Packing Sony Camera Gear for Paris
Paris is the most beautiful city in the world. The City of Lights, magnificent architecture, art, the flow of the Seine River, the opulence of Kings and Emperors, with no skyscrapers blocking the views. I just returned from a week in this majestic city and I am mostly pleased with the photographs I was able to capture. While a 
professional travel photographer can devote the resources to getting the perfect photographs at the ideal time with the best gear, most enthusiasts will find themselves in a place like Paris as part of a vacation and will need to make some compromises. My general travel philosophy is summed up in the Two lens travel solution. For Paris, I actually packed three lenses and additional gear.
In this post, I’ll cover the Sony mirrorless kit I pieced together, the reasons for the gear I chose, and some general recommendations for photographing Paris. I’ll dive deeper into to some Paris photography tips in future posts.
As a Sony shooter, this post will cover some Sony gear. Generally speaking, mirrorless is ideal for travel, whether a Sony A7/A6xxx camera, Canon M/R or Nikon Z. While the size advantages or mirrorless are sometimes overstated, mirrorless cameras and wide angle mirrorless lenses do save some bulk when traveling, without compromising quality. Non-Sony shooters can easily adapt this article to their own system.
Travel Photography Priorities for Paris
For most enthusiasts, photography when traveling requires significant compromises. You don’t want to be weighted down with too much camera gear. Not only will lots of gear break your back on days you may be walking and touring extensively, but you also deal with airline and security restrictions. In many Paris tourist sights, larger bags and tripods will be forbidden. Even worse, they don’t provide lockers for your gear so if you show up with forbidden items, you’re just barred entry. Additionally, if you are traveling with friends or family, they may not have the patience for you to spend an hour setting up your gear, finding the perfect spot, and waiting for the perfect sunset photo.
For many people when they travel, they prioritize the ability to take the maximum number of photos while carrying the least gear. In today’s world, for those that aren’t really photography enthusiasts, that means a phone. For some people, it means the biggest zoom range they can carry simply, whether a bridge camera or a super zoom lens. I do not favor those options. A super zoom lens, like the Sony 24-240mm (Sony 24-240mm review), may cover a lot of zoom range, but it’s making the wrong trade offs. While gaining zoom range, you lose low light ability and you lose significant image quality. While gaining the convenience of a single lens, it’s a rather heavy single lens, where other kits may be much easier to carry during the day.
So my priorities for Paris and similar trips:
- Image Quality: Paris is one of the most beautiful urban locations. Shooting in such locations should be a reason you own good camera gear, a reason you learned photography. My goal isn’t to come home with thousands of Facebook quality images from all over Paris. My goal is to come back with a few very impressive photographs of a very memorable location and trip. I’d rather have 1 photo I can frame than 1,000 photos for facebook.
- Portability: If I was going completely on image quality, it would mean a bag of 1.4 primes and 2.8 zooms. It would mean lighting gear, tripods and other accessories. But as long as I know I can maintain a fairly high level of quality, I start making reasonable tradeoffs to keep the kit portable. The entire kit must be capable of air travel. On a daily basis, it must be of size and weight that I can carry during long walks in the heat without regret.
- Wide angle: Seems most vacation photographers, especially less experienced photographers, are most concerned with having enough telephoto reach when they travel. But if I’m not going on a safari, I don’t care much about telephoto reach. Sure, I might miss a few shots of details in the distance if I don’t have a 300mm lens, but travel is immersive. It’s not about the details seen through binoculars, it’s about the scenery all around you. A wide angle is immersive, as demonstrated in this post about the Sony 12-24mm at Universal Theme Park.
Photography Gear for Paris Travel
Some people will look at the above image and think I overpacked a huge amount while others will see it as a sparse collection. Deviating from my own typical 2-lens travel, I did go with 3 lenses. A full discussion of what was packed and why, followed by specific examples of using most of the items.
- Sony A7riii (on Amazon / Adorama): I own both the Sony A7riii and Sony A9. While I often resent the large files of the Sony A7riii (I wish there were better compression options), I wanted all those megapixels for some landscapes. Additionally, given that I was not packing a true telephoto lens, the 42 megapixels of the Sony A7riii gave me more room to crop. And as of July 14, 2019, the Sony A7riii is marked down to its lowest ever price, under $2500.
- Sony 24-105mm F/4 G (Review / Amazon / Adorama): While I often prefer prime lenses, the Sony 24-105mm promised to get me a very useful range from wide angle to short telephoto. With 42 megapixels to crop, I could essentially get images with enough resolution for the equivalent to 200mm. Given that this was a family vacation, it would also be appropriate for some portraits.
- Sony 12-24mm F/4 G (Review / Amazon / Adorama): In many ways, my favorite lens. The majority of my best images came from the Sony 12-24mm. Not just for landscapes, but for architecture interiors such as the Grand Opera House and the inside of the palace of Versaille.
- Sony Zeiss 55mm F/1.8 (Review / Amazon / Adorama): I always travel with a fast normal prime. It is a lightweight walk-around option and also an important tool in potential low light locations where you can’t shoot with a flash. Inside museums and churches, for example. The new Sony 35mm F/1.8 (pre-order on Adorama) may become a great option to fill this slot in the future.
- DJI Osmo Pocket (Amazon / Adorama): A really good option for video and generally an upgrade over action cams in most ways. Can certainly use the video in the camera, but this was a compact discrete second option. My kids were usually tasked with taking some video while I focused on photography. It’s shown with its charging case, which extends the battery life as well as providing compact storage.
- Extra batteries (Amazon / Adorama): While the Sony A7riii battery life is generally acceptable, wouldn’t want to risk running out of battery power when you’re away from a charger for the whole day.
- Godox TT350 flash (Amazon / Adorama): While I don’t use a flash often on a trip, a small portable flash is an important tool as fill flash and for some potential backlit situations, as demonstrated below. The Godox TT350 is small and affordable, and just as good as Sony branded flashes. (Known as Flashpoint at Adorama)
- Two tripod options! You likely would not be able to bring a full size tripod into most of the museums and indoor sites in Paris. So the goal is to find portable options that you can carry everywhere and use any time. First, we have the Green Pod. (Amazon / Adorama). The Green Pod is little more than a beanbag. As nothing more than a beanbag, it was easy to carry everywhere. Any time a long exposure scene presented itself, I knew there would be a way to capture it. I also brought my typical favorite, the GorillaPod 3K (Amazon / Adorama), actually providing at least a little bit of height to the camera. While I prefer the Gorillapod, it isn’t quite as extremely portable and I was concerned it could get confiscated at museum security checks where tripods might not be allowed.
- Rocket blower (not pictured) (Amazon / Adorama): Mirrorless cameras are dust magnets. Do not travel without a rocket blower. While I didn’t typically carry it with me during the day, I blew off any accumulated dust each evening when returning to the hotel.
- Ipad Pro (not pictured) with Lightroom and SD – USB-C reader: Why wait until get you get to transfer thousands of raw files to your computer and start editing. While Sony cameras let you transfer jpegs to your phone, transferring raw files isn’t so easy. Lightroom is super fast on an ipad pro, and the card reader makes image transfers easy.
- TWO CAMERA BAGS? WHY? The majority of the space in the photograph is taken up by two different camera bags. You may ask, if my goal is portability, then why pack two camera bags. The larger bag is the Peak Design Everyday 20L bag. (Amazon / Adorama). This backpack was for lugging everything around. Plenty of room for all my chargers and cables, for my ipad, for both tripods at once. This was my packmule bag. But I knew I wouldn’t need to carry everything everywhere. I could pick and choose gear for the activities planned for the day, leaving the rest in the hotel. So in my suitcase, stuffed away, I brought the Peak Design Every Day Sling 5L (Amazon / Adorama). This small camera bag, or unassuming man-purse, could carry quite a bit, comfortably over the shoulder. It allowed for fast lens changes. And I didn’t have to worry about the bag being too big for any Paris tourist sight security check points. The bag held the gear I needed for a day of shooting, except for the camera which was across my other shoulder.
Packing Camera Gear for a Day of Sightseeing
As noted above, on most days, I carried the camera on one shoulder and filled a Every Day Sling 5L on other days. Above, you can see what the bag looked like on a typical day, filled up. So how much is actually in the bag? Well, assume I already have the camera and one lens on one shoulder. Now, let’s unpack the sling:
As you can see as we unpack the bag above, when completely full, it was able to hold my other two lenses, the Green Pod, the Osmo Pocket video camera, the small flash and an extra battery. All without feeling likeI was packing a massive camera bag.
While the fit was a bit tighter and required some bending, it was possible to squeeze in the Gorillapod with some other gear:
Results: Paris Photos with the Sony A7riii travel kit:
I plan additional upcoming posts, getting into details of how each lens was used in Paris. But let’s demonstrate the value of the various items we packed and how they were used to capture aspects of Paris.
Portable Tripod: Paris Long Exposures
Paris is the City of Lights. Whatever the actual reason for the nickname, there is no question that Paris comes alive with illumination in the evening, and a tripod is the best way to capture such images. A tripod allows the capture of the scene at low ISO, which translates into a much higher quality image that also allows for more editing flexibility.
The image on the top of the page of the Eiffel tower was taken with the Green Pod placed on the ground, bit like this:
But let’s take a look at the Louvre at night with the gorillapod:
Not only was the Louvre image taken with long exposures, it was also a HDR composite of 5 images. It could not have been achieved handheld.
Tripods aren’t just for night. Tripods will be forbidden inside just about any indoor tourist location in Paris, but nobody blinked twice when I used the Green Pod balanced on a railing at the church of St. Chapelle:
Flash (Godox TT350) in Paris
In the above images, my daughter demonstrates the need for a flash, if shooting environmental portraits. As noted, I used the small portable Godox TT350 flash (Amazon / Adorama).
The need for the flash is obvious in the first night time image of my daughter in front of the Eiffel Tower. With the lit-up tower behind her, she would have been in total shadow without a flash.
The second image is taken in Giverney, in the gardens of Claude Monet. When I’m doing a typical portrait session, the light is more important than the environmental scene, so I’ll move my subject to an area of even shade. That would defeat the purpose on a trip like this, where the background is so critical. In this case, proper use of flash allowed for a nicely exposed environmental portrait.
Wide Angle: Sony 12-24mm F/4 in Paris
I’ll do a future post solely devoted to the Sony 12-24mm F/4 G (Review / Amazon / Adorama) in Paris, but I’ll start with a few demonstrative images..
Landscapes
The Sony 12-24mm F/4 proved especially valuable for architectural interior scenes:
Normal Zoom: Sony 24-105mm F/4 in Paris
The Sony 24-105mm F/4 G (Review / Amazon / Adorama) proved pretty darn versatile when the situation did not allow for foot zoom. Combined with the 42 megapixels of the Sony A7riii and cropping, it became a reasonable telephoto lens substitute.
The same location and scene, as we go from a 30mm image to a 105mm image..
Images taken at 105mm and then cropped even further…
And a few images taken in the middle of the focal range..
Prime Lens in Paris: Sony 55mm F/1.8
I actually used the Sony Zeiss 55mm F/1.8 (Review / Amazon / Adorama) a bit less than I expected in Paris. Most museums are surprisingly bright and airy so a super fast aperture was not critical. Still, it allowed me to shoot in museums at F2.8, it’s a pretty good portrait lens. So it was certainly worth bringing..
Low light details at the Grand Opera House (Palais Garnier) in Paris with the Sony 55mm F/1.8:
Art museums and the chapel at Versaille with the Sony 55mm F/1.8:
Some portraits with the 55mm F/1.8:
Conclusion: The Keys to Planning Paris Photography
The most critical thing about planning photography for an upcoming vacation is to actually plan. Many people fear they will forget a critical piece of camera gear. But planning for travel also needs to take the opposite into consideration: You don’t want to be stuck carrying too much.
A mirrorless camera, like the Sony A7riii, can pack a lot of image quality into a fairly small body. Not everyone would agree with my lens selections but everyone should carefully consider the types of shots that are most important to them. I would discourage you from obsessing about getting every shot. Instead focus more on making sure you’re able to get your most critical images at the highest quality.
If you do enjoy photography and travel, there is no better place to combine the two than Paris.
As of July 14, 2019, much of the gear discussed in this post is on sale. While Sony routinely raises and lowers the prices of their cameras and lenses, some of these prices are the lowest they have ever been. So it could be a good time to pick up Sony cameras and lenses for the remainder of your summer travel shooting:
Sony A7riii: $500 off as of July 14, 2019 (Amazon)
From Adorama, get the Sony A7riii at the same discounted price with the gorillapod used in this post, plus a full size tripod and camera bag.
Sony 24-105mm F/4 G, $200 off as of July 14, 2019 (Amazon)
A note to my readers, it was a busy June shooting a few weddings, and a busy early July with travel. In the near future, I’ll be posting my review of the Sony 70-200mm F/2.8GM, more Paris photography information, and other articles. Please follow me on twitter or accept notifications from this blog to get the newest content.
