What’s in Your Bag? 7 Camera Bag Essentials for the Travelling Photographer

The most important thing any travel photographer can be is prepared. Proper preparation is the first step in the artistic process. Being a travel photographer takes patience, careful planning, and the ability to reduce your life essentials into a small enough package that everything can be carried on your back. We have 7 essentials every traveling photographer must have to be prepared for anything!

The Bag

The first item is the bag itself! The Canon Deluxe Backpack 200 from Beachcamera.com is comfortable to carry for travelling. Best of all, it fits under an airplane seat as a personal item. This means your expensive photo gear is safely with you on the plane, instead of having to check it. It also allows you to still bring a carry-on item. Waterproof, this backpack is built for any weather condition. You’ll also like that it has many compartments to carry your camera, lenses, accessories and even a tripod.

Lens

If you’re using a camera with a changeable lens, it is vital to have at least one extra lens. This is to give you greater choice with your focal length and will also be a backup lens if anything happens to your primary lens.

Extra Batteries

Always keep a spare battery in your bag. A full day of shooting will eat away at your battery life, especially if you overuse the LCD screen on your Nikon camera from Beachcamera.com. That will drain the battery quickly. Remember that turning your camera off and on repeatedly uses a lot of battery power as well. If your battery runs flat, there’s nothing else to do but pack up and go home!

Tripod

A lightweight tripod will always come in handy when traveling. You should never really go anywhere without it. A tripod can greatly expand the types of photography you can get into. Landscape and night photography in particular, should never be attempted without a tripod.

Filters

Weather when travelling can be unpredictable. Filters are your friend on very bright days. A UV filter can minimize haze when you are shooting with intense sunlight. Polarizing filters are great for reducing glare, handling reflections on water, clouds and glass. They’re also the perfect tool to manage the contrasts of the skyline in landscape photography.

SD Memory Cards

You can never have enough storage space! If you find yourself faced with an amazing situation that causes you to become trigger happy with your camera, you’ll find you quickly fill up your memory cards. You may also forget to clear a card from a previous shoot, and suddenly find that you’ve gone out to take more photos but the card is full. Carrying spare memory cards with you eliminates these problems.

LED Head Torch

You should never go out on a shoot without carrying a light. You can easily find yourself running out of daylight and far from your car! A head torch keeps your hands free and will help keep you from getting lost. Also, if you’re out photographing the stars at night you’ll find it hard to assemble a camera, adjust the focus and manipulate the settings in the dark. An LED head torch will give you another clear advantage here.

These are some of the most useful, and sometimes forgotten, accessories every travel photographer should consider having in their bag.