Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan, today on The Slanted Lens I'm gonna talk about how we pack to come
here to Cuba.
We pack very light, much lighter than I've ever packed before, so let's take a look at
what we've got.
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So I'm here at the casa, or the house that we stayed at.
Wonderful house, wonderful host here, just had a great time, a great place to stay.
Right off the market, you hear the market going right outside of our window, which is
really fun, the market is right down the street here, it kinda packs up each evening and then
in the morning it comes back.
But anyway, I'm gonna talk about how I packed.
I brought this medium-sized bag by Vanguard.
I love this bag for a couple reasons, it's not too large, it's not too small.
I love the entry point on the side, this is a must for me when I travel.
I absolutely have to have this.
This makes it so I can flip off one shoulder, on a strap, I can put things in and it's easy
to work with.
But let's look exactly what I have in the bag and what I brought with me today.
First off, in the top pouch, I brought the most important thing that you need on a trip
like that and that is toilet paper, because one never knows a situation that one might
be in, toilet paper.
And snacks and more snacks, and even some more snacks.
And a headlamp.
I always carry a headlamp in here just in case I get in a dark situation at night and
I wanna be able to see something.
So that's what I have kind of in the top.
Now if we open this up, I brought Sony cameras on this trip, Sony only.
So in the top here I've got all my batteries and chargers, Sony batteries and chargers.
One knows when you're shooting with Sony, you need a ton of batteries and chargers.
And so in this main pouch here I have my a7R II and I brought a 24-70 Sony Lens and the
reason I brought that was only one reason and that is because Julene has a really hard
time shooting BTS and keeping it in focus.
So with that Sony lens, it's turnkey, it just focuses for her, you put the face smile recognition
on, and it just follows me around, so it makes it very easy to use.
And so that's the reason we brought that lens, and it's small and easy for her to use so
that's what we brought.
But the lens I love to shoot with most on my mount is 35 millimeter lens.
I just...I love it because it sees enough of the world and yet I can still use it as
a portrait type lens.
I absolutely love this lens.
So I brought a 35 and then I brought an 85 because I wanna be able to get in a little
tighter and more of a portrait kinda situation and it's just a little closer and I love that
lens for that reason.
I brought my Syrp Mini, with the cables in here.
I'm gonna do some portraits while we're here, some panoramic portraits and that'll be fun.
So I brought my Syrp Mini.
I brought an a7S for us to do BTS on.
Right now we're doing the BTS on the a7R II because of the 4K gives us the ability to
punch in.
But a7S with an adapter for my lenses.
I brought a CSLR strap.
I still love this strap, I've had it forever.
Reason I love it is because I throw it over my shoulder, I can leave this attached to
the camera, I can leave this around my shoulder underneath the backpack, so I'm not trying
to wrestle all this stuff apart and I can just pull the camera out, slide this out of
my pack, and then I can put it back on, put my camera back on.
I brought two of these which are PocketWizard Pluses because I wanna be able to run the
one strobe I bring, I want it off the camera and so it's just way off this camera.
I've gotta come up with a better solution for these, something smaller than this when
I'm traveling.
This is too big for what it needs to do.
And I know there's things out there, throw 'em in the comments if you have things that
you think would be a great alternate to that PocketWizard.
Although I love PocketWizards, they are so reliable.
But it'd just be nice to have something a little bit smaller.
This is the scariest thing I brought on this trip, and that is I did not bring a laptop,
I did not bring a way to download, I just brought a container here.
Everything I'm shooting is in one place, this is the one kind of flaw in my system here
that makes me really nervous, and that is I really should've brought a laptop and a
place to download these.
So there's what I've got in my camera bag that I carry on my back.
That's about 16 pounds, maybe a little less, but it's pretty heavy.
I try to unload some of that stuff when I get to the hotel where we're staying at, well,
not hotel, the Airbnbs, so just to get a little lighter if I'm gonna carry it around with
me during the day.
But now in my suitcase, I've got several things.
The 265 Carbon Fiber VEO tripod, which is lightweight, collapses, it's very small, and
it's just a great tripod.
Now I know that Vanguard is reworking this tripod, another version of that coming out.
It'll be interesting to see where that goes, but I've used this tripod a lot and I've liked
it a lot.
I carry my bracket for my Syrp Mini, so I can do the vertical panoramic views.
I carry the 600 Canon strobe, that's the only strobe or the only power I'm gonna have on
this trip.
Then I have a small stand with a bracket so I can put that 600 strobe on there, so I can
put the hot shoe on this and just a way to set it up, not have to have someone to hold
it.
Although I had my daughter the other night with me and she was just holding it, which
made it really easy.
And then last of all, I've got a sound kit for doing what we're doing right now, which
is really just a lav set from Sennheiser.
And I've got the Sony sound system now, that attaches on top of the camera, it gives me
inputs that go right in the camera and puts the sound right on the clip, and that way
I don't have to carry a zoom recorder or something extra, another piece of device.
I mean, this thing's fairly large in and of itself, but it does give me a mic option to
bring a mic sound into the camera and it also brings the lav into the camera, so I can have
two XLR inputs on it, which makes it very, very nice.
So that's what I have in there, that's basically my little sound kit.
And this all goes in my suitcase.
And that's what I carry.
Oh, the one thing I forgot, I did bring a reflector, a small 32-inch reflector that's
hiding in my suitcase too.
Doesn't seem like too much to me, but, you know, when you're hauling it around, day after
day and place to place, Julene's going, "That's too much equipment."
Every time we go out, Julene goes, "Less equipment, less equipment."
And pretty soon I'm just gonna have a camera with a lens.
So there's all the equipment that we brought with us to Cuba, between Jolene and I. It's
really set up so that Julene and I can work together, Julene doing BTS and me shooting.
So in our next segment, we're gonna talk about how we did our street photography, how we
did our formal portraits, and take a look at how we did that here in Cuba.
So keep those cameras rolling, keep on clicking.
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