Photography Equipment

I like to take photographs as I go. It's a good memoir of where and what I've done. While some people say that it takes you out of the moment, I find that most of your time spent doing travel photography is being more in the moment, focusing on what and where a good composition could lie.

Here is the equipment I currently use.

Main Camera: Sony a7cR

This ended up being the right set of tradeoffs for me. The body is light at just 500g, and the profile is small. The larger grip means that unlike the a7c, my hands hold it very well. But, I do have small hands.

The resolution does help. When you do travel photography, you often don't have time to get a perfect shot. The perfect shot can be something that only flits into existence for a second before disappearing. Having the ability to crop the 60 MP image really gives more flexibility.

Lens: Sony 20-70mm F4

I pair this with just one lens: the Sony 20-70mm F4. I use to carry multiple lenses, but have paired it down. The 20-70mm F4 has been the perfect travel lens for me; it's razor sharp, something that test charts have proven, the range of focal lengths is spectacular, and it's small and light. The cost is a slow aperture of F4, but I don't really mind.

I often shoot at F4 and above anyway; after all, it's travel photography, I rarely want such narrow depth of field. Much of the landscapes are above F8, even.

In practice, I shoot a lot at 20mm. A normal 24-70 would really leave me wanting for more space. Not to mention that even the smaller of the 24-70mm's, the Tamron 28-75mm, is much larger than the 20-70mm F4.

Secondary Camera: Ricoh GRIII

This is absolutely a luxury, but while I use to bring a small 40mm F2.8 prime, I now just bring another camera for a more casual, walkaround camera. The Ricoh GRIII is a truly pocketable camera - while that label is often give to cameras like the Fujifilm x100 series, I just don't think you can actually put them in any pockets unless you're wearing cargo pants.

The point of bringing it is to really have a camera on me at any moment. Often I'll go an entire session without shooting a shot, but sometimes you stumble on magic and you'll really thank yourself that you brought it. (an example)