Returning to Photography Kit

[Beccatrix]

After several weeks of reading, asking questions, and hitting up the local camera store, I'm almost ready. I'd love anyone's thoughts!

Enjoy photographing: wildlife, birds, flowers, gardening, travel, family

Waiting on shipping: R6 Mark II and RF24-105mm F4 L IS USM , 2 more Canon batteries, WANDRD Camera Cube, 77mm protective cover, lens hood for the RF 100-400, and Flexangle Tripod head.

Figuring I'll want a ND and ND graduated filter for the Galapagos and upcoming beach trips. I was thinking 3 stop soft edge? Am I going to want those for the 24-105 (77mm) or 100-400 (67mm) more likely?

Wondering if I'll regret not grabbing some type of flash with holiday sales. Probably needing an external HD to photo dump!

Any suggestions on anything basic that I'm missing would be appreciated! Two camera stores said the rain cover should be sufficient and that I wouldn't need lens covers? What about body protection?

I picked up Topaz on sale and will start LR when the body comes. I will have to save...and save...and save for a wide angle lens!

Thanks for any assistance!

 

[mdees88]

That rf 100 f2.8 macro is an awesome lens. I use mine primarily for macro but it's a great all around low light and portrait lens too. If you plan on doing any macro with it, you will definitely want a flash and a diffuser. I use a meike mk320C and an angler pfd100 diffuser. Both are inexpensive and work very well. I pretty much only shoot wildlife and I have never had much of a need for ND filters. I understand their use for adding motion blur to waves, etc. This would lean me towards getting them for your 24-105 and not the 100-400. I think it's always best to buy larger diameter filters because I'm fairly certain you can adapt them to smaller diameter lenses with step down rings. I only use flash for macro so there might be better flashes for other uses but the one I recommended works well for me for macro. I also have a godox T350c flash and while it worked pretty good, the recycle time was a little slow when doing high speed continuous shots of insects and it would have several black images as a result. This will not be an issue for normal portrait use or shooting flowers, etc. So it is a good flash but I prefer the meike for my fast shooting macro. If you buy either, you will want to buy a set of panasonic eneloop pro rechargeable AA's for it. These are some of the best batteries that are rated for use with flashes.

Those sandisk extreme pro cards are good but 32 gigs is not a lot of storage, especially if you decide to record some video. About 1000 raw photos from the R6II should fill up one 32g card. I can shoot that much in an hour if I get trigger happy, lol. Recording at the highest quality 4k 60p video setting on an R6, 32g will only hold 2 minutes worth of video, and at a normal 4k 30fps it will hold a little over 8 minutes.

I prefer to have way more storage than needed because I never intend to swap out a card in the field (due to running out of space). I would recommend at minimum a 128g USH II card (V60 speed minimum but V90 is faster). 256g or more is a necessity if you plan on recording video. I run one 256g and one 128g in both my cameras. I think my 128g is v90 and is my primary and the 256 is v60 (less expensive) and is for overflow or set to dedicated video). Is that much storage overkill for photo only use, maybe, but I can shoot many days worth of photos without worrying about filling up my cards. I also haven't needed an external hard drive (one more thing to keep up with and possibly lose/forget to bring) since I have so much storage in the camera. Compared to the price of the these cameras, storage is really not too bad these days.

Since you already have the SD cards you can definitely use them as long as you are not shooting video. Having two in your camera is 64g and if you shoot in craw instead of raw that should give you around 4000 images split between the two cards. That's decent, just not ideal...

That rain cover in your kit looks like it covers both the lens and the body so that might be all you need.

 

[Beccatrix]

That rf 100 f2.8 macro is an awesome lens. I use mine primarily for macro but it's a great all around low light and portrait lens too. If you plan on doing any macro with it, you will definitely want a flash and a diffuser. I use a meike mk320C and an angler pfd100 diffuser. Both are inexpensive and work very well. I pretty much only shoot wildlife and I have never had much of a need for ND filters. I understand their use for adding motion blur to waves, etc. This would lean me towards getting them for your 24-105 and not the 100-400. I think it's always best to buy larger diameter filters because I'm fairly certain you can adapt them to smaller diameter lenses with step down rings. I only use flash for macro so there might be better flashes for other uses but the one I recommended works well for me for macro. I also have a godox T350c flash and while it worked pretty good, the recycle time was a little slow when doing high speed continuous shots of insects and it would have several black images as a result. This will not be an issue for normal portrait use or shooting flowers, etc. So it is a good flash but I prefer the meike for my fast shooting macro. If you buy either, you will want to buy a set of panasonic eneloop pro rechargeable AA's for it. These are some of the best batteries that are rated for use with flashes.

Those sandisk extreme pro cards are good but 32 gigs is not a lot of storage, especially if you decide to record some video. About 1000 raw photos from the R6II should fill up one 32g card. I can shoot that much in an hour if I get trigger happy, lol. Recording at the highest quality 4k 60p video setting on an R6, 32g will only hold 2 minutes worth of video, and at a normal 4k 30fps it will hold a little over 8 minutes.

I prefer to have way more storage than needed because I never intend to swap out a card in the field (due to running out of space). I would recommend at minimum a 128g USH II card (V60 speed minimum but V90 is faster). 256g or more is a necessity if you plan on recording video. I run one 256g and one 128g in both my cameras. I think my 128g is v90 and is my primary and the 256 is v60 (less expensive) and is for overflow or set to dedicated video). Is that much storage overkill for photo only use, maybe, but I can shoot many days worth of photos without worrying about filling up my cards. I also haven't needed an external hard drive (one more thing to keep up with and possibly lose/forget to bring) since I have so much storage in the camera. Compared to the price of the these cameras, storage is really not too bad these days.

Since you already have the SD cards you can definitely use them as long as you are not shooting video. Having two in your camera is 64g and if you shoot in craw instead of raw that should give you around 4000 images split between the two cards. That's decent, just not ideal...

That rain cover in your kit looks like it covers both the lens and the body so that might be all you need.

Thanks for the info! We did get 256g cards for the GoPro. If I have 13 active days on our trip of hiking between the Amazon and Galapagos, how many overall gigs would you recommend (there are another 2 days of travel and 2 days in a city)? GoPro will be used for snorkeling. Mix of video and pics on the camera. Do I want to swap and store cards daily in case of failure? I'd love to avoid taking my laptop. I'm so nervous about running out of room!

I did pick up the diffuser, and I'll see if my store has that flash!

 

[mdees88]

It's hard to say, I have never travelled to a place like that to take photos so my opinion may not be the best on this. Most all my trips are 1/2 day and I transfer them to my desktop when I get home and I was thinking in more of that perspective.

It really boils down to how many photos you plan on taking, whether you are shooting in raw, craw, or jpeg, and at what point you will transfer them to a laptop. I just found the specs for the R6 II and one 32G card will hold 3700 jpegs, 2350 craws, or 1170 raw photos. I shoot in craw and I like that the file sizes are half the size of raws.

If I was going on a once in a lifetime photography trip, I would probably set my camera to record to both cards at the same time. This way if one card gets corrupted (rare, but does happen) the other one will be fine. Then I would transfer my photos to my laptop after each event/trip/end of day. So I would end up using the same two cards for the whole trip but that's just how I like to do it, but I've also never gone on a trip like that before so im speculating.

I think the best practice is to record to two cards, download to a hardrive on a laptop, and to an external hard drive so you have two separate copies in two different locations. I think that is what the pros do but how much of that is really necessary I'm not sure. Would definitely be great for peace of mind.

Using several smaller cards and changing them often is probably a better option to be honest. You can use one for each event or day, then you swap it out for a fresh one after that event or when it is full, and if you ever do have a card failure you are only losing a limited amount of photos instead of losing a bunch you had on one card. So you may be better using multiple small cards as long as you are okay with carrying extras on your person and keeping up with them all (which one is which). I just prefer to never fill one up if I can.

So again, it boils down to how many pictures you are planning to take and which format you are shooting in, and whether you are recording to two cards simultaneously or not. Your four 32g cards will hold 14,800 jpegs, 9,400 craws, or 4,680 raws. They will hold half that much if you decide to write to 2 cards at once. If you are bringing your laptop, you should be fine. If you are not bringing your laptop you "may" still be fine but I would probably add a couple more cards to be safe. You can get two 64g uhs ii v60 cards for pretty cheap and that will double your storage capacity.

My needs are likely not the same as yours. I shoot wildlife almost exclusively. I shoot at 12fps and every single time I press the shutter I take 5-10 photos (so I can pick the sharpest one later). Then if I sneak a little closer to my subject, I rattle off 10 more, get even closer 10 more, he changes his pose I take 10 more, the sun comes out from behind a cloud I take 10 more. If the bird starts flapping its wings I may take close to a hundred images in several 2-3 second bursts. I could easily take over a thousand images in a good morning. If I was primarily shooting landscapes, people, or scenery I probably would only take a hundred or two.

The meiki is a rather low profile flash. The godox is a little taller and is shaped like most all other flashes, it might be a better flash for portraits and stuff but I only use flashes for macro. That's just the two I use and they both have worked well.