What’s In My Camera Bag?

I received a question from a reader recently about how I take pictures for my blog, & what type of camera gear I use for travel photography. My photography skills are sub-par at best, and I wanted to share some of the affordable camera gear I use for travel photography. 🙂

It took me a while to grasp the basic settings of my DSLR camera and I remember it was at least a good month before I could operate the camera without some kind of guide. It also didn’t help that I was traveling at the time and had to learn these skills on the fly.

As far as the camera is concerned, I suggest getting an entry-level DSLR camera over a simple point-and-shoot. The difference between the two is simple: the lens on a DSLR camera can be taken off and exchanged for another lens depending on what you’re taking a picture of. In the beginning, I was in between getting a Canon Rebel T6s or the Nikon D5300 (Nikon and Canon both dominate the camera industry in terms of quality and versatility.) Either camera will be more than enough to suit the needs of a beginner photographer but in the end, I went with Nikon because I felt like the white balance worked better and the images looked sharper and more detailed.

Nikon D5300

The Nikon D5300 is a cute, compact, and highly functioning camera that will meet all of your needs – and then some. It really packs a punch for an entry-level camera. Amazon has a special going on right now where you can by the “kit” (both the body and an entry-level lens) for $450. See the special by clicking on this link

Have you heard about Rakuten? It’s a website where you get cashback for purchases that you make online. You can earn 5% cashback when purchasing from Amazon. It’s COMPLETELY FREE to sign up, & has zero monthly or subscription fees. You also get $10 dollars for signing up. Click here to learn more if you’re interested (it’s basically free money!)

So If you purchase the camera from Amazon using a service like Rakuten, you will earn $32.5 back on your purchase and apply it to when you want to buy anything from Walmart, Nike, Macy’s, Sephora, and a bunch of other name brands that work with Rakuten.

More posts if you need some travel inspo:

Stairway to Heaven Hike (Haiku Stairs)
15 Beautiful Places You Should Visit In Italy
15 Best Destinations For Solo Female Travelers
15 Bucket-List Destinations That Are Open For International Tourism
The World’s 10 Most Underrated Travel Destinations
The Best Travel Gifts To Get Your Jet-Setting Friend This Holiday Season

What you should be looking for when you purchase your first camera:

• Know your image sensors. The image sensor is what captures the light from the object you’re shooting. The Nikon D5300 has a 24.2-megapixel sensor which means it can take high-quality pictures that can be viewed on a large tv screen or blown up for a presentation without losing any detail.
• Lenses, lenses, lenses. You want to make sure your camera body can work with different lenses without any problems.
• Easy to use manual controls. There will be a time when you will need more control over the settings (if you’re taking low-light or macro shots for example).
• The viewfinder & display. The display on the 5300 can be swiveled around so that you can take more interesting pictures. You will only be limited by your own creativity.
• Price. You should look for something affordable because if you’re anything like me, you don’t have a bazillion dollars lying around.

Below is an unedited photo of my friend Anna in Hawaii right after our Stairway to Heaven Hike. I simply turned the camera on and took this picture a split second after. As you can see, the picture came out really crisp and detailed and it took less than a second for the camera to focus. I cropped a section of the photograph to show how sensitive the sensor is.

You just can’t get that on a point and shoot.

Learning More About Your Camera

Now that you know a little more about what kind of camera you should be looking for, I suggest learning about how to use the camera more efficiently. This means how to shoot in various modes, and then, how to compose the perfect photograph.

There are many photographers on YouTube that will explain all the settings of the D5300 (I recommend watching any one of these videos: here, here, and here.) If you already have a camera and would like to get a little more familiar with it, a simple google search of your camera’s name followed by “tutorial” or “how to” will probably show a ton of results.

Once you’ve learned all of the camera settings, you are now ready to go out in the world and take pictures!

How To Take Beautiful Photographs

Taking a great photograph has actually no correlation with the camera gear you use and has everything to do with your technique! The hardest part of photography is developing the eye for when to hit the shutter release button.

Now that you have found your camera gear for travel photography, now you must practice and what tutorials on Youtube.

Youtube has a variety of photographers that explain basic photograph composition and technique. However, many of these videos are shallow in terms of what they teach. They fail to go in-depth because photographers make their money by sending YouTube traffic to higher ticket courses on personal websites that will end up costing you hundreds of dollars. Don’t waste your time or money by doing this.

I learned everything I need to know and then some, by signing up to Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community with over 30,000 classes on any topic you wish to learn about. I used Skillshare to master watercolor painting and photography, and I even set up this very blog with what I learned on the site.

Readers of my blog will get first two months for free just by clicking on this link :):) ❤️

Here are some of the classes I recently took on Skillshare that made my photography skills a whole lot better:

How I edit photos

I use Lightroom. In Lightroom, you can organize your photos into different albums, create color presets that you can apply to all photos, and export all your pictures in one go. I’ve been editing my own images for 14 years now and there’s really no editing software that’s better than Lightroom 🙂

. If you have any more questions feel free to leave a comment below and I will be more than happy to answer them.