What Camera Gear to Pack for an Overseas Photography Trip

The instinct when preparing for a major photography trip is to bring everything. Every lens, every filter, every backup of the backup. It feels responsible. It feels like preparation. What it actually produces is a bag that weighs eighteen kilograms, clears security slowly, and makes you reluctant to go anywhere that isn't a ten-minute walk from the hotel.

The photographers who consistently come back with the strongest work travel light. Not minimally — there's a difference — but with a kit that's been thought through rather than accumulated. Here's how to think about it.

Start with the body, not the lenses

The camera body is the least important decision you'll make. Modern mirrorless and DSLR systems from any major manufacturer are good enough. If you're shooting at the level where your equipment is genuinely limiting your output, you already know what you need and don't need this guide.

What does matter: bring one primary body and one backup. Not because failures are common — they aren't — but because losing your only camera body on day two of a two-week trip to a remote region is a specific kind of catastrophic that a second body entirely prevents. The backup doesn't need to be identical. A smaller, lighter body of the same mount works perfectly and doubles as a second angle in challenging situations.

Keep both bodies in your carry-on. Always. Checked luggage gets lost, delayed, and handled without care. Your camera gear never goes in the hold.

Three lenses cover almost everything

This is where most photographers over-pack and where the clearest thinking pays off.

A wide zoom in the 16–35mm range handles landscapes, interiors, tight spaces, and the kind of environmental shots that establish a place. It's the lens that gets used most on location work involving architecture, mountains, and anything where you want to convey scale.

A standard zoom in the 24–70mm range is the workhorse. Most of the images in The Still Poet collection were made in this range. It's versatile without being a compromise — sharp, fast enough for low light, and the focal lengths feel natural to the eye in a way that very wide and very long lenses don't.

A short telephoto — 70–200mm or a prime in the 85–135mm range — handles compression shots, details within a scene, and the kind of isolation that makes a single subject read clearly against a complex background. It also works well for candid work in markets and public spaces where a wider lens requires uncomfortable proximity.

Three lenses. That's the kit. The case for a fourth needs to be specific and strong to justify the weight and the decision fatigue of having more options than you can hold in your hands at once.

What to leave behind

The super telephoto. Unless wildlife is a specific objective, a 400mm or 500mm lens is weight without proportionate return on a general travel photography trip. The shots it enables are genuinely different, but they're a small fraction of what you'll actually photograph.

The macro lens. Same logic. Specific use case, heavy, rarely reaches the front of the bag on a location trip.

The entire second bag of filters. A circular polariser and one or two graduated NDs cover the practical cases. A full filter system with multiple holders and ten individual filters is a studio-grade solution to a problem that post-processing handles adequately.

The drone, unless aerial work is explicitly planned and permitted. Drone regulations have tightened significantly across Asia and Europe. Research the rules for every specific location before packing one, and be honest about whether you'll actually use it given the permit requirements, registration, and weather dependencies.

Support — the honest version

A tripod is essential for serious landscape and low-light work. The question is which one. A full-size carbon fibre tripod produces the best results and the worst travel experience — it's long, it's noticeable, and it triggers additional scrutiny at certain sites and borders.

A travel tripod — the kind that folds to under 40cm — is the practical answer for most trips. It makes compromises in height and maximum stability, but it fits in a carry-on, weighs under a kilogram, and gets used because it's accessible. The best tripod is the one you actually bring to the location rather than leaving at the hotel because it was too heavy to carry.

A small flexible tripod like the Joby GorillaPod solves specific problems — attaching to railings, shooting from low angles on uneven ground, using in spaces where a full tripod is prohibited — and weighs almost nothing. Worth including as a supplement.

Power and storage — don't underestimate this

Bring three times as many batteries as you think you need. Cold weather, extensive live view use, and long shooting sessions drain batteries faster than casual use, and the ability to charge on location is not always reliable. Battery chargers that accept USB-C are preferable for international travel — fewer adapters, more flexibility.

Memory cards: bring more than enough and use a dual-card strategy if your camera supports it, writing the same files to two cards simultaneously. Losing images to a card failure is rare but permanent. More practically, running out of storage in the field because you filled cards and didn't have backups is entirely preventable.

A portable SSD for evening backups is worth its weight. Copy the day's shoot every night. Cards fail, bags get stolen, cameras get dropped. The images are the point of the trip.

The bag itself

A camera backpack in the 20–25 litre range fits as carry-on on most airlines, holds a two-body kit with three lenses comfortably, and distributes weight well enough to walk for hours without damage. Look for one with a dedicated laptop compartment and a rain cover — both get used.

A smaller shoulder bag or sling for day shooting is worth considering. Taking the full backpack to every location adds friction. A lighter bag with the one or two lenses appropriate for that specific shoot means you go more places and move more freely.

The real test

Before you pack it, ask whether you used it on the last trip. If the answer is no, it stays home. The image that defines a trip is never the one that required the piece of equipment you almost didn't bring. It's the one where you were in the right place at the right moment with whatever you had.

The kit that gets carried is the kit that gets used. Everything else is ballast.

The Still Poet collection is shot on location across the globe — high altitude, extreme weather, remote access. All prints are available as limited edition museum-quality pieces.