My 'Ideal' Camera Bag

As a teacher, I constantly get asked about equipment: What DSLR to buy, what lenses, speedlights and where to find the best deals.

(Check out the Good Places to buy Gear link on this site)


I compiled this rough listing as a place to start:

Budget Photographers
APS-C DSLR
(Most consumer DSLRs have a smaller sensor but nevertheless produce excellent quality. The advantage of a full frame camera is less noise and better image quality - but at a price)

10-22mm extreme wide-angle zooom lens

(Far more useful than a telephoto lens, unless you are into wildlife. Good for extreme wide landscapes, interiors and urban photography.)

18-135mm f3.5-5.6 zoom
(Most DSLRs are sold as a 'kit' with one, or two average, inexpensive lenses to get you started. I recommend you spend a bit more instead of the cheapest lens combo, and go for a slightly better/sharper zoom lens selection like Canon's excellent EF-S 18-135mm lens or Nikon's AF-S 18-140mm VR lens)

70-300mm f4.5-5.6 zoom
(Same deal applies to the 'kit' telephoto lens. Most of us will only ever use a telephoto lens about 15% of the time so, unless you are keen on wildlife photography, it's not worth upgrading it. But, if you like snapping wildlife, upgrade and spend around $700 to get a good quality, sharp lens like this)

Accessory speedlight
Far more powerful than the little pop-up on-camera flash. The real reason to use an accessory flash is to bounce the light off the ceiling or, better still, to use it off-camera entirely. Many new DSLRs can trigger flash wirelessly)

ND + Polarising filters
Neutral Density
filters are used to cut down the amount of light getting into the camera - so that you can use much longer shutter speeds. Ideal to get that soft, smokey waterfall effect. Polarising filters are used to reduce reflections off water and in particular, off shiny vegetation)

Carbon Fibre tripod
(Years ago these tripods cost more than $1,200. Now you can get a good travel CF tripod for less than $300. A few models are particularly well designed - you can unscrew one leg and use it as a Monopod. Most tripods are sold separately to the camera head bit. Buy the heaviest tripod you are prepared to carry. Don't bother with a gorilla pod. You'll never use it. A Monopod is an excellent camera stabiliser. No good for night shots but perfect for supporting heavy lenses, excellent for shooting from a safari vehicle, use as a walking stick!)
Cable Release
(Use this to release the shutter while shooting on a tripod. Far more effective than the self-timer and only $20 off eBay)


Serious enthusiast photographers
Full frame DSLR
(A full frame camera is expensive - but produces awesome image quality, lower noise response and cleaner files)
APS-C DSLR
(I like to travel with one of these smaller sensor cameras because, with a 1.5X image magnification, it adds additional magnification to any lens. i.e. a 50mm lens becomes a 75mm lens, a 70-200mm zoom lens is actually a 105-300mm lens). 
14mm fisheye (f2.8 or f3.5)
(A 14mm rectilinear lens produces a rectangular image with extreme wide angle results. Care must be taken not to include your feet in every shot. Excellent for shooting small interiors, architecture and creating special (distortion) effects. Also good for shooting HD video. TIP: You can buy excellent and inexpensive fisheye's from companies like Samyang. These are manual focus but, when set to f8, no focussing is needed!)
24-105mm f4
A reasonably fast, continuous aperture, general purpose zoom lens. Worth spending a lot of $$ on because you will use this for 70% of your work)
24-70mm f2.8
A faster, continuous aperture, general purpose zoom lens. Worth spending a lot of $$ on because you will use this for 70% of your work)
70-200mm f4 or f2.8 zoom lens
(This is the standard pro general purpose telephoto zoom lens. To save money look at the f4 version (Canon). The faster f2.8 version works nicely in conjunction with lens Extenders, affordably extending the focal length by 40%, 70% and 100%, depending on the extender model you buy, with very little loss of quality. Extenders effectively give you another lens for around $450)
Speedlight
(The more expensive the speedlight, the more powerful it's output. The more powerful it is, the bigger the (light) modifier you can use and the larger this modifier (like a Lumiquest softbox) the softer and more professional your results will be). TIP: Don't feel that you have to buy a name brand speedlight. Consider Metz, Nissin or Yongnao. Similar performance at half the price).
ND and Polarising filters

Neutral Density filters are used to cut down the amount of light getting into the camera - so that you can use much longer shutter speeds. Ideal to get that soft, smokey waterfall effect. Polarisng filters are used to reduce reflections off water and in particular, off vegetation)
Carbon fibre tripod
(Years ago CF tripods cost more than $1,000. Now you can get a good travel CF tripod for less than $300. A few models are so well designed, you can unscrew one leg and use it as a Monopod. Most are sold separately to the camera head. TIP: Buy the heaviest tripod you are prepared to carry. Don't bother with a gorilla pod. You'll never use it. A Monopod is an excellent camera stabiliser. No good for long, night shots but perfect for supporting heavy lenses, excellent for shooting from a safari vehicle, good to use as a walking stick!)

Best Priced lenses for wildlife

Canon EF-S 70-300mm f4-5.6
Great $500 telephoto lens for APS-C DSLRs

Canon EF100-400 f4.5-5.6 lens
(Excellent super-telephoto, sharp, unique push-pull zoom mechanism and affordable at $150)
Canon EF70-300mm f4.5-5.6 DO Lens
(At $1600, this is a great buy - the Diffraction Optics used in its construction make it half the length of comparable lenses and therefore very compact with no loss of quality)

Nikkor AF-S 70-300mm f4.5-5.6G IF ED
(A good  value, $700 Nikkor lens for general purpose telephoto use)

Nikkor AF-S 300mm f/4D IF ED
(Nikon's excellent $1600 offering. If you don't absolutely need that fast, f2.8 max aperture, this is an impressive optic)

Sigma Lens 150-500mm f/5-6.3 APO DG OS HSM
(Another good third-party super-zoom for less than $1,000.
Excellent quality for the results you get...)


Tamron 150-500mm f5-6.3 lens
Amazing quality for such a powerful lens; $1,000.
Tamron 150-600mm f5-6.3 lens
(Tamron's newest super-telephoto delivers incredible quality and sharpness for an affordable $1,300)

As a general rule, if you can't fill half the frame with the subject using a 300mm lens, you are not close enough. Some point-and-shoot cameras have 1200mm (equivalent) lenses, four times the magnification of a Canon 300mm f2.8 lens but:
a) they are almost impossible to control
b) are very slow focussing
c) are not that sharp and
d) because they are so powerful, present a whole new set of camera shake issues (despite having inbuilt image stabilisation)