm EF-S 1:4-5.6 IS Zoom lens
Standard lens (18-55mm?) for very close range (frog on glass etc).
A monopod (new, not used yet so looking forward to my next zoo trip)
A tripod (quite flimsy, I've used it a couple of times but never to any success)
Lens cloth (new)

I shoot in Jpg at the moment, but I might dip my toes into the water and experiment with a couple of RAW shots. Hopefully more memory cards and batteries will follow soon.
 
I too carry extra memory 20GB and battery has I think this is critical when photographing animals, also in my bag I carry a lens cleaning clothe, blow brush, a dark coloured towel (this comes in handy when photographing through glass) a pen and note book, a small torch, spare filters and a 2x converter.
I also use the extra space in my bag to sometimes carry the most important thing of all my Turkey Sandwiches
Also carry a full size or mini tripod or monopod, I shoot injpeg at present but am hoping to start shooting in Raw when I get my D300S shortly
May be Alan can give me some hints on whats the best setting are for my D300S

Adrian
 
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adrian1963 said:
May be Alan can give me some hints on whats the best setting are for my D300S
Click to expand...
Happy to help! Have a little trial when it arrives and then send me a PM.
I like the dark towel idea: I usually wear a hat or a cap and use it as an improvised shade when required.

Alan
 
Good thread Alan. I'll list the lenses too as they might be some interest. I've shot exclusively in RAW since my first DSLR (Canon D30) and remember paying a small fortune for a 1GB IBM MicroDrive. £10 for a 4GB card indeed, the kids these days don't know they're born. ;)

Canon EOS 5D Mark II
Canon Powershot S90 (in case of emergency)

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM
Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM (cheap, but lovely lens)
Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
Canon Extender EF 2× II

Canon TC80N3 intervalometer
Garmin GPS

Hoya Pro-1 ND8 filter
Hoya HD polarising filter
B&W F-Pro neutral graduated filter
(the 24-105 and 100-400 are both the same filter size, which is handy)

2× Sandisk Exteme 60MB/s 16GB CompactFlash
2× Sandisk Exteme 60MB/s 8GB CompactFlash

Spare battery for camera
Spare battery for intervalometer

X-Rite mini greyscale card
Lens pen (can't remember the brand)
Spudz microfibre lens cloth

Maglite Solitaire
Small padlock and rhino keyring (to stop people in crowds opening kit bag from behind)
Small fold-away raincoat (for the British summer)
Plastic bag (to protect [insert item here] in case of emergencies)

Calumet monopod (actually an OEM Manfrotto and the only one tall enough) or...
Manfrotto 756CX3 Mdeve carbon fibre tripod with 501HDV HDV head
 
Haven't been here for awhile, am hunting for information on where to shoot dholes in the uk :)

I carry the following if I'm out on a serious wildlife trip (e.g. Farnes islands)
D200+70-200VR (on hand)
D300 + 300/4 AF-S (strapped to body)
SB600 + Flash extender
16-85VR
4x4gb cf cards
4 batteries
Manfrotto automatic monopod

in hotel
backup lenses/flashes
cleaning kits
battery chargers
hyperdrive space
 
Interesting answers, thank you all.
I can't fit my monopod into my camera bag (it's a carbon-fibre Gitzo with a Manfrotto long lens monopod swivel head - which is a fantastic piece of kit); but I do keep a spare rubber foot in a bottom pocket of my bag, having suffered embarrassing foot losses at both Whipsnade and Cotswold in the past couple of years :o
I can't be bothered to take my tripod anywhere. Several years ago I decided to agree with the people who say that if a tripod is sufficiently rigid and stable to be worth using, it must inevitably be too big and heavy to be worth carrying around :)

Alan
 
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We forgot to mention the bags themselves; I'm going to experiment with a Lowepro SlingShot over the weekend and see how that works out, anyone using something similar?

On the subject of tripods, there are lots of occasions where I couldn't work without one. For example, if I'm shooting a bird perch it's much easier to line up the camera on a tripod and fire it remotely than to hand-hold it (even on a monopod) for hours. I shot some long exposures of the World Land Trust hut in the Tropical Realm the other day and they wouldn't have been possible without a tripod. Plus, there's absolutely nothing worse than shaky video footage!

Having said that, like lots of gear I don't carry a tripod all the time, setting one up in RotRA on a bank holiday is not a good idea.

One additional item to mention is something called a Gorillapod, a flexible mini-tripod I use with the S90. Now that's a handy little device for compact cameras and point-n-shoots.

And where do those rubber feet go!?
 
Canon 400D
Canon 100-300mm IS Zoom lens and the 100mm Macro
Canon IXUS 65

I don't have an actual camera bag, the Body and the Zoom lens have a case with a pocket that has spare batteries for both cameras and a lens cleaning cloth, plus a spare lens rear cover for changing lenses. Normally I don't lug the macro around because the IXUS does good macros in well-lit environments, so I shove the IXUS in my jeans pocket and carry the case with just the body and zoom lens.

If I'm going somewhere new, or I'm on holiday, I have a backpack that accomodates all the above, plus my ideocamera, a small tripod and a gorillapod.

In my old film days I used to lug around a camerabag that weighed 15kgs!

:p

Hix
 
javan rhino - how did you get on with your monopod? one of my lenses is rather heavy, so i think i need to buy some sort of support, but i think a tripod might be too awkward to carry round a zoo all day, so i was thinking a monopod might be a better idea.
 
macca said:
javan rhino - how did you get on with your monopod? one of my lenses is rather heavy, so i think i need to buy some sort of support, but i think a tripod might be too awkward to carry round a zoo all day, so i was thinking a monopod might be a better idea.
Click to expand...

I liked it, I don't know how much difference it actually made, but it does add a little extra support. I'll attach a couple of pics I took using it.
 
The point about a monopod is that it lets you use a shutter speed that's half or a quarter of the slowest one you dare to use hand-held - or to put the same point another way, it increases your chance of getting a sharp photo when the shutter speed is slower than ideal (which of course it usually is ;)).
Like any other piece of kit, your skill at using it will increase with practice.
Enjoy!

Alan
 
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I am concidering getting a mini tripod so as to be able to get low down shots with using a remote control release has anyone tried this yet and if so does it give the photographs a new dimension
 
adrian1963 said:
I am concidering getting a mini tripod so as to be able to get low down shots with using a remote control release has anyone tried this yet and if so does it give the photographs a new dimension
Click to expand...

Unless you are going to lie prone to look through the viewfinder to check focus and composition, you will need a rightangle viewfinder attachment too.

Alan
 
@SMR... this is probably too late as this is quite an old thread, but I have used a Lowepro Slingshot for 18 months or so and would give it a thumbs-down. The theory of it sounds great; the portability of a backpack with the ease of access of a shoulder bag. The big 'however' is that you can only access one sub compartment through the side pocket, that is, one body and the lens that's on it at the time. If you need to change lenses, or get to any other kit at all, the whole thing needs to come of like any backpack would. And I'm always short of somewhere clean and suitable to put it down. For me personally, I'm going back to a shoulder bag so I can access the contents as a whole while its still on my body.

@Javan Rhino. Great shots there but that Bush Dog shake is an absolute belter. I'd be proud as punch if I'd caught that moment.

To answer the post, in addition to camera/lenses, I carry very little else, mainly to keep the weight down. Spare cards, batteries, polarising filter, cleaning materials and a bin liner for emergency water proofing. I don't use a mono and rely on IS. Just for portability really.
 
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