Lessons
Lesson Info
Tom's Gear Bag
Today let's start with the cameras. I use the D4S which is the latest high end Nikon. Now again, I can't talk about canon cause there are too many numbers. And since I don't use it, I would just confuse people but certainly a lot of my friends use Canon and there's a comparable Canon I'm sure, but this is my go to camera. It's a bit heavy, but I like heavy cameras cause they're steady. And so I have three D4Ss and a couple D4S, I've never sold a camera maybe once or twice in my life, I give them to my nephews. So I don't grade up necessarily but my nephews are happy to get my own cameras. And then I have a D800. This will also take a motor drive for faster frames. This I use for more landscapes and slow moving animals say or when I'm not shooting. Rapid mode this shoots 11 frames a second. This is five or six depending on whether the batteries are on the bottom are not. So in the buffer on this is like 98 frames. So it's really great to have 98 frames to shoot in you know Cheetah chas...
ing a gazelle or a bear chasing a squirrel or whatever. It depends on what kind of trip I go on. If I go on a trip in Yellowstone or Tetons and I have my car I have a Land Cruiser and I can carry everything with me and it's all in the back of the car. And it's there most of the time. But now I have to take it off cause I said that (audience laughs) but anyway, so it depends on the trip but if I'm hiking walking, maybe take the 80 to 400. That's a lightweight lens. But if I'm going on a big trip, I will take two to 400 and the 80 to 400. This will be quick, easy to handhold, It's a 200, it has 8A millimeters. So this is a very handy, very sharp, not as expensive as the two to 400. This is the widest I use 14 to 24. I don't use a lot, but I use it sometimes other people use it more than I do. I don't think why does much as I do the telephoto and I just got this lens it's a 24 to 120. I did have a 24 to 70 or 2070. And this 24 to 120 is a really super lens. And then I take a one seven and a one four especially for the two to 400 I don't find it. Although they work on the 80 to 400. This one, I don't find them. Sharp, maybe they are but that's what's great about the two to 400 with the extenders. In the same way with the 600 is my go to bird lens. And I find that the one four and one seven on a 600 is great A lot of people think extenders compromise the lens. I never found that I think it's the operator error usually not try putting it heavy enough and shooting high enough shutter speeds or cable releases. I've never had the 2x and the I don't think is quite there yet for whatever reason. Sorry Nikon again but they're gonna work on that I think I will always have a vest. This is my old vest. I think it might have been smaller one I bought this vest. (audience laughs) But you can put a lot of stuff in secret I'm not gonna do that. I usually put the extenders in my pocket, put extra batteries, put extra cards, memory cards in this bag, you know I usually have a gear, enough gear in here like the basic kit would be the 80 to and 24 to and two extenders is what to carry on the plane. And in here I have the cards. And So I always have a headlamp for whatever, you know cleaning clothes and cleaning fluid, extra battery so all that goes in one little bag. So in order to get it that's a greeny yellow bag. And I have a beauty a bigger pair of binoculars for most things, but if I'm traveling light, I just use a small pair. These are celestron but there's a bazillion Nikon and somebody gave me these. That's their free that was good. (audience laughs) Nikon pay attention and so you always have to have binoculars. I think that's really a handy thing. A little duct tape. Always have duct tape, superglue. You never know what happens. A couple extra screws in there. A little tool kit. bunch of different sizes there's always things rattle loose especially when you travel a lot in boats and planes and cars so there's always little screws that need to be tightened down, extra plates for the tripod. And there's more plates in there. Now the little screw driver, little microphone for the Nikon on board. This is a really important if you're shooting people or sounds, it's a better microphone than what's on the camera for doing you know higher quality more professional sound. There's a loop looking at the back of the camera I don't use a lot but once in a while to check sharpness for your monitor. Blower brush for your sensor, rain covers for your lenses. These always they don't weigh anything. So you can always put a couple of those in a lot of times I just put them in the side pockets. Bean bag this I take almost everywhere in my car of course it's filled with beans but if you're traveling to Africa or something, you dump the beans out, go to Africa go to that village and fill it up with beans there and then you can give it to your driver whoever who would love to have beans for dinner. And there's a number of these, this one fits over their window. And I find this really great cause it has this flat top and being fit here and here and you can get lighter things you can put rice and beans. What comes with are husks that are a little bit lighter weight, so that's handy. This time of year I always have hand warmers for like Jackson Hall and somebody asks about filters only use one filter It's a circular polarizer. So I always take I don't use it very often, but we're gonna talk about that too later. And the neutral density, graduated filter. In case you're in bright sunny situation where you wanna slow down the ISO more than say 100 or 50, whichever your camera might do, and you still need it slower, you wanna, you know, a 30 second exposure or a one minute exposure, you can put this on as graduated down to eight. So it darkens everything and you can shoot really slow shutter speeds for things like water, creeks, waterfalls, so that's handy. And in here's another little kit has a little GPS unit, which is really great if you're traveling, if it's on the top of the Nikon, and each of the images will have the location where you took the picture. So if you couldn't remember if you're in Africa or Brazil, this will tell you. And you can look that up and that's really great. Cable release, this is the american number of cable release of course, but but the long lenses and extenders really important. And so I use that a lot. And I also found this, this little DJI Osmo here. It's made by Velo. And it has a little, you can screw this into the side of the camera, the lantana. And this has a remote button. And this in some ways is better than this cause you don't have a lot of crapping, hanging down cable and swinging in the wind and stuff like that. So this is really handy and it's good for like 500 feet, 300 feet some quite long distance. So if you're doing some remote stuff, this is a good way to do it. Not only is it like, you know six feet or nine feet, so of course you can't get very far. So that's pretty much of course you have lens claws and things and other small things in the bag but that's sort of my basic kit if I were just going to take, you know, golf for the day. What if I had to live with the way we'd take on a plane is this lens the 24 to and a 1.4 extender and the D4S.
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