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I, like most camera-wielding people, have accumulated a lot of gear since I first developed an interest in photography. Among the collection of things I sometimes use is the handful of things I always use… and then there’s a larger list of things I never use!

There appears to be a phase you go through when you take up photography – the one where you think new equipment will make your images better. It’s the “gadget” phase, and for the enthusiast, it is the most financially challenging phase you will go through. Some will buy camera bodies believing they make a huge difference to their photography, some will buy lenses and some with more money than sense will buy it all. For some reason, and certainly not because I have loads of spare cash, I fell into the latter group to some extent.

A while ago I noted a distinct change in my photography spending habits. I had no craving for lenses, or any other new gear for that matter. It wasn’t like I was bankrupt or anything either. I guess I had discovered that I had everything I needed to take the type of photo I enjoy taking… and was just starting to enjoy photography without approaching photography in an equipment-centric way.

The gear list

I have a large bag, but I use that mostly for storage, decanting the usual suspects into a smaller bag of stuff for carrying around. I walk to take 90% of my photos!

So here is my list of “essentials”, obviously excluding the camera and lenses:

1. Tripod
2. IR shutter release
3. Hotshoe spirit level
4. Eyepiece cover
5. BlackRapid Strap
6. Lens cleaning cloth
7. Camera cleaning cloth
8. Filters: 0.9 soft ND graduated filter, polarising filter and a 10 stop ND filter
9. Light meter – I like taking incident light readings :)
10. White balance card

Just ten things!

The lenses I carry depend very much on what I’m doing – but I only have four lenses, so the choice is made simple for me most of the time. If I’m packing lenses I’ll probably take the 17-40mm f/4 and the 70-200mm f/4.

For walking around, opportunistically taking shots, I’ll use a single lens, either the 40mm f/2.8, the 50mm f/1.4 or the 70-200mm f/4. If I’m walking around like that and want another lens with me I’ll carry it in my Think Tank Lens Changer pouch – a great piece of kit!

Sometimes I can’t be bothered carrying anything, so I’ll just go out with my little Fujifilm X10 compact camera and a micro fibre lens cloth.

Whatever I’m carrying, or not carrying doesn’t really matter – I’m having fun making photos :D