5 travel photography essentials this summer — take stunning snaps on your next vacation

Planning a summer getaway? You’ll probably want to consider some of the best travel camera gear. And to help you pack light and shoot smart, I’ve tracked down the best Prime Day deals on my absolute favorite travel photography gear.

You don’t need a massive budget, either. Three of my top essentials — an ingenious travel tripod, a high-capacity power bank, and a reliable cleaning kit — don’t break the bank. They’re all under $100, so you have more money left over to spend on that dream destination.

I’m focusing on pure essentials: my favorite pocketable camera, an ultimate wide-angle travel lens, and the key accessories I rely on to keep shooting through sand, dust, and sea spray.

Ricoh GR IIIx HDF

Ricoh GR III HDF cameras on a black background — (Image credit: Ricoh)

It may surprise some of you, especially those in the Fujifilm camp, but one of my favorite cameras for travel photography is Ricoh’s GR series. While these premium compacts don’t perhaps have quite the same cool retro styling as the Fujifilm X100VI, they are extremely practical and portable.

My current top pick from Ricoh’s popular series is the GR IIIx HDF, which is one generation old, so it’s more affordable than the Mark IV version, yet is still plenty of camera for your dollar.

The Ricoh GR IIIx HDF uses a massive APS-C chip for incredible image quality and its resolution of 24MP is more than adequate for taking tourist snaps and high quality photos when you’re on your holidays and travels. In fact, its lower resolution of 24MP actually makes it a better choice for shooting in low light than high-resolution alternatives like the X100VI, with its larger pixels delivering better light gathering potential with less noise at higher ISO values.

All of this, plus a beautiful prime 28mm f/2.8 lens is squeezed into a body that weighs a miniscule 232g and measures just 4.3×2.4×1.4in / 10.9×6.1×3.6cm, making it a true compact and one that’s entirely possible to fit into a pocket. An added bonus of the Ricoh GR IIIx HDF version is its built in Highlight Diffusion Filter, which is a softening mist filter to add loads of atmosphere to low light scenes and helps your city night shots ooze with atmosphere and fog.

Sigma 12mm F1.4 DC | C travel lens

Professional photographer Dan Mold shooting outdoors holding a Sony a6700 body with a Sigma 12mm f/1.4 DC | C lens attached to it with his eye to the camera viewfinder — (Image credit: Future / Dan Mold)

A superb wide-angle lens you can keep on all day

Earlier this year I had the privilege of testing the Sigma 12mm f/1.4 DC | C lens and it quickly became my favorite travel lens to use while I spent a week in London in January for New Year’s.

One thing to note is that it’s a lens designed for APS-C cameras and effectively delivers a full-frame focal length of around 18mm. But, it works brilliantly on full-frame cameras via crop mode, too. It offers up a much smaller and portable solution than full-frame lenses which are usually much larger and heavier.

As the world’s first fastest 12mm lens with a super wide maximum aperture of f/1.4, I had great fun squeezing in all of the details of the city and zooming with my feet to get closer to the action. Image quality is superb, autofocusing is fast and for me it’s the perfect ‘day lens’ to stick on your camera and take shots as you walk around and explore new towns and cities on your travels. It’s available for a wide range of camera mounts including Canon RF, Sony E, Nikon Z, Fujifilm X and L-mount.

Gorillapod 3K

A travel tripod is a must-have item for any travel photographer interested in landscapes, cities and low light photography. A set of ‘sticks’ allows you to lock off your camera to eliminate camera-shake, which you’d get from hand-holding your camera with slow shutter speeds in low light situations. They also help you to take your time with your compositions, too.

It’s not, however, always possible to take a full-blown tripod on your travels. Perhaps it’s too big or overweight for your flight restrictions, or it would attract too much attention. In these situations I turn to a GorillaPod, and I’ve used many different iterations of these flexible supports over the years. They are much smaller and easily fit inside or attach to the outside of your camera bag, but still allow you to lock off your camera to catch those long exposures – perfect for blurring cars into traffic trails, or taking astro photos.

The only downside is they’re much smaller than a tripod, so to get height you need to wrap the adjustable legs around a railing, lamppost or similar to elevate your camera off the ground – luckily there’s never a shortage of these in busy city centres. Alternatively, you can lean into its small size and shoot close to the ground with a wide-angle lens for a dramatic low angle perspective.