One question I seem to get more than any other is "What's in your camera bag?" From the first time a picture appeared with me filming on the road, folks have been asking what I'm carrying around on my back.
Well I’m happy to share a typical setup for my camera bag. With this configuration, I can film interviews, documentary / docu-reality storytelling, training, travel and the like.
The bag itself is available on Amazon. Search for Evecase Extra Large Professional DSLR Camera/Laptop Travel Backpack Gadget Bag. It's $89 and the bag you see in the video is 4 years old. Not a scratch or tear on it yet after many travels all over the US, Caribbean, and Europe.
It fits under standard airline seats as well making it super easy to carry with you on a flight.
If you have any questions about specific equipment, drop them into the comments and I'll be happy to lend my advice.
Full Transcription. Apologies for any typos.
0:00 Ever since the first time I showed a picture of this bag I've gotten so many requests from people saying what is in that bag? I mean, it's a beautiful looking bag. I've taken this bag all over London I've taken it to New York, I've taken it out to the west coast, taken it to the Caribbean. It is a phenomenal all in one camera bag that you can shoot for a week with this thing. So why don't we take a look at what's in the bag.
0:23 I'll start off with "what is it" it's called an evecase not an ever case called an evecase. E V E C A S E. I got it on Amazon. I want to say the bag is less than 100 bucks now. It has beautiful padding on it. So even with all the weight that's inside this camera bag, you can put it on your shoulder. It's very comfortable.
0:43 I've walked around for 2, 3, 4 hours with this thing on my back. Just walking around taking pictures shooting video. Very, very comfortable bag.
0:51 So let's start on the top. There's this little rubberized area where you can keep a jacket and whatnot. I've got my slate up there sits very nicely. There's a nice little pouch right here on the very top. Oh and here I've actually got some of my knuckles and whatnot for my lights.
1:10 These things are great because not only can you use them for your lights but you can you know you can screw your DSLR camera into this or you GoPro and just be able to flexible mount that around. So that's the top pouch.
1:22 The outer sleeve. This is where I've got my SD card wallet, I'll show this to the GoPro. This is really nice, you know, you keep all your little cards, they don't go flying all over the place. They're handy dandy. You always got to have mints when you're working with a client right? I wear hearing aids so I have a little pack of hearing a batteries that I keep handy with me. That's the outer pouch.
1:47 And there's an inner pouch in here. Here's my card reader. So this is a nice unified card reader it's got everything on a CF, SD card, mini SD card. This is my beautiful little Peerless. I think this is a 10 or 11 inch model that allows you to mount lights and grips on it. beautiful little flexible mounting thing there.
2:10 Little mini to regular HDMI cable and I got pens. This is really handy. This is one of those, you know, standard old USB three USB two to the new USBC adapter. Always good to have adapters with you on a shoot and I've got various pens and things in there.
2:28 Here's the main bag. So the first thing in here is my Fuji XT-3 and on there I've got an XF 16 to 55 millimeter lens and then underneath I've got the battery grip. Now typically if I was flying or traveling long distance, obviously I would have the lens off of here and I would have the body cap and the lens cap. But when I'm just traveling around locally, I will keep it all together so I'm ready to go. If you're going to invest in an XT-3, I highly recommend the battery grip. This holds two batteries. Plus you can have one battery inside the camera, which will give you about 90 minutes of shoot time. Without it, you're going to get 20 to 30 minutes of filming time. If you're going to roll video on it, that's the XT-3.
3:14 The other thing in here I've got my Panasonic GH4. And this is just a little baby micro 12 to 60 millimeter lens on here. Basically what I call a standard lens, not the best lens in the world, but it does work. So there's the GH4. Now with the GH4. I also have my Rokinon Cine lens. This is a 35 millimeter 1.5 lens. And if you've never used the Rokinon Cine style, I highly recommend these lenses. They're heavy, they're metal. And they're very inexpensive. I want to say this was around 400 bucks. It's got the metal teeth on it so you can use the follow focus and it has the manual aperture which I love. So when you're shooting you can just be using your hand just to grab the aperture and change it. Same thing on the Fuji. Fuji also has a manual aperture, which is awesome for filming. So the Rokinon 35 millimeter prime.
4:09 This is my VP, Shure VP 83 lens hopper microphone which I flat out love. It's about a $200 microphone. I use this with these cameras with the GoPro and with my telephone. And one of the things I really love is that it uses a double A battery with a very easy to get to battery door.
4:29 This is my GoPro Hero 7. I've also got the Hero 5 which is up there shooting this and this is in an Ulanzi video vlogging case. I love this because I can take the microphone and I can go ahead and mount it right there. And now I can shoot you know GoPro video but then I've got good audio as well. And this microphone is good up to about 10 feet away, aimed right at the subject. It can still pick up the sound very, very well relative to everything that's going on around it. And then underneath here I've got the GoPro audio adapter to USB, which allows me to plug the microphone directly into the GoPro. This is a great little rig. I use it all the time, you'll see me a lot when I'm filming and I'm just talking to camera and I'm shooting it's great. You don't have to worry about focus, you don't have to worry about anything, you can just go.
5:20 Up here on top. This is interesting. So I've got a 10 port USB hub. And you might be thinking, "Why in the world would you have that in a camera bag?" Because most everything today all the battery chargers and whatnot are USB based. So instead of having all of these cables and all of these plugs, especially when you go to a hotel and you might have you know, maybe three or four outlets in the whole room. One little box like this, I can plug in 10 battery chargers or 10 whatever that runs off of USB, a very handy dandy 10 port unit.
5:53 I got my camera strap I'll just put this over here. And that's the main bag. Now up here I'll show the GoPro Pro I do have a little screwdriver tool and then I've got all the back, camera caps in here. So when I do take the lenses off, I've got the camera and the lens caps sitting right there.
6:11 Now in the back, this is another Ulanzi product. This is a camera frame. So this allows me to mount any any phone on to here. It can be an iPhone and an Android, it can be a Google Pixel it's a universal mount. You clamp the phone right in here and now you've got some nice handles to hold on to the camera. Plus, you've got cold shoe mounts up here. So once again, I can use the microphone with a phone. No problem. Now I do also have a Rode adapter right here which allows me to take a stereo microphone and plug it into a phone port. Because keep in mind a telephone port is is a stereo headphones out but it's also a microphone and so you have to have an adapter for that. But this little guy is about $17 so if you don't want to invest in you know, one of those gimbal type things for the phone you can just get yourself one of those.
7:05 Now I'm back here I've got a lot of my my hardware for the cameras. So here's a here's a GoPro charger sitting right there. Here's my GH4 charger. Here's one of my Fuji chargers. Going in here another Fuji charger. Oh, we've got batteries. I've got three batteries for the for the GH4 right there.
7:30 I got, oh boy. I've got 1, 2, 3, 4 Fuji batteries and I know there's actually two sitting in there's so that's six Fuji batteries. Another GoPro charger. And you notice I keep the batteries inside the charger. Because the batteries are so small they're going to get thrown around in my bag so I tend to travel with them just like this so they stay inside the charger and they don't get banged up quite as much. And that's two GoPro chargers. That's it for that pocket.
7:59 This is a neat little shoe mount right here. This is especially good for the DSLRs because they only have one mounting point for a microphone. And if you want to put you know a light and a few other things on there, well now I can just go ahead and throw this little guy on there. And now I can put the microphone on here and then I can also put a light up here or vice versa. So a little unit from Vello. I want to say this is like a little $10 part right here. So that's in the bag.
8:27 Oh what do we got back here here's the flash for the for the Fuji. And oh this is the power supply for that ten port hub. So again, this is the only thing I'm going to plug into the wall and I can charge 10 devices just using that one hub. This is really great when you're traveling. What else is in here, we just keep going and going and going. Oh this is one of the large batteries for the lights. I can also use this for my portable monitor when I'm bringing my monitor on the road. This is a GoPro charger cable. I'll just put that over here get that out of the way. We're not done yet.
9:05 I see oh, these are the chargers for the lights. Right here these for the Ikan lights which here's one of them right here. This is the Onyx I want to say this is the 128, yeah, the 120 the Ikan Onyx 120 which actually I have two of these that go into this pocket. The other one's actually up here lighting up the bag. So I've got two of my lights in there. And then I've got one, two. I've got woooo I'm going to drop it. There we go. Three batteries for the lights there. This table is becoming quite full, is it not? All right. We're done. We're done inside the bag. But we're not done yet. Because over here on this side.
9:52 Here is my selfie stick. And I really like this model because it extends out twice. So it's great for when you want to get up above people where you want to do interesting things like this shot right here where I go over a cliff or I want to really give you a sense of what it looks like and then I take this on a cruise is a lot I'll shoot over the side of the ship. That's a lot of fun.
10:15 Over here on this side I've got the Joby GorillaPod. This is really handy when you're out on field shoots because not only is that a tripod but then you can wrap it around things to and mount it in different positions. And the other cool thing about this stick it actually screws into the Joby so if I need to get a taller tripod, I can just put this on the ground and then stand this up, but I can get the camera up even higher.
10:40 And are we done? Just about. So on the bottom of this camera on the bag, there's actually a laptop pouch as well and I know you can fit a 15-inch laptop not sure about a 17-inch laptop.
10:54 So now I know that this camera bag is less than $100 these days up on Amazon. And so that's everything that that's in the bag. And this is what I can go out and shoot for a week with this, I can go out shoot a feature story or shoot some social media, shoot two camera interviews. There's really not a whole lot that I can shoot. And one of the things that I might swap out would be my little Zoom audio recorder which I'm using right now to record this but you know, I can throw my Zoom audio recorder in with a microphone as well.
So that's what's in the bag. Highly recommend a bag like this so that you know you're always ready to go and then you've got everything at your fingertips.