There is a particular kind of regret that only photographers know. It does not hit at home, where your kit feels complete. It hits on day three of the big trip: the once-in-years trip, the Iceland trip, the safari, the month in Japan. The last battery dies an hour before golden light, the memory card fills at the wrong temple, or the camera takes a knock in an overhead bin and the autofocus is never quite the same. In that moment every photographer thinks the same thing: this would have cost me almost nothing to prevent.
The list below is built from that exact feeling and updated for the 2026/27 travel season. Ask travelling photographers what they wish they had bought before the first big trip, and the answers are rarely lenses or bodies. They are the unglamorous supporting cast, and the same eleven come back with remarkable consistency.
1. More batteries than seems reasonable
The universal number-one answer. At home, one spare battery is plenty because you are never far from a socket. On a trip, everything conspires against you: cold mornings that halve capacity, long days with no charging window, video eating power, and the golden-hour session that starts exactly when the display turns red. Mirrorless bodies are hungry, and "two spares" is the point where most travelling photographers finally relax.
Two upgrades pay for themselves at once: a USB-C charger that refills batteries from a power bank in the car or on a train, and a strict personal system for separating full from empty (arrow stickers, a two-compartment pouch, anything). One more thing to settle before the airport: spare lithium batteries travel in your cabin bag, never in the hold. Our guide to items you cannot bring on a plane has the details.
2. Memory cards, and a plan for them
Cards are cheap until the moment you need one in a village with no camera shop. Shooting RAW on a modern high-resolution body, a card that lasts a month at home fills in three enthusiastic travel days. The regret is not just capacity. It is having every card from the trip in the same camera bag, one theft away from losing everything.
The travelling photographer's card rule: several cards of moderate size rather than one giant one (a failed 1 TB card is a catastrophe, a failed 128 GB card is a bad afternoon), a proper card wallet, filled cards stored apart from the camera bag, and nothing erased until the photos exist in two other places.
3. A real backup solution
Nobody regrets buying a rugged travel SSD. Plenty of people regret not buying one, usually while filing a police report about a stolen bag that held a camera and every photo from the trip. The camera is insured and replaceable. The photos are the one genuinely irreplaceable thing you carry.
A workable road routine takes ten minutes an evening: copy cards to a compact SSD, keep the SSD physically separate from the camera bag, and where bandwidth allows push your selects to the cloud overnight. Two copies in two places, always.
4. The filters that do not exist in post
Most filter effects can be simulated in software now. Two cannot. A circular polariser physically removes reflections from water, wet foliage and glass, and no slider recreates the fish visible through an alpine lake's surface. A solid ND filter is what makes silky waterfalls and emptied city squares possible at midday.
5. The tripod you will actually carry
Everyone owns a tripod. The regret is owning the wrong one for travel: sturdy studio legs that weigh 3 kg and therefore stay at the hotel every evening, precisely when blue hour, night markets and star fields happen. The best travel tripod is defined by one metric, whether it is with you at 9 pm.
That means genuinely compact and light (carbon if the budget allows), tall enough rather than tall, and stable enough for your heaviest lens with the centre column down. It unlocks the half of photography that happens after sunset.
6. A sensor and lens cleaning kit
Change lenses on a beach in Portugal or a dusty track in Andalusia and you will meet the travel photographer's constant companion: the sensor spot. At home it is a minor annoyance fixed by the local service. On the road it is a grey blob on three thousand frames of sky, plus evenings of cloning it out.
The kit weighs about 200 grams: a rocket blower (never canned air, because propellant on a sensor is a service-visit mistake), a lens pen and microfibre cloths. For the full routine, see our rules for shooting in dust and sand.
7. Weather protection for shooting, not hiding
The best conditions for photographs are the worst conditions for cameras: storms, spray, fog, snowfall. Weather-sealed bodies handle drizzle, but the photographers who come home with the dramatic frames are equipped to keep shooting when everyone else packs up. That means a simple rain cover (or the zip-bag-and-rubber-band field version), an absorbent towel, and a handful of silica gel sachets against the condensation that forms every time cold gear enters a warm room. Our guide to shooting in the rain covers the techniques.
8. Proper transport, the purchase everyone makes second
Repair counters see the same pattern constantly. The first big trip happens with a padded shoulder bag doing double duty as flight luggage, boot storage and hiking pack. The second big trip happens with a hard case, because in between something got crushed in an overhead compartment, soaked in a boat transfer, or slowly vibrated out of alignment on gravel roads. Soft bags are superb for the day's shooting kit. They are not transport protection for a system worth thousands of euros.
A watertight hard case with foam or adjustable dividers changes the logistics of a trip. Gear can be checked into a hold or strapped to a roof rack without anxiety, dust and humidity stay out overnight, and the case doubles as a dry seat and a lens-changing table in the field. The Peli Air range is built from HPX² polymer, up to 40% lighter than conventional hard cases, with IP67 sealing, an automatic pressure equalisation valve and Press and Pull latches. If the case has to fly as cabin baggage, check dimensions against your airline first. Our guide to cabin luggage dimensions and their five traps covers the pitfalls, and camera case, bag or backpack helps you decide which format suits your kit.
Hard cases photographers take on trip number two
Peli Air 1485 Carry-On Case
Exterior 48.7 × 32.5 × 17.5 cm, 2.1 kg empty. The slim, compact choice for one body and a few lenses.
Peli Air 1555 Photographic Case
Exterior 62.9 × 39.3 × 20.9 cm, 3.3 kg empty. Room for two bodies, several lenses and a drone.
Peli 1525 Air Waterproof Case
Exterior 55.8 × 35.5 × 19 cm, 2.7 kg empty. The middle size for a body, lenses and a controller.
Peli Air 1465 Ultralight Case
Exterior 52.9 × 32.1 × 32.4 cm, 3.2 kg empty. The deep one for long lenses and bulky accessories.
Which case for which kit
| Model | Interior (cm) | Weight empty / with foam | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Peli Air 1485 | 45.1 × 25.9 × 15.6 | 2.1 kg / 2.4 kg | One body, two or three lenses, cabin travel |
| Peli Air 1525 | 52.1 × 28.7 × 17.1 | 2.7 kg / 3.2 kg | Body, lenses and a drone controller |
| Peli Air 1555 | 58.4 × 32.4 × 19.1 | 3.3 kg / 4.1 kg | Two bodies, several lenses, accessories |
| Peli Air 1465 | 47.3 × 25.4 × 27.8 | 3.2 kg / 4 kg | Long lenses and deep kit |
9. Insurance that actually covers the gear
The purchase that feels most optional until it is the only thing that matters. Standard travel insurance typically caps valuables at a level that would not replace one good lens, let alone a system, and many policies quietly exclude professional equipment or theft from vehicles, which is exactly how camera gear tends to disappear.
Before the trip, check what your existing policies genuinely cover, price a dedicated gear policy or a rider if the numbers do not reach your kit's value, and spend fifteen minutes photographing serial numbers, receipts and the kit itself. That folder, stored in the cloud, turns a claim from an argument into a formality.
10. A carrying system that survives day five
The factory neck strap is an instrument of slow torture, and every photographer notices at the same moment: day three or four of a walking-heavy trip, when the neck ache becomes the dominant memory of a beautiful city. A camera that hurts to carry gets left behind, and the best camera is the one you have with you.
The fix is cheap relative to what hangs from it: a sliding sling strap, a chest harness for hiking, or a belt clip system, whichever matches how you actually move.
11. A power strategy for the whole kit
The modern photo kit is a small electronics department: camera batteries, a drone, a phone running maps, sometimes a laptop, a headlamp, tracker tags. The regret here is arriving with one wall charger and one socket adapter, then spending every evening on charging triage, or rationing shots on a battery that could not be topped up in the airport, the bus or the tent.
The setup that ends the problem: a multi-port USB-C GaN charger (one socket charges everything overnight), a serious power bank, ideally one that can feed the laptop too, short cables for the daypack and a long one for the hostel wall, and plug adapters for every region on the itinerary, bought at home for pennies rather than at the airport for the price of lunch. See travel adapters and chargers abroad for the ways it goes wrong.
The pattern in the regrets
Read back through the eleven and notice that the combined cost is a fraction of one camera body, yet each item protects, extends or rescues the shots the whole trip was for. Batteries and cards keep you shooting. Backups and insurance make disasters survivable. Filters, tripod and weather kit unlock the frames that make the trip worth photographing. The case, the strap and the chargers keep the whole system alive and on your shoulder for weeks at a time.
Organise the inside of your case
Peli Air 1535 TrekPak Divider Kit
Five adjustable 1.1 cm dividers and two perimeter panels, pinned in place and repositioned without tools.
Lid Pouch Mesh Organizer (1535 / 1510)
Zippered mesh pockets in the lid for cards, cables and filters.
Laptop 14–16" Lid Organizer (1535 / 1510)
Carry the laptop for evening backups in the same case as the camera.
Peli 1606 Padded Divider Set – Red
Fifteen padded panels (15 mm EPE) and six elastic webbings, 0.7 kg in total.
Unsure whether foam or dividers suit your kit? Our comparison of foam, dividers and TrekPak explains how to choose.
Frequently asked questions
How many spare batteries should I take on a long photography trip?
Two spares per body is the usual comfortable minimum, three for video, cold weather or days without charging. Keep them in your cabin bag when you fly.
Is a hard case really necessary for camera gear?
For day shooting a soft bag is fine. For flights, boat transfers, car boots and rough roads, a watertight hard case protects against crushing, water and dust in a way a padded bag cannot.
Which Peli Air case fits a camera body with several lenses?
The Peli Air 1525 suits a body with a few lenses, the 1555 suits two bodies and more lenses, and the 1485 is the slim option for a lighter kit. The 1465 is the deeper case for long lenses.
Foam or dividers inside the case?
Pick N Pluck foam gives a fixed, snug fit. Padded dividers and TrekPak let you rearrange the layout whenever the kit changes, which suits photographers who swap lenses between trips.
