What Camera Gear do I use?
My Camera Gear:
light and adaptable
I am always curious what other photographers use for camera gear and processing software, so I list mine here.
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Cameras and lenses
I don't like carrying a lot of weight, but I also don't like feeling constrained by my equipment. I have therefore focused on compact camera gear that is inexpensive enough that I can afford a number of lenses. I am also not a professional photographer, so I don't need professional-level gear. In 2012, when I moved fully into the digital photography world (point and shoots and film before this), I purchased the smallest fully capable camera on the market: The Sony NEX-F3. I think I paid about $450 for the camera and lens. This is a 16-Mpixel camera that came with the kit 18-55 mm zoom lens. I used this on quite a few trips, and it remains a capable camera even by today's standards. I still bring it on nearly all trips so that I have a second camera, generally keeping my wide-angle lens on it.
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In 2014 I upgraded my gear by purchasing for $750 a Sony a6000 camera as a package with the 16-50 mm compact zoom lens and the 55-210 mm telephoto zoom lens. This remains my primary camera.
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In 2015, feeling like I wanted a "fun" lens, I purchased the Rokinon 8 mm fisheye lens for about $250. I love this lens, as you can see from the many fisheye photos on the other pages of this website, especially the travelogue slide shows. This lens, combined with the NEX-F3 reversible screen, is fabulous for taking selfies because the 180-degree view includes yourself plus a wide background that can be cropped later to whatever composition you want. The only caveat with using the fisheye lens for selfies is that you need to keep your faces near the center of the frame to avoid the severe distortion near the edges.
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In 2019 I wanted to improve the image quality, which lags a bit with the lenses I had unless they are stopped down to about f8. After researching options, I spent about $600 for the Sony E 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS zoom lens because of it's wide zoom range and better sharpness than the older lenses. This lens is widely rated as one of the best, if not the best, "all-in-one" travel lenses for compact Sony cameras. It's a wonderful lens that stays on my a6000 almost all the time, and when I don't want to carry much gear with me this is the lens I bring. It has a 35-mm equivalent range of 27-202.5 mm, which is almost the same range I had with my older film camera and three lenses (24, 50, 70-210 zoom) that I used for many, many years.
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Recently I was missing having a wide-angle option other than the fisheye, as I found the 16-mm kit lens was often not wide enough and sometimes I did not want the fisheye distortion (yes, I realize this can be corrected, but the final composition is a bit of a guessing game when doing this). Again after much research, I purchased the Rokinon 12mm F2.0 NCS CS Ultra Wide Angle Lens for $279. This lens has a reputation for sharpness, though suffering from chromatic aberration. The latter, however, is easily corrected in post processing.
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Filters
For all of my lenses I have a UV filter for protection and a circular polarizing filter.
I also bring a 67 mm, 4-stop neutral density filter and graduated, 2-stop neutral density filters in two sizes to fit various lenses. The 67 mm filters fit the Rokinon 12 mm lens, but I have a variety of step-down rings that allow me to attach these 67 mm filters to any of my lenses (except the fisheye does not take filters).
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Recently I picked up Cokin 2-stop and 3-stop graduated neutral density filters (square) with filter holder in the bargain bin at a camera shop. This will allow for rotating the filter as well as changing the location of the transition. With my various step rings I can use this on any of my lenses.
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Tripods
I have a full-sized Manfrotto tripod for around-the-home work, but my main tripod is a great little Manfrotto aluminum tripod that weighs 3.3 pounds (Model: MKSCOMPACTACN-BK SKU:6244901). This is made for video so has a grip handle, but it works just fine for still cameras. It extends to 61 inches in height plus the center post. Most importantly, it folds up to about 17 inches, so it fits inside of my backpack. Having it inside my backpack means that it is not visible when carrying it around town or through airports, making me less of a target for theft. I spotted this tripod at Best Buy a number of years ago and picked it up for $45 in about 2013. It is a wonderful, cheap, light travel tripod that I bring on all my trips, though I often leave it in the hotel room during daytime sightseeing.
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I also recently purchased a little Pedco/Kestrel portable tripod for carrying permanently in my camera backpack:
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This cheap (under $20) little tripod weighs only a few ounces and works on a table top, or can be strapped to objects like posts or railings with a velco strap. For hiking, it can be strapped to a hiking pole to make a monopod, and using velcro straps to attach the legs to additional hiking poles actually makes a serviceable, full-sized tripod (though slow and touchy to set up). It also works quite well as a selfie stick if you use the camera's timer.
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Camera Bags
There are loads of backpacks designed for camera gear that are loaded with padded foam dividers and pockets to protect the gear. I ended up buying a Tamrac Anvil 27 backpack. To pick this out, I brought my small travel tripod to the camera store and tried it inside various bags to make sure it could fit. This bag fits all of my camera gear and accessories (extra batteries, cleaning items, graycards, filters, tripod, etc.), as well as my 13-in laptop with power cord and bluetooth mouse. Unfortunately, it weighs a ton with all this gear in it, so for longer trips I generally leave some gear in my suitcase at the hotel and just bring what I think I will need for the day.
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I also have a soft Timbuktu briefcase/messenger bag with a shoulder strap into which I put a camera insert so there are padded slots for lenses. This does not look at all like a camera bag, so it is useful for walking around cities without looking like I have camera gear to steal. The shoulder strap also can go on my opposite shoulder, making it almost impossible to grab (because the strap is around my neck). It's actually large enough that I can put my Monfrotto travel tripod in it, in addition to the camera gear, although this makes it heavy enough that I would not want to carry it all day.
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Travel Kit
For minimal travel gear I just bring the a6000 with either the 18-135 lens or, if I want to put it in a coat pocket, the 16-50 lens.
For multi-day trips I take a more full set of gear consisting of:
-Tripod
-a6000 camera with 18-135 lens on it (my main camera and lens)
-NEX-F3 camera with 12 mm Rokinon lens on it (second camera)
-Rokinon 8 mm fisheye lens (this is such a small, light lens that it is easy to bring anywhere)
-Sony 16-50 mm zoom lens (this is tiny, and a camera with it on can fit in my coat pocket)
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For landscapes and hikes I bring the 55-210 zoom, leaving the 16-50 mm behind, but for city travel I don't bother with the long zoom. Depending on where we are planning to visit, such as to a specific museum or a rigorous hike, I sometimes leave some of the gear in my suitcase in the hotel rather than lugging it around all day.
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Software
I have a 13-inch, relatively inexpensive HP laptop that dual boots into either Windows 10 or Ubuntu linux. I also have various hard drives for storage and backup at home, but for travel I have a 256-Gbyte USB drive and 256 Gbyte SD card to back up photos. I find that 256 Gbytes is plenty of storage for a couple of weeks of travel, and I also have the 500 Gbyte computer hard drive (though this is split between a Windows and a Ubuntu partition, so only about 250 Gbytes in each partition).
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I use two software packages for processing my photos, both of which are free on Ubuntu:
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Darktable
I use this for pre-processing RAW images, including exposure adjustment, white balance, lens corrections (all my lenses have preset corrections included with the software), chromatic aberration correction, and export to tiff.
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GIMP
This is a fabulous program in which I rotate the image for flat horizons, stretch the image to straighten vertical lines such as trees and buildings, refine the white balance, fine-tune the exposure using curves, sharpen the image using unsharp mask, clone out any spots or unwanted objects, and crop the photo to the final composition. The software has flexibility for doing much more such as exposure blending, vignette correction, and various filter effects, but I use these options less often.
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I have also experimented with Hugin software for panoramas and Luminance software for High-Dynamic Range (HDR) processing, but those are only occasionally used.
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