What’s in the Bag?
This is what I typically carry around in most outdoor, walk-around shooting situations:
Lowepro 75 AW top-loading holster bag
(great for dusty and damp situations)Really Right Stuff Arca-Swiss L-bracket
(for tripod shooting)Singh-Ray LB Warming Polarizer (slim)
(for landscapes)Hoya Pro-1 S-HMC UV filter
(B+W MRC filters work great, too)Lens hood
Extra compact flash cards
Extra batteries
WhiBal gray-card reference
(for white balance; “studio” size works well)Allen wrench for RRS bracket
Gallon- and quart-sized Ziplock bags
(for cold-weather and wet shoots)
My favorite walk-around lens at the moment is the 17-55 f/2.8 DX lens. The eventual prosumer full-frame Nikon DSLR with the new 24-70mm f/2.8 lens would be a dream combination, but the 17-55 DX is no slouch!
In ultra-light situations, I just take the 18-200 VR on a D40/D40x/D60 with a few SD cards and an extra battery. All of this fits compactly in the Lowepro Rezo TLZ 20 toploading holster bag. These consumer DSLRs have such great battery life that I could ditch the bag and just put an 8GB or 16GB SD card and go!
In the no-DSLR, ultra-ultra-light situation, I carry the Fujifilm F31FD point-and-shoot gem. One battery and a 2GB XD (yes, XD, blah) card last for a whole day’s worth of shooting. Stop down a little to avoid the dreaded purple fringing.
The list of items explodes for wedding and event shooting. Flash photography equipment sure takes up a lot of bag space! More on that later…
P.S. Some online stores say that the D60 + 18-55 VR kit lens will fit in a Lowepro TLZ 10. Unfortunately, this combo won’t fit. The D40 + non-VR kit lens will probably fit, but the newer kit lens is just a little to long! Use the TLZ 20 instead.