What's In My Camera Bag

What's In My Camera Bag... December 2025 Edition

Over the past few years, I have owned and used almost all of the high-end mirrorless cameras from all the major brands, including Canon, Fujifilm, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, and Sony.  Each of them comes with a mix of compelling features as well as some irritating compromises, and none of them is perfect for all situations.  All of these cameras are capable of producing excellent results, so the question of which is the "right" camera system mostly comes down to personal preferences.  

In terms of over-all performance, the Canon EOS R5 II is easily the best camera on the market in 2025, especially when size, weight, and cost are factored into the equation.  However, Canon's current mirrorless lens lineup is somewhat limited compared to the competition, and I found Canon's premier RF 600mm f4L IS telephoto to be a little difficult to work with due to it size and weight distribution, so in early 2025 I decided to move back to the Nikon system to take advantage of their fairly extensive line of smaller and lighter telephoto lenses.  It was not a perfect solution, though - Nikon's autofocus performance, exposure metering, and white balance detection are all a notch or two below the current Canon and Sony cameras, and the stacked imaging sensors in Nikon's flagship cameras have less dynamic range than the competition. 

As nice as some of Nikon's telephoto prime lenses are, there are some weaknesses in their lens lineup as well, especially at the wide end of the range.  This, coupled with the inability to match Canon or Sony in terms of sheer performance or image quality, led me to conclude that the small advantage of a few telephoto lenses was ultimately not worth the tradeoffs.  Recent firmware upgrades to the Sony A1 and A7RV cameras greatly improved their usefulness for many of the types of photography I do, and given Sony's significantly larger selection of available high-performance lenses, it led me back to that system.

As of December 2025, my camera bag contains the following Sony gear:

Sony A1 II  50-megapixel stacked sensor mirrorless camera

Sony A7R V   60-megapixel mirrorless camera

Sony FE 16-35mm f2.8 GM II lens

Sony FE 20mm f1.8 G lens

Sony FE 24-105mm f4 G OSS lens

Sony FE 90mm f2.8 Macro G OSS lens

Sony FE 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 GM OSS lens

Sony FE 200-600mm f5.6-6.2 G OSS lens

Sony FE 400-800mm f6.3-8 G OSS lens

Sony FE 1.4x teleconverter

The recent introduction of Sony's 400-800mm G lens helped seal the deal - it weighs virtually the same as the Nikon 800mm f6.3 VR, and replaces both the 800mm f6.3 VR and 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR in my bag - a huge weight (and size) savings at the rather insignificant cost of only 2/3 of a stop of light.  What's not insignificant is the weight savings when comparing the camera bodies - my Sony A1 and A7RV combined weigh about the same as the oversized Nikon Z9.

Up until October 2025, my camera kit for wildlife, nature, travel, and landscape photography was based on the Nikon Z mirrorless system:

Nikon Z9  45-megapixel mirrorless camera

Nikon Z7 II  45-megapixel mirrorless camera

Nikon Nikkor Z 14-30mm f4 S lens

Nikon Nikkor Z 20mm f/1.8 S lens

Nikon Nikkor Z 24-120mm f4 S lens

Nikon Nikkor Z 105mm f2.8 MC VR S macro lens

Nikon Nikkor Z 180-600mm f5.6-6.3 VR lens

Nikon Nikkor Z 800mm f6.3 VR S lens

Nikkor Z 1.4x TC teleconverter

Other Equipment I Use:

Apple MacBook Pro laptop computer
Gitzo carbon fiber tripods
Arca-Swiss ball heads

Kase, Lee, and Zeiss filters

Dynamic Perception Stage Zero motion time lapse rig (now discontinued...)
Clik Elite, MindShift and ThinkTank camera bags (you can never have too many camera bags... )