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Space is a very valuable commodity for travelers. Pack too little, and you might miss out on certain opportunities by not having the right equipment. Pack too heavy, and you’ll make it harder to stay versatile. We’ve changed out the equipment in our travel camera bag multiple times throughout our 1.5 years of full-time travel, but the items below are what we are currently carrying, and strikes a good balance between comfort and photo/video capability.
Backpack: Thule Covert
This travel camera bag, simply put, has been perfect. Just when we think we can’t fit anything else in there, in goes another camera, or battery, or hard drive. And it’s extremely durable. We actually started our adventures with 3 suitcases and 4 backpacks (one of them being this one). Out of those 7 items, we’ve had to replace 6 of them. Which one has survived more than 60 flights, 100+ destinations, and multiple modes of transportation? This backpack. And it looks just as good as the day we bought it.
Everything that I’ll be describing below all fits inside this travel camera bag. We feel like big winners when it comes to being able to carry all this stuff on our travel adventures. The only loser? My back. Since this thing can carry so much, it can get HEAVY. But don’t worry, you’ll get used to it! I know I have…
Photography Gear
Camera: Sony A7Riii
This mirrorless camera replaced our Nikon D750 about 6 months into our adventures. I like the fact that it’s lighter, and allows us to basically “preview” images while changing settings without taking a picture (because of its mirrorless feature). We use this camera for all of our pictures, as well as much of our cinematic video. Bottom line, we are huge fans of Sony’s mirrorless cameras now and highly recommend them.
Lens 1: Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8
This is our most used lens because of its versatility. It allows us to shoot more narrow images, as well as having a large enough aperture to have a good depth of field (blurred background) effect. We picked the Tamron lens because it’s significantly cheaper than the Sony brand, and its features are very comparable.
Lens 2: Sony Vario-Tessar 16-35mm f/4
This is our wider lens, which we use when we want to include more of the scene in our images. We mostly use this when we’re outdoors, and the focus of the image is the destination itself. If you’re planning on bringing a camera with interchangeable lenses, we highly recommend getting both a narrow lens for close-up shots, as well as a wide lens for landscapes.
Peak Design Black Slide Camera Strap
You may be thinking, why is a camera strap important? Well, I truly think this has been such a valuable purchase for us for two reasons. This camera strap makes it so effortless easy to adjust the length, unlike many we have tried previously. Since Jess and I both shoot with the camera, we have different preferences in the length of the camera strap and it makes it so easy to hand off back and forth and adjust. We also sometimes take just the camera on hikes and being able to lengthen and wear crossbody for comfort and then adjust throughout the day is a perk.
Phones: Google Pixel 2 XL and Samsung Galaxy S10
We use our phones to record the majority of our stories on Instagram, as well as keep up with social media and email. Both of our phones are on our Google Fi plan, which allows us to have seamless worldwide voice, text, and data service for standard rate! If you’re interested in Google Fi, sign up with this link to get a $20 credit.
Tripod: Bower VT5800
Frankly, we have terrible luck with tripods. This one in particular is actually the 5th tripod we have purchased since leaving. Of our previous ones, 2 of them broke, 1 we lost, and another was actually confiscated by airport security when going through the security checkpoint (which was completely bizarre since we had flown with a tripod in our travel camera bag 50+ times before this happened). So this tripod that we have now, thankfully has lasted us the longest our of all of our tripods. It’s lightweight, adjustable, but also sturdy, and we’ve used it countless times in all kinds of situations. As an added bonus, it fits on the side pocket of our Thule Covert bag!
Videography
GoPro HERO7 Black
This has been our video workhorse mainly because it’s so small and simple to use! The HERO7 records in 4K, is very portable, and shows some very smooth footage with its HyperSmooth technology. Oh, and did I mention that it’s waterproof? This is our go-to camera for when we’re chasing the kids or doing other sporty activities that our other cameras are too big and bulky to do. This GoPro also has way better audio recording than the previous models.
GoPro HERO5
This was our initial GoPro when we first started, but we upgraded to the HERO7 because of its superior microphone and image stabilization features. Now we have this as a backup for whenever we need multiple angles, and the GoPro is light enough to only take a little bit of space on the travel camera bag.
GoPro HERO5 Session
While the image quality isn’t as good as the other two GoPros above, we use this more for mounting to our heads, bodies, or pretty much anywhere we need to. It’s extremely handy because it allows us to have a secondary point of view when we film. This is also the GoPro that we use for all of our pool and underwater filming. We typically keep the HERO7 on a handheld mount, so this is our flex camera for when we do something different that doesn’t necessarily require a lot of image stabilization.
GoPro Accessories
We carry all kinds of mounts for our GoPros. We have chest, head, and wrist mounts, as well as multiple handheld mounts. We even have an extendable selfie stick that we use when we need a very wide angle. Granted, some of these accessories may be overkill, but we would rather be prepared than miss an opportunity. Different companies have different rules as to how a GoPro must be secured so we try to have a variety to meet any restriction we may come across.
Rode VideoMic Go with Fuzzy Cat
One thing we notice while we film on our GoPro is that if it’s windy out, the wind noise totally distorts the built in microphones on most cameras. We use this external Mic and Fuzzy Cat combo attached to our Sony A7Riii to get great sound quality even on windy days. It truly makes a huge difference in quality and is very light and portable.
JOBY Gorillapod
If I had one word to describe the Gorillapod, it would be VERSATILE. We’ve mounted this on rails, posts, and even on Santi’s arm. And it works like a charm! It allows us to get all of our family on one frame for pictures and videos when there’s not ample space for the main tripod. Even better, it’s very light and fits very easily on the outside pocket of our Thule travel camera bag.
DJI Mavic Pro
Drone footage adds a new element to our video, and we couldn’t be happier with DJI and their amazing selection. We’ve been using the Mavic Pro since we started and have been very impressed with such great video quality in such a small package. Even after I crashed our first Mavic Pro in the jungles of Costa Rica, we replaced it with the same mode, because it provides so much value.
Accessories
Portable Hard Drives (Western Digital My Passport)
Throughout the course of our travels, we have captured SO MANY photos and videos. We store all of our photos and videos on two duplicate hard drives, and send one home when we have the opportunity to, just so we have a backup. All the content we shoot holds some of our most treasured memories, so we tend to be over-cautious with our digital storage. We also use Google Drive’s subscription service and upload all of our edited content on there, so we can easily retrieve it when we need to.
Battery Pack: Anker PowerCore 20100
This battery pack can be really convenient when you’re in a location with no power and need to charge phones or some batteries. The battery pack that we have is the Anker PowerCore 20100, which can charge an mobile phone a ridiculous 7 times on a single charge.
Laptops and Software
Razer Blade 15
Yep, this is a gaming laptop. And while I wish I had more time to play games on it, I was actually drawn to it for its combination of portability, power, and price. It’s cheaper than a MacBook Pro, and also has greater processing power because of the dedicated video card. This comes in handy when I’m editing videos constantly. Best of all, it weighs less than 5 pounds, is less than an inch thick, and fits perfectly on the Thule Covert travel camera bag.
13 inch MacBook Pro
This is Jess’s laptop, which she carries in her own backpack (although I could probably find space for it on the Thule bag if we needed to). This laptop replaced our 15 inch MacBook Pro, which we dropped from a storage cabinet on our rental motorhome during our road trip across Ireland. At 3 pounds, it’s much lighter than the Razer Blade, but the screen is smaller. However, it’s capable of doing all the photo editing that Jess needs it to do, so it’s been a very good purchase.
Editing: Adobe Creative Cloud
We are big fans of Adobe’s subscription-based Creative Cloud services. It gives us access to all of our photo and video editing software on each of our devices. Although it costs $50/month for access to all of its apps, we find that to be completely worth it because of how game-changing photo editing is (especially on Instagram). Jess uses Lightroom and Photoshop to edit our photos, while I use Premiere Pro to edit videos, and Audition to edit our podcast episodes.
Great post! Thanks so much for sharing your phone and laptop choices as well. Safe travels!
Thanks Jason, glad to see that you liked the post!