Are you are looking for the best photography gear to have for your next adventure? You’ve come to right place! We don’t have all the top of the lines gear and we are still working everyday to improve our photography skills, but we have already learned so much since we have our account and blog and we thought it would be nice to share what we know with you.
Photography gear can be quite expensive, this is definetely an investment to think about but when you decide to become a content creator, it becomes really important to have the right gear. As we travel a lot, and hike for long hours sometimes, it is also very important to pack light for us. In this article, we will share with you everything we use to create our Instagram, blog and Pinterest content!
Camera for travel photography
Nikon D3400
In photography, there is often two teams: Canon or Nikon… We’ve used both, Marie has a Canon and Karim a Nikon, and they both are great honestly! When we decided to invest in lenses, we decided to use only our Nikon mainly because it is better for night shots than our Canon…
The Nikon D3400 is a very nice, and affordable, DSLR camera. It is quite light so it’s definitely great when you travel and hike a lot. The battery life is incredible, it’s perfect for long days spent exploring and, its value for money is really great. We basically shoot 90% of our content with it! Another great feature of that camera is that it has Bluetooth connnectivity to transfer your photos to your phone or laptop! Unfortunately, it does not have Wi-Fi, so if this is a must-have for you, then the D3400 might not be the right fit.
If you’re beginning photography, or don’t want to spend tons of money for a camera, but still want to shoot great shots, we can only recommend the Nikon D3400!
Other great travel cameras:
- Nikon D5600
- Nikon D7200
- Fujifilm X-T20
- Sony A7R III
Tips:
- Always carry extra batteries, especially if you are visiting somewhere cold, and extra memory cards for your camera! There is nothing more annoying than not having any memory left to shoot
- To carry around your camera,it might be a good idea to invest in a case, there are super stylish ones that can be really useful!
- Don’t forget to put a screen protector to avoid the damages that can be done to your screen
Camera Lenses
You probably already saw some lenses in your life, and maybe you were confused with all the numbers and letters on it? It’s alright, we’ll make it clearer for you!
There are a couple of things you want to look when picking a lens:
- The focal lenght: it’s the number(s) followed by “mm”. When the number is low, we talk about wide-angle and when it’s high (>80mm), we talk about telephoto. Which number you should choose will really depend on what kind of photography you are into (landscapes, portraits, wildlife)
- Fixed focal lenght or Zoom? If the numbers are 18-55mm, this is a Zoom, while if it’s 35mm, then it’s a fixed focal lenght. The quality of fixed focal lenght is usually better than a zoom and they are usually a bit cheaper, however, a zoom gives you more flexibility in your photography!
- Focal range: it’s the number(s) following the “f/”. It works a bit counterintuitively: the smaller the number, the bigger the aperture and the more luminous. The aperture also allows to control for the deepness/bluriness of the background. The smaller the number, the more blurry background you’ll get.
- Fixed focal range or not? A fixed aperture is great as it will allow a perfect control on depth of field, compressing more the background of the photo. They are usually more expensive than variable aperture and variable ones will give you more flexibility in your photos once again
18-55mm f/3.5-5.6
This is the basic lens that is sold with most cameras. It is good for most of the shots you might want to take but as soon as you will want to take more creative photos, with wide-angles or a very blurry background, you can get a bit limited… That’s why we invested in other lenses once we were comfortable with our camera. Lenses really do most of the job to get a nice photo, in our opinion!
35mm f/1.8
This is our first lens (and only one so far) with fixed focal range and fixed focal length we have and we absolutely love this lens! It does an amazing job for portraits and shots with a compressed blurry background.
10-20mm
Our wide-angle telephoto lens that we absolutely love! It’s amazing for landscape photography as it allows you to capture a lot of the background, like a high waterfall, a long bridge, a tall mountain, etc.
55-200mm f/4-5.6
Our zoom for wildlife photography. We bought it before going to Iceland because we wanted to get a chance to get some nice photos during our whales watching tour and we were not disappointed at all! It works really well if you plan on shooting some animals.
GoPro Hero 8 Black
Our GoPro is our best companion for action shots, underwater and videos! Obviously, it is super light and just easy to pack for any kind of adventure. What is also really great is that you can download everything to your device really quickly and with the app you can also shoot from a distance by triggering on your phone, great for couple photos! Also, be sure to have extra batteries as this is one of the downside of all GoPros.
We also recommend investing in some accessories to get the most out of your GoPro:
- A dome to get those half-under and half-above water shot that we see everywhere on Instagram
- A handle to keep the GoPro steady while filming. We have one that also converts into a small tripod which can be really useful
- Extra batteries and memory card
Drone
Dji Mavic Mini
We don’t think that you need a drone when you start travel photography, but it definitely helps to find some unique perspectives! We absolutely loved it during our road trip in Iceland for example, as the landscapes are simply incredible from above. We didn’t want to invest straight away in a very expensive drone and we wanted to keep it light to always carry it with us, this is why we bought the DJI Mavic Mini. It’s really nice to start with drone photography. But it lacks some features and quality that the Mavic Air 2 has, so we will probably upgrade soon! A drone can also be useful for some couple shots to have a higher, more creative, point of view! The two main downsides are the battery life, which is really low (but that’s for most of the drones), so always have extra batteries! And, the Mavic Mini is really sensitive to wind, due to its super light weight, it can get carried away (too) easily, so you better be careful with that…
Note that each country has its own regulations for drones, so always double check before flying! And please, if it says “Dones forbidden”, don’t fly! It can be because of architectural places, airports close by, or wildlife, in any case, it’s very important to respect the rules!
iPhone
Even if we shoot most of our content with our camera, we still use our iPhone for stories, most of the videos and when we don’t have time/place for our camera or we didn’t plan on shooting. If you have the portrait mode (and the wide-angle option) you can already shoot some great photos honestly. And, there are great mobile editing apps that will make your photos look super professional!
Camera Backpack
Wandrd Prvke 21L Photography bundle
After long months of hesitation, and struggles everything we want hiking because our backpack was not organized at all, we finally decided to invest in a camera backpack…And, we wonder why did we wait for so long! It is life-changing!
Its compartments are removable so you can basically adjut how you like, there is a place for your laptop as well as the possibility to attach your tripod. There’s also a passport pocket, a place for a reusable bottle and some more pockets where you can put anything you might need. We’re not gonna lie, it’s not cheap, but it really is an investment we recommend as long as you begin to have several lenses, a drone, etc.
Tripod
Since we are a travel couple and always travel just by ourselves, our tripod is definitely something we couldn’t forget! Our tripod is really light, easy to carry and has a great adjustable height that fits all our needs. We also have an adapter to fix on it so that we can use it for our phone if we ever need it.
Photography editing
People sometimes underestimate it but editing is essential in photography, and travel photography is no exception. We use our MacBook Pro for blogging and editing our photos most of the time. Except when we want to edit quickly on the road, in this case, we use our phones.
We mainly work with Adobe Lightroom, available on laptops and on phones. There is even a free mobile app for Lightroom that you can use for your edits.
We use our own Presets to work both in Lightroom mobile and desktop. These work as filters that we use on all our photo, it makes editing so much easier. Because we want a very natural vibe in our photos, we try to keep our editing quite simple. We believe in sublimating our photos but we don’t want to overchange them so that you’d be disappointed if you visited the same location.
So there you have it, our full photography gear which fills our camera backpack. We hope that this article helped you in finding out what you need to take your best travel pics and create awesome memories!
Marie & Karim
If you liked this article or have any questions, please comment below! And make sure to follow our adventures on Instagram @InspiringExplorers
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