This article is sponsored by Ted’s Cameras.
If you’re new to travel photography, you might already be feeling overwhelmed with the amount of gear you’ll be looking at picking up just to get started. Travel photography isn’t simple. You’re travelling into environments you can’t control, meaning you have to be quick to adapt and have every scenario thought out ahead of time so you’re not left unable to take that photo you want. Or stuck with an empty battery.
Because travel photography requires a bit of gear, you’ll also need to consider how heavy your bag will become.
Here are our picks for the essentials you’ll need when getting started with travel photography that your back will thank you for later.
A travel camera
Surprise. The first thing to get started with travel photography is well, a camera. No don’t go, I have valid points to make!
If you’re starting with travel photography, the ideal camera would be lightweight, carry decent battery life and won’t take up too much space in your bag. You’ll have to consider if you want to take vlogs, landscape photos, selfies, night photography, street photography, portraits, I could go on. While there are great (and very expensive) cameras out there that specialise in some of those kinds of photography, if you’re only taking a single camera, you’ll want something versatile and easy to use.
The Canon R-series is a range of mirrorless cameras that give you excellent coverage while you’re out and about. They’re lightweight, loaded with great tech and won’t take up a huge bulk of space in your travel bag. This series of cameras is also equipped with solid tech that’ll give you great quality images thanks to the camera’s responsive autofocus and image stabilisation.
So if you’re taking photos on the go, you won’t have to worry about adjusting your camera settings to take a photo in focus, or overthink adjusting for exposure and lighting.
A reliable camera lens
If you’re setting out on a trip and want a range of great photos, you’re going to want an adaptable camera lens that’ll let you take grand landscape photos and detailed close-up shots.
Advanced photographers will normally opt for a range of different lenses for different circumstances. If you’re into night photography, you’ll need a specific telescope or thermal vision lenses to capture objects in the sky for example. But these are hyper specific niche cases, and not something to get hung up on if you’re going on a vacation and want to shoot photos for yourself.
In this circumstance, a simple zoom lens will do you just fine. For example, the Canon RF 24-70mm lens is a great all-rounder lens that’ll cover you from street photography to massive landscape shots.
Camera bag
If you were thinking of bringing any hunk of junk bag with you on a trip and playing Tetris with your camera gear, congratulations, you’ve just made an enemy for life.
A dedicated bag for your gear is vital for any travel photographer. Lucky for you, a camera bag is more than just a glorified single-use bag. A great camera bag will come with pouches to store chargers, batteries and memory cards in. There’ll be storage separators for you to organise your cameras and lenses in also. But most importantly, camera bags are padded to protect your gear. This means if you drop your bag, or it gets tossed around a bit while it’s in your luggage, your gear has a better chance of not breaking.
Spare batteries and memory cards
This has been drilled into every photographer it should be second nature by now. No matter what kind of shoot you’re going on, backup batteries and memory cards are a must for any photographer. However, you’ll want to consider whether you might need to pack more than you normally would while travelling and the conditions of your trip. If you’re in a colder climate or camping in nature, you may not have the luxury of charging your batteries overnight like you normally would.
As a general rule of travel as well, it’s very easy to just forget to charge your camera overnight. So having spare batteries on hand could save you should your main and backup battery fail.
The same logic here applies to memory cards. If you’re vlogging and taking plenty of videos or 4k photographs, it’s easy to end up chewing a bunch of your memory card storage without realising after a full day of shooting.
External hard drive
The first lesson any film school will teach you is that you need to have all your photos and storage saved in a secondary location. If you’re on a trip and taking a ton of photos, your memory card is more than likely going to use up all its storage fast, and you’ll need somewhere to offload it so you can keep taking photos with peace of mind.
Packing an external hard drive with you on a holiday is as important as packing a camera I’d argue. The second you’re done with any shoot, that footage should be on a solid hard drive, ready for you to import onto your computer so you can get started with editing as soon as you can.
Tripod
Nothing feels worse on a shoot when you need a tripod and you don’t have one. If you’re looking to take photos on the go, a tripod isn’t the most important tool to bring with you, but it’s always such a valuable tool to have on you just in case.
Having a tripod on you for travel photography is handy to have more control over your desired photo or video.
Of course, the big hurdle to bringing a tripod on trips is that they’re huge and can be heavy. But, fortunately, there are plenty of options out there for tripods that fold nicely into your travel bag and won’t cause you too much of a headache when packing.
A monopod is a convenient option, as it’s a single leg that extends out and folds up neatly into your bag. A gorillapod is also a reliable lightweight tripod that’s a lifesaver for any solo travelling photographer.
Travel photography is a specific and expensive hobby. So before diving into it, make sure you’ve done your research to find the right kind of equipment you can find universal uses for, and that you know you’ll be able to take with you on any journey for many years to come.