Surf Photography Gear – What I have – Updated

If you follow this site you’ll know I’ve picked up a few bits of new surf photography gear, the last post I did on the subject was nearly a year ago and I’ve been busy researching and investing in new toys since so here’s my current set-up:

1. Yongnuo YN460 II Speedlight Flash – good value flash gun which I bought specifically to try out remote flash photography, but which has been useful for my other photography too, you can read about my experiments with flash in my series of posts on the subject.
2. Canon 270 EX speed light – a smaller flash unit which is a bit more user friendly than the Yongnuo flash, perfect for parties.
3. Battery Grip with 2 spare batteries – I’ve been shooting some more video with the 60D recently so I picked up a cheap battery grip with batteries as video rinses power a lot quicker than stills, this one is a knock off brand but I’ve had good luck with them in the past and it’s been working fine for a few months now, it even has a tray which accepts AA batteries just in case you really can’t find a charger anywhere.
4. Panasonic GF1 with kit lens – backup camera for shooting second angle video and stills if I don’t want to carry around the 60D, see more about compact system cameras in my dedicated post.
5. Canon EOS converter for Micro Four thirds – allows me to use my Canon EF mount lenses on the Panasonic GF1 body.
6. Giottos Rocket Blower – for blowing dust off the lenses and sensor, and clearing sand or other debris from housings and ports, a cheap, useful addition to my kit.
7. Canon 50mm f1.8 – same as before.
8. Canon 28mm f2.8 lens – it fits in the housing with the flat port and gives me a normal length lens on my Canon 60D, great for shooting from the shoulder.
9. Tokina 10-17mm Fisheye – I got this a while ago now, I’m really happy with it for water shots, if you want to know more about the lens you can read a more in depth comparison with my old Sigma 10-20mm wide angle.
10. Yongnuo RF-603 flash triggers – for triggering the flash remotely from the camera, a cheap and cheerful set of radio triggers are great fun to mess about with out of the water too, you can try and emulate the kind of remote flash shots featured in the Red Bull Illume finalists.
11. Miscellaneous SD cards – same as before + a second 32GB Sandisk extreme card with Magic Lantern on it.
12. Canon 70-200mm f4 L lens, the non image stabilised version, see my full review for more.
13. GoPro Hero 2 & accessories – same as before.
14. Aquatech CR-60 Housing – same as before
15. Aquatech LP-5 flat port – for shooting with the 50mm and 28mm lenses, it makes the whole unit much more manageable but it requires a totally different technique for keeping the port dry.
16. Aquatech LP-3 8 inch Dome port – same as before
17. Canon 60D – same as before (Not Pictured)
18. DIY Flash Housing (Not Pictured) – read more about it in my dedicated post.
19. Canon 17-85mm IS (Not pictured) – general purpose zoom which I mostly use for video.
20. Squeegee (Not Pictured) – I bought a cheap squeegee then cut it down and attached it to the housing leash so I can clear the flat port of drops more easily.
21. Velbon PH-368 (Not Pictured) – Fluid Tripod head – for smooth pans, a big improvement on my old Manfrotto head, a head like this is essential if you want to get smooth footage of surfing.
22. PeliCase 1510 wheely travel case (Not Pictured) – I reckon it will last forever and will be able to fit the majority of my camera gear now and in the future, it’s the maximum carry on size for most major airlines and has wheels so it should be the perfect case to compliment a board bag on long haul trips.
23. Samsung 21.5″ LED monitor (Not Pictured) – I was given a new PC for my birthday so I invested in a decent monitor to go with it, it’s done wonders for my photo editing, my old monitor was probably about 8 years old and is now working well as my second monitor so hopefully this one will last just as long.

When I get round to sorting all this gear out for a trip I’ll do a how to on preparing and packing up the case, I’ll probably try and shoot a video too as I’ve not found any good ones on the process from start to finish of getting the case laid out with custom foam.