Africa: What's in the Camera Bag

What a photographer packs for a job, holiday or assignment is quite a personal thing. And of course, what's packed can change significantly depending on the nature of the job, the location and specifically, the subject matter you might be chasing.

When I travel to Africa to photograph (mostly) wildlife, for example, the contents of my camera bag is quite different compared to say, a trip to the UK or Japan.

To get great wildlife shots though, you need to pack a good, powerful, fast telephoto lens. The one I have is big, heavy and and bulky so it really prevents me carrying much more - but that's the nature of the beast.

I find lens hoods are a total nuisance when packing - the hood for the Canon EF 300mm is massive - it provides great protection for the front lens element but just does not fit in my backpack - so it travels, with all the cables, USB power kit, flash modifier, filters, battery chargers and other assorted necessities, in my suitcase.

At $500 for a replacement, the EF300mm lens hood is not something I want to lose but because of its bulk (compared here to a 24-105mm f4 lens) it goes into the suitcase.
(I stuff it with all my cables to keep them all in one place).

Two camera bodies:
Canon EOS 5D MkIII
Canon EOS 60D
1x 32Gb + 1x 64Gb CF cards
4x 32Gb SD cards
1x Polarising filter
1x 1000X ND filter
USB dual LP-E6 battery charger + 6 LP-E6 batteries
USB dual GoPro battery charger + 2 GoPro batteries
Canon EF 300mm f2.8 L USM lens
Canon EF 2x and 1.4x Extenders
Canon EF 24-105mm f4 L USM
12mm Extension Tube
Canon 580EXII Speedlight
Spare AA batteries ('cos reliable batteries unavailable in some parts of Africa)
MagMod Magbeam Wildlife kit (for speedlight)
5-port USB Wall charger
5-socket PowerCube + power adaptor for whatever countries I'm visiting
Velbon Monopod  + Benro Head
MacBook Pro 13-inch laptop + USB/HDMI card-reader hub + Power brick
2x 500Gb SDD USB portable hard drives
Travel mouse
Allen key set + Small LED torch
iPhone + USB charge cable
GoPro Hero 6 Black edition
FeiyuTech G5 Gimbal + soft case
Bose noise-cancelling cans - for those long flights
Sony XB20 Bluetooth USB powered speaker
An ancient heavily customised Lowepro Pro Runner 350AW (see below).

It looks a lot, but in general, most non-vital stuff, like cables, power adaptors, chargers, mouse, etc, can be stashed in the suitcase.

I have had this smallish LowePro backpack for a few years - it does a pretty good job of accommodating all my kit - but there are a few things that I find annoying about its design.
First Problem: everything is black - might look neat in Newtown, but in the field, when you are in a hurry to grab a fresh card or a replacement battery, it's very easy to open the wrong part of the case and waste time. So, to make it easier to quickly find the correct zip for each appropriate compartement, I added short lengths of different-coloured fluoro builder's string (Bunnings) which are easier to grab hold of and provide instant identification.
Second Problem: I find the flap over the zip, there ostensibly to provide additional weather insulation, often got jammed in the zipper. To fix this I hot glued all of the flaps (backwards) firmly onto the body of the pack to get them permanently out of the way (rather than cutting them off which would look naff). Slightly less waterproof maybe, but now I never get a jammed zip.
Third Problem: Too many straps and clips. I cut the side straps and clips off because, like the waist belt, they got caught at just about every conceivable opportunity. I rarely used the side clips unless carrying a tripod and have never used the waist belt so it too had to go. I also removed the inner pen and mobile phone pockets from the outer part of the pack as these also catch on anything that you try to slide into that outer pocket.
It's now a little lighter and, I think, a lot more functional.

Shot with the Canon EF300mm f2.8L USM lens, this leopard was only 20 feet from the hide we were in so I got this lovely close up, with beautiful soft, out of focus background features. The nice thing about new photo technologies is that to you don't have to spend a fortune on one lens - you can now buy very good quality telephoto lenses for less than $2,000 from companies such as Sigma and Tamron.