Be Prepared

Don’t be caught without that one piece of camera gear you need to get the shot.

Often times when out shooting with other photographers I hear them say, “I wish I had brought my grad ND filter.”  Or maybe they didn’t have the lens they needed.  “Where is it?” I ask.  “It’s back in my hotel room,” is their response.  “Why didn’t you bring it with you?”  “I didn’t think I would need it,” or “It’s too heavy.”

Truth to tell, I don’t understand the rationale of selecting the gear you think you might need when going out on a shoot.  Why not take it all?  I suppose if you have 20 lenses (I exaggerate) you can’t take them all with you.  But a normal complement of gear that gives you the flexibility you need isn’t that hard to pack and carry.

What’s a normal complement of gear?  Here’s what I carry and my rationale for including and excluding what I bring.  I have my camera body of course, a Canon 1Ds Mark III.  And my Gitzo tripod with a Really Right Stuff ball head.  As for lenses I have an assortment of four lenses that cover the range from 17mm to 200mm.  I don’t have a lot of overlap, the most being the 24-70 and the 24-105.  I carry them both because the 24-70 is fast with superb optics and the 24-105 is image stabilized which makes it good for hand-held shooting.  That makes up all the heavy stuff.  Oh, I do have a 1.4X tele-extender  for the 70-200 to give it a little extra reach.  The rest of the gear is extra batteries (3 all together), remote release, extra memory cards, 2 Lee grad ND filters and the adapters to mount them, 3 Singh-Ray polarizers, lens cleaning cloths, a rain cover for camera and lens and that’s about it.  Oh, don’t forget the multi-tool.  That puppy comes in handy in the most unusual circumstances.

I have a really nice ThinkTank camera bag.  I prefer the backpack style.  Keep it simple.  So with everything loaded up the total weight comes to about 40#. Now that’s not light so the backpack is very important.  It has to be comfortable, not too heavy and well padded.  And the ThinkTank Street Walker is so comfortable I can wear it for hours.  If you care to check it out here’s the link.

http://www.thinktankphoto.com/products/streetwalker-harddrive-backpack.aspx?code=WS-427

So I never find myself in the situation where the one piece of gear I need is back in the hotel room.  And consequently, I never miss a shot – at least not for that reason.

Seriously, if you’re in the habit of saying to yourself,  “I’ll just take what I need,” consider the old Boy Scout motto – Be Prepared.  You never know what strange and wonderful light you may encounter and you want to be ready for the unexpected.

Join me on an upcoming workshop.  Click here for more details.

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Author: doinlight

Ralph Nordstrom is an award-winning fine art landscape photographer and educator. He lives in Southern California and leads photography workshops throughout the Western United States.

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