Two Moro's Travels

Now for the cool stuff: Packing Photography Gear for a Road Trip!

By: JM. We’ll start by listing/showing some of the ancillary items I am taking on this journey starting with the more mundane items such as hard drives, cables, pouches, etc. I promise to make it short and sweet.

These are two Samsung T5’s in 1TB Capacity each (clear covers) and two Samsung T5’s 500G ea (black covers) and a Sandisk Extreme 2Tb. The clear covered Samsungs will be attached to my iPad Pro each evening and all images taken that day – both raw and jpeg will be copied to them on a day-by-day basis. At the same time, a backup copy of the images will be added to the Sandisk Extreme. Once the first images are copied to these drives they will never be together again. This means the clear covered T5’s will be on my person at all times and the Sandisk will be safely hidden or stored somewhere. The two 500G Black covered T5’s are extra drives should they become necessary towards the end of the trip. The actual memory cards, once full, will also be stored separately from the T5’s and the Sandisk. This way I have multiple redundancy in case of loss or theft of gear. Which leads me to another important travel point: These external drives, and the memory cards, will NEVER see the inside of a camera bag again once the first set of images are copied onto them. If I lose the gear or it’s stolen from the van, I still retain the images which over time are much more valuable to me both from a sales standpoint as well as their intrinsic value than any gear. Besides, the gear is insured.

On the left is the 51 megapixel Fujifilm 50r and on the left is the Fujifilm X-H1. The 50r is only a backup body though I may plop a lens in heavy action if needed and I’ll use it. The X-H1 with either the 50-140 2.8 or the 55-200 zoom lens if I need more reach are

for wildlife shooting. The X-H1 with these two zoom lenses worked out very, very well in last years visit to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. These two lenses allowed us to reach out to plenty of Elk, Moose and bear for some pretty cool images. I’ve also packed Fuji’s best APS-C lens – the 16mm 1.4 prime; this is the lens I will use for Astrophotography in those clear, and light-pollution free Alaskan skies. Also included in this bag are two additional Lacie Rugged USB-3, 1TB each external hard drives for storage, and backup as needed. As you can guess the images are more critical to me than gear. All the externals will attach to my M1 iPad Pro that I’m taking in lieu of a laptop for this trip. I find the iPad so much more fun and tactile to use with the pencil, or my big fat fingers when reviewing and making minor edits to the images. Its a much more personal experience plus it can be used anywhere and the battery lasts forever. The black and red trimmed pouch contains all my filters, and step-up rings so all the lenses, across all platforms use 77mm filters. I carry Singh-Ray Warming Polarizers, plus some Hoya Polarizers and several ND filters for long exposures. Step up rings include 58mm, 62, 67mm, 72mm all to the 77mm size I‘ve standardized on.

Not shown here are two tripods. One very large, very sturdy, very heavy Sirius that I use for more stationary shooting opportunities, and a small Sirius travel tripod which folds nicely and fits in my Manfrotto backpack. Though very small, I have found that it can easily support my 50r with the 100-200 zoom with no issues at all.