Traveling with Photographic Equipment

Bob Harvey and Diane Kelsay

Nature Photography Adventures

 Copyright © 2011

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The digital era has made travel with cameras easier and instantly rewarding.  The ability to review your images in the field,  can make all the difference on what you bring home.  It does present some issues – and it pays to think them through before setting out to see and photograph the world.

Digital media takes up little space in your pack, but has some risks.  That media can, if you move images onto other storage media, be used over and over again on a single trip, giving you incredible photographic capacity.

We prefer to head out into the field with small laptops and multiple portable hard drives.  That enables two important things to happen.  1) we get to review (or at least spot check images as we go) and 2) we are able to make multiple copies of every image, increasing the likelihood that we’ll get them all home.

Those review sessions tell us whether our thinking (and the instructions we’ve sent to our camera) are “on track” or whether we’re missing in some way that should be corrected for the rest of the trip.  They also spot problems, like a camera setting that accidentally got changed in the field.  It enables us to try various techniques and see results before proceeding further.

The multiple backups (we put each image on two separate portable hard drives) enable us to spread them out while we move around in our travels, especially going through security.  We sometimes copy each other’s images over to one of the other person’s hard drives before each travel segment so we each carry all of them.

We prefer to travel with 2 Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) cameras each.  This allows us to be prepared for short and long distances without always changing lenses to match our photographic situation or intentions.  New zoom lens technology has improved options, so that one can handle a broader set of angles of view with fewer lenses, which are lighter, and often have vibration reduction technology built in.  The second body also serves as a backup, should the primary body malfunction.  If space allows, a waterproof pocket camera can come in handy for some activities.

These days our standard lens is one which zooms from a moderate wide angle to a medium telephoto – and is sharp for the whole range!  Beyond that we often carry a macro lens, a wide angle zoom, and a more telephoto zoom.  Those four lenses cover just about every situation that we face in the field. 

With advancements in noise reduction, ISO, and vibration reduction, one can now use a range of ISO ratings that, in many situations, allow you to work without a tripod. This is a huge savings in areas where baggage weight restrictions are tight and convenient when a tripod would make things awkward.

One critical issue for traveling with digital photographic equipment is power.  You’ll need the ability to charge batteries for your camera.  Fortunately, almost all the battery chargers we see these days take a broad range of currents (most take 110 – 240v) and can work (with adaptors) with almost any electrical source we encounter. 

Remember that it is strictly against airline and FAA rules to pack lithium batteries in checked luggage.  They must be in your carry-on bag inside a camera body or with the connections covered.

Laptops can have a short life unplugged – and it’s not a good idea to run out of power midway through transferring a card full of images.  Fortunately, they too typically handle 110-240 volts of power input and simply need to be “adapted” to fit local outlets.  That transformer (which often sits in the power cord, but sometimes is inside the laptop) also serves as a surge suppressor. 

There is a new generation of camera bags that facilitates travel.  We use camera backpacks with computer slots.  Research carefully so that you pick one that will carry your gear, is resistant to dust and moisture, fits under most airline seats, and “looks” small.  Your full pack will probably weigh more than most airlines “allow”, but weight of carry-on bags is rarely checked unless they look huge.  Don’t flaunt the size of your bag during check-in – or make it look heavy.

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