What's In Our Camera Bag - Heading: EAST Edition
In 2019 we produced our first helicopter travel series called Cold Island which documented a grueling cross country expedition from Buffalo to Newfoundland. We learned a ton during that trip, but one thing that stuck out was that we brought WAY too much. 6 bags just for camera gear felt a little crazy, especially considering how little space we had. So when it came time to pack our cameras for Heading: EAST, our goal was at the MOST 2 camera bags.
Outlined in this post are pieces of kit we brought to shoot our 5 part helicopter series Heading: EAST. This kit was optimized for a lighter cary and to fit the type of imagery we planned on shooting. If you want to see our entire gear list you can check out our full kit here.
You can check out our entire Heading: EAST camera kit tour in the video below where we discuss what we brought to shoot the entire series, what got used and what didn’t, and things we wished we had.
You can find the entire series here:
The (BIG) Travel Kit
As I mentioned above we tried to keep things pretty stripped down this time around. But the kit was still BIG!
Bags and Cases
We should probably start with this one since you can’t carry any amount of gear without a bag or camera case. We used the Peter McKinnon X Nomatic Travel Camera Bag for our drone kit, this also housed our charging kit, gimbal, cleaning supplies and more. For our camera kit we used the Peter McKinnon X Nomatic Everyday Camera Bag. This held our video and photo kit, lenses, mics, etc.
Cameras and Lenses
Again, not the full kit but what we chose to be the lightest and most versatile carry. We shot the entire series on the Sony A7S3 in S-log3, with the A7R4 doubling as a back up camera but also our main photo camera. Our lens list is below, and we had a variety of GoPro’s including the 360 Fusion for inside the helicopter shots.
GoPro Hero 8
memory cards for these cameras:
128GB Sony Tough SD for A7S3 and A7R4
256GB ProGrade V90 SD for A7S3 and A7R4
SanDisk Extreme 64GB Micro SD for GoPro
Filters for these cameras:
Microphones
As per usual we used our trusty Rode Video Micro for most of our run and gun shooting.
No battery = reliability.
But we brought a few others as well.
Aspen Lapel Mics (we will be replacing these soon)
Drones and FPV
Even though we have the helicopter for aerial shots, we can’t really fly it everywhere so we rely on the DJI Mavic air and Chris’ cinewoop to get a different perspective. He did a full post on all of the gear he uses to build drones which you can find here.
DJI Mavic Air
Charge Kit
Last time we took a bag that was dedicated to cables, chargers, batteries and an extension cord. This time we managed to fit it all in our camera bag.
Hexagon Power Bar
Sony Battery Chargers
Omni Charge Back Up Battery
RAVPower Battery Bank
Accessories
We went light on the accessories this time around. This time we added a mobile studio for our interview shots. We will be making a full detailed video about this in the coming weeks!
Peak Design X Lizzie Peirce Camera Strap
Amaran P60X with pop up softbox
Worlds smallest light stand
Maintenance
We also took a full cleaning kit last time and didn’t use it (even though we should have, I spent some time clone stamping out sensor dirt in After Effects) we brought a basic kit.
Kim Wipes
Sensor Cleaning Wand
Lens cloths
Check out the behind the scenes here:
BECKI AND CHRIS
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