What's in our camera bag as content creators - travel photo and videography gear
We have a LOT of gear and it took us years to figure out what gear is best and what we actually need. If you’re curious about what’s inside of our camera bag and to save you countless hours: This guide shares the must-have gear for content creators on the road. This is all the gear we use to capture our travel photos and videos, vlogs, and content 👇
So do you need everything on this list?
No. You can create beautiful content, grow on social media, and even start working with brands without all of this.
Before you feel the need to buy all of this at once, please note that we collected all of these items over the course of years. It’s a pretty decked-out setup. We take it everywhere and with a bag this full, I’m not sure how Magnus is still standing upright.
But every item on this list has a purpose and helps tell a story. With each tool, our quality went up enormously and we have a lot more fun with photo- & videography now that we have the tools to try things out. Lastly, having a gear list like this helps justify an increase in your rates if you decide to monetize your photo- and videography.
Our Camera, Lenses, and Accessories
Camera
Canon R6: This is our main camera (and our absolute baby). The Canon R6 is a full-frame mirrorless camera, meaning it has a large sensor that captures more light and detail. The R6 also has incredible image stabilization, so our shots are steady even if our hands are not. It can shoot video in 4K, which makes our videos look more sharp and professional. The fast autofocus helps us capture clear images, even of moving subjects. It's great for both high-quality photos and videos.
Lenses
Zoom lens
24-70mm 2.8F Tamron Full-frame: If you only buy one lens, we recommend this zoom lens. It can zoom in and out which makes it very versatile and thus we use it for everything from landscapes to portraits. NOTE: This is not an RF lens meaning that you need an adapter to fit it on our Canon R6 camera. Many nerds believe this is detrimental to the quality of your footage. But to be honest, it saved us 2000 EUR and we couldn’t tell it apart from our “official” RF Canon lenses.
Telephoto lens
70-200mm 4F Canon RF Full-frame: This lens is perfect for taking shots of subjects that are far away. It also brings the background a lot closer to the foreground so it opens up a whole new perspective in your photo & videography.
Portrait lens
50mm 1.8F Canon RF Full-frame: This lens is great for portrait photography. We use this one when capturing people or animals up close. It makes the background extra blurry (bokeh), which makes the subject stand out and gives that cinematic feel we love. This is also the lens we use when we want to take our camera but don’t want to stand out too much as it’s a lot smaller than our zoom lenses.
Wide angle lens
16mm 2.8F Canon RF Full-frame: This lens is for capturing wide landscapes or big buildings. But, it’s mostly great for indoor photo & videography when we are shooting hotels or Airbnb’s.
Filters
ND filter
K&F ND Filter: This variable ND filter is a lifesaver, especially for videography. We use it in bright light to reduce the light that comes into the camera.
Polarizing filter
K&F Polarizing Filter: This filter reduces reflections in water or glass. It allows us to see through car windows, for example.
Mist filter (❗️OUR SECRET FILTER❗️)
K&F Black Mist Filter: This filter is our absolute favorite and our little secret for artistic photo & videography. It’s called a mist filter because it adds a soft, dreamy effect. This one simply lives on our camera full-time.
We use the 1/4 variant, but you can also use 1/8 if you want a more subtle look or a 1/2 for a stronger effect.
TIP: if there’s a light source behind you (like a sunset or lamp) this filter works wonders because it gives people in your footage a sort of halo effect.
SD card
Lexar 260mbps 128GB: This beast is for our camera. We have an extra one as a backup.
Stabilization
Gimbal
Zhiyun Crane 4: This is one of the most recent additions to our gear list. It’s a great stabilizer for heavy camera setups and allows us to create footage that is really smooth. We chose to add this one to our gear list although it’s really heavy. We don’t take it everywhere we go but use it for specific shoots with brands or when we have a shot in mind that can’t be shot handheld.
Tripod
Rollei Compact Traveler #1: This tripod is lightweight and easy to carry when on the go. It helps keep the camera steady, is great for long-exposure shots and it is strong enough to carry our heavy camera setup.
Audio
Rode Wireless GO II: These wireless microphones are great for recording clear sound from a distance. We use it for all of our vlog-style videos. The awesome thing about these is that you can connect two mics at the same time, allowing two people to talk on one video.
Rode VideoMic Pro Microphone: We also have a shotgun mic, although we barely use it because it picks up a lot more surrounding sounds. We sometimes use it for voice-overs or use it for the moments where not everybody can be mic’ed up. For example, when traveling and interacting with locals.
Batteries
Canon Battery for R6: This is the main battery for our camera. It lasts a long time and charges quickly.
Jupio Battery for R6: We use this battery as a backup battery for our camera. It’s always good to have an extra one just in case.
Canon Battery Charger: This battery charger can charge both the Canon and Jupio batteries.
Our drone and accessories
Drone
DJI Mavic 3 Pro Fly More Combo: This is our drone, our second baby. The Fly More Combo comes with extra batteries and parts, giving us longer flight times and a backup plan for when we do crash. We initially chose this drone to create high-quality horizontal footage for YouTube. It doesn't support vertical shots, which means we have to crop for Instagram and lose some quality. The stabilization is amazing and the advanced self-flying settings make it a great drone for professionals. If you are looking for a more lightweight drone that can shoot vertically, we have been looking into the DJI mini 4 Pro.
Remote
DJI RC Remote: The remote for our drone. We upgraded to this one because we didn’t want to use our phone as a screen anymore and rely on our phone batteries to fly.
SD card
Sandisk Extreme Pro 128GB: This is a MicroSD that we use for our drone and GoPros.
Filters
ND & Polarizing
K&F ND & Polarizing Filters for Mavic 3 Pro: ND filters control how much light gets into your drone and especially when flying in bright light and capturing video, these are lifesavers. The polarizing filter helps decrease reflections in water, especially helpful when shooting above the sea during midday.
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Underwater gear
Camera
GoPro Hero 11: Although not a fan of Gopro image quality, we do love how tough these action camera’s are. They allow us to film things more casually, rather than pointing our huge camera at people. We mostly use them for underwater photo & videography. We initially bought this camera as it has a 8:7 ratio which would allow you to film horizontally and vertically at the same time. However, you can’t use all settings when using this ratio and instead, you’re stuck with wide footage and standard settings.
Batteries
GoPro Enduro Batteries: These batteries last a long time, even in extreme weather.
Dome
Telesin Dome: The dream tool for half-underwater, half-above-water photos and videos.
Filters
K&F GoPro Filters: ND filters control how much light gets into your camera. We often use the standard settings on this camera because we don’t use GoPro for the quality. We have these ND filters just in case. This set also includes a polarizing filter.
Storage
HDD external harddrive
Seagate OneTouch 5TB HDD: This is a large storage drive. It holds all our photos and videos and keeps them safe. I would rather store everything on SSDs as they break less easily than an HDD. However, SSDs are MUCH more expensive so we store everything on these HDDs instead. In the “editing” section of this post, you’ll find more information about the SSDs we use for editing.
NOTE: because HDDs are so much more affordable, we back-up all of our content TWICE, decreasing the risk and still keeping it cheaper than storing it on an SSD.
Our camera bag
Backpack
Shimoda Action X30 V2 with Core Unit: This is our beloved camera bag (and third baby ;)) that we take everywhere we go to protect our stuff. It fits all of our heavy gear and keeps it safe. The bag is high quality and made for people who travel around frequently.
Editing
Phone
iPhone 13 Pro: They always say the best camera is the one you have with you and as we can’t always grab our heavy setup, we use this for quick photos and videos, especially for sharing the behind the scenes on instagram stories.
Phone case
Rhino Shield CrashGuard: The best phone case on the market if you ask us.
Laptop
MacBook Air 2020 M1: We did a lot of research about which laptop would be best for editing videos while also being affordable and light to travel with. This was our top pick as it’s easy to carry around, very versatile, reasonably affordable and great for editing.
Photo editing software
Adobe Lightroom: The software we use for editing all of our photos.
Adobe Photoshop: We don’t often use Photoshop, although we do like to use it to clean up our photos a bit by removing unwanted objects from our photos. Nowadays it also offers the amazing AI generative fill option but we don’t use this feature because we are not sure how to feel about using AI too much for our work.
Video editing software
Final Cut Pro: The editing software of our choice for editing cinematic travel videos.
CapCut: As we are posting a lot more vlog-style videos, we don’t need the features of professional software like FinalCutPro and CapCut offers unique things like AI-generated captions. It’s also a lot more user-friendly and increases the speed of our edits.
Music and sound effects
Epidemic Sound: This service gives us access to lots of music and sound effects for our videos. Especially useful when we need copyright-free music or sound effects when creating ads for brands.
Editing storage
SSD
SSD Samsung T7 Shield 2TB: This is where we store all our recent footage. We also use it when we are editing as it’s the fastest storage device we have. NOTE: we have Final Cut Pro installed on the SSD, meaning it runs on this one instead of our laptop, giving us a lot more space to work on while keeping things fast.
SSD WD My Passport 1TB: Our backup SSD.
Data cable
Vention Data Cable USB-C 3.1PD: The best cable we use to connect our SSD to our laptop so we can safely edit our footage.
Accessories
Afterplug 2-Pocket Pouch for Laptop with Reusable Adhesive (for Portable External SSD): This pouch sticks to our laptop and holds our external SSDs. It’s an amazing tool that decreases the amount of cables you have hanging around when editing.
Extras
High-Speed Ethernet Cable
High-Speed Ethernet Cable: This is a secret to fast internet in remote locations. You can connect this long cable directly from your laptop to the wifi router. It has saved us multiple times when working remote from a hotel room that was a bit too far from the Wifi router.
Extension cord
PowerCube: This is a compact power strip. It lets us charge multiple devices at once. We take it everywhere and allows us to work in any cafe.
Powerbank
Powerbank Xtorm: This portable charger keeps our devices powered up on the go. It has saved us multiple times when our phones, laptops or camera was empty and we needed a quick charge.
Airtag
Apple Airtag: As we don’t want to lose our camera bag with all our gear, we have an Airtag inside of our bag so we can track where it is.
Reflector
K&F 5-in-1 Reflector: This one is a bit tricky because you can actually only use it if someone else is holding it. However, it saved us multiple times when we didn’t have enough light to our faces. We use the reflector to bounce back the light into our faces, reducing contrast and “softening” harsh light sources.
Future additions
Drones
DJI mini 4 pro: As we don’t have a drone with vertical shooting capability, this one is pretty high on our wishlist
DJI Avata 2: An FPV drone that allows for some really unique perspectives that seems to be the closest thing to flying ourselves as humans.
Underwater camera housing
Nauticam NA-R6 Underwater Housing: This underwater housing is specifically designed for the Canon R6. It allows you to take your camera underwater, capturing high-quality photos and videos. It’s waterproof up to significant depths and provides full access to your camera’s controls. We are not underwater often so we haven’t prioritised this as it’s really expensive but it’s something we dream of upgrading to to significantly improve our underwater content.
Extra monitor
Desklab Portable 4K Monitor: We would love to add a second screen to make it easier and faster to edit on the go. Also, it has better color accuracy than a laptop screen.
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