Essential Travel Gear for the Alps and Med

It’s only been a little over year since the Iceland trip, which means the gear I traveled with for the Alps and Mediterranean trip remains largely familiar. But there were some significant changes this time around – a different camera body, a new bag, and some lessons learned from Iceland about what to bring and what to leave at home. Read on for details …

Travel Gear and Workflow

Every international trip starts with the same challenge: carefully considering what to pack to capture the best photos and video while being realistic about what you’re willing and able to carry. At nearly two weeks, the Alps and Med trip was longer than Iceland but shorter than Italy and Greece. The itinerary covered a wide range of environments – from the snow-capped Swiss Alps at 10,000 feet on Mount Titlis, to the rocky coastlines of Cinque Terre, to the warm streets of Barcelona. Average temps ranged from 37°F (2.7°C) in the mountains to 69°F (20.5°C) along the Mediterranean. That kind of range demands careful thought about both camera gear and clothing.

As I did for Iceland, Italy and Greece, Israel, Brazil, Southeast Asia, India, Cuba, Peru, South Africa, and Galapagos, here is an overview of the gear I carried to Switzerland, Italy, France, and Spain, followed by the photo and video workflows I used to handle the media files after returning home.

Travel Gear

Nikon Z6II 24.5MP Mirrorless Camera: After carrying the Nikon Z8 through Italy and Greece and then Iceland, I made a deliberate choice to go lighter on this trip. The Z6II is the same body I used for the Israel trip and it remains an outstanding travel camera. Saving 205 grams compared to the Z8 was meaningful on a trip with this much walking and bus time. And honestly, I didn’t really need the Z8’s higher resolution and faster buffer on this trip. The Z6II’s RAW files continue to be outstanding, with very little time necessary for post-processing. Sometimes smaller and lighter is the right call.

NIKKOR Z 28-400mm f/4-8 VR Travel Zoom: While I sometimes toy with the idea of only traveling with the NIKKOR Z 24-120mm f/4, the 28-400mm has become my default travel lens, and for good reason. From sweeping Alpine vistas to tight architectural details on the Sagrada Família, the 28-400mm handles it all from a single lens. Strong mid-day daylight conditions in Lucerne, Cinque Terre, Monaco, Provence, and Barcelona meant working at f/8 on the telephoto end was never a problem. Outstanding image quality and versatility in a package that’s easy to carry on planes, buses, and boats – and just walking down the cobblestone streets of Les Baux-des-Provence.

NIKKOR Z 14-30mm f/4 S Wide Angle Zoom: Packed specifically for landscapes and wide panoramas like Lake Como, the 14mm end also proved useful in tight spaces in the winding streets of Cinque Terre. And I entertained myself during the longer bus rides to Provence and Barcelona with the 14-30mm. For next year’s trip to New Zealand and Australia it will be tough to choose whether to bring this wide angle zoom or the 20mm f/1.8 prime.

Nikon SB-800 Speedlight Flash: Not a regular part of the travel kit but brought along for a specific purpose: capturing a graduation photo under less-than-ideal lighting conditions. The right tool for the job on this trip.

Canon II F Rangefinder with Kodak Ektar 100 Film: The most unusual addition to the kit on this trip. In the mid-1960s, my dad took a business trip to the IBM La Gaude research campus in Nice and visited Monaco, shooting slides along the way with this Canon II F – a camera he had purchased in Japan while stationed in Korea in the 1950s. I grew up seeing those slides. So as a last-minute idea, I packed his Canon II F and two rolls of Kodak Ektar 100, with the goal of retracing his steps overlooking the harbor of Monaco and along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. This rangefinder camera is fully manual, so I used a light meter app for exposure and bracketed a few shots for good measure. Once the film is back from processing, I’ll do a follow up post to share the results. But the act of carrying his camera to the same places, 60 years later, made Day 6 one of the most memorable of the trip.

DJI OSMO Pocket 3: The tiny form factor of the OSMO Packet 3 is perfect for crowded streets, bus-window sequences, or on watercraft where the built-in stabilizer makes for smooth video. But on this trip, I decided to use the OSMO Pocket 3 exclusively for timelapse video, capturing 10 MP4 timelapse sequences across the trip. But was difficult to capture timelapse sequences because we were never in one place long enough. Whether I’ll bring the OSMO Pocket 3 on future trips will depend on if the itinerary includes situations where this smaller device would be preferable to a full-size mirrorless camera.

DJI Mic Transmitter: I intended the same workflow as Iceland: at each location, step away from the group and record 30 seconds of clean ambient audio for use in the final video edit. However, I only did this at four locations – in Lucerne, at Lake Como, in Avignon, and in Provence. I did set the audio gain slightly higher than the Iceland recordings, a lesson carried forward after reviewing those audio clips. But the reality is that there was always a lot of unwanted ambient noise – conversations, overflying planes, construction noise, traffic, and wind. And was frequently difficult to step away from the group. I may leave the DJI Mic home and instead rely on AI generated ambient tracks to solve the problem of unwanted noise.

Apple iPhone 16: The iPhone continues to serve as the operational hub for travel photography. The Nikon SnapBridge app connects directly to the Z6II for GPS location data and photo transfers throughout the day. The WordPress Jetpack app handles daily blog drafting and publishing – usually on the bus between locations. Internet access was solid throughout Switzerland, Italy, France, and Spain. And once again, the iPhone 16’s larger battery compared to my previous phone meant no mid-day recharging was ever needed despite heavy daily use.

Think Tank Photo FocusPoint 30L: After trying the Gura Gear Kiboko City Commuter 18L for Italy and Greece and the Shimoda Urban Explorer 25 for Iceland, I switched bags again for the Alps and Med trip. The FocusPoint 30L offered excellent camera access and organization for the Z6II with multiple lenses. In a bag that feels more compact the FocusPoint has slightly more volume compared to the Shimoda and proved useful when packing the 14-30mm in addition to the 28-400mm. A strong contender to become the go-to travel bag going forward.

Clouzen Tainer: Now a permanent part of the travel kit after its successful debut in Iceland. End-of-day card backups became routine – usually on bus transfer days or in the hotel room before bed. With nearly two weeks of shooting across four countries, having a reliable backup copy of all media was essential peace of mind.

Anker 525 PowerCore Essential PD: At 20,000 mAh this power bank has enough capacity to charge the iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods, and Z6II batteries multiple times. Indispensable for long travel days and layovers, and especially useful during the back-to-back flight and transfer days on this trip.

MINIX NEO P3 100W GaN Wall Charger: The 4-port GaN charger with worldwide voltage support continues to anchor the overnight hotel charging setup. The Z6II EN-EL15 batteries via the now-discontinued SmallRig EN-EL15 Camera Battery Charger, iPhone 16, Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, Anker power bank, and OSMO Pocket 3 – all recharged overnight with a handful of short cables and a single wall plug.

Memory Card and File Management

For this trip I brought the Z6II’s two 64GB Sony XQD G Series Memory Cards and two 128GB Lexar Professional 1667x SDXC UHS-II Memory Cards. The Z6II was set up with the XQD card in slot 1 for 14-bit NEF raw photo files and the SDXC card in slot 2 for 4K H.265 MOV video files. Midway through the trip I swapped to the second set of cards. At the end of the trip, across the Z6II, OSMO Pocket 3, and DJI Mic, the final file counts were as follows:

Photos	Files	Gigabytes
Nikon Z6II NEF	958	28.80
iPhone 16 JPG	9	0.03
TOTAL	967	28.83

Video and Audio	Files	Gigabytes
Nikon Z6II MOV	300	47.45
DJI OSMO Pocket 4 MP4 Timelapse	10	1.53
iPhone 16 MOV	0	0.00
DJI Mic Transmitter WAV	4	0.02
TOTAL	314	49.00

Not counting travel days, the Z6II shooting rate was about 80 photos per day — slightly below my usual average of 100. Not counted – 36 exposures from one roll of Kodak Ektar 100 film.

Shooting Guidelines

Building on the guidelines developed for Iceland, here are the rules set for the Alps and Med trip and how they played out:

• Record 30 seconds of ambient audio at each site using the DJI Mic Transmitter … Did this at four locations: Lucerne, Lake Como, Avignon, and Provence. Audio gain set slightly higher than Iceland recordings for a better level.
• Capture all photos and video with the Nikon Z6II … Mostly but did use the iPhone 16 for several photos during flights.
• Capture interstitial timelapses with the DJI OSMO Pocket 3 … Did this. 10 timelapse MP4 sequences captured.
• No iPhone photos or video … Did this for video, but see second bullet above for photos.
• Back up media cards daily using the Clouzen Tainer … Did this every day without exception.

Fitness Data

The Apple Watch tracked every step across the 13-day trip. Some of the most walking-intensive days were Barcelona (19,389 steps / 8.2 miles) and Provence (19,810 steps / 7.7 miles). The full trip totals:

Day	Steps	Miles	Stairs
IAD to BOS	16,073	7.2	14
BOS to ZRH	14,924	6.6	4
Lucerne	7,960	3.4	6
Mount Titlis	18,912	7.5	32
Lake Como	12,376	5.3	9
Cinque Terre	12,051	4.9	17
Monaco, Èze, Nice	17,105	7.4	20
Avignon	13,479	5.8	24
Provence	19,810	7.7	24
Provence to Barcelona	14,030	6.1	6
Barcelona	19,389	8.2	10
BCN to ZRH to BOS	8,776	3.8	5
BOS to IAD	7,995	3.7	16
TOTAL	182,880	77.6	187

For comparison, Iceland totaled 102,691 steps and 44.6 miles over 9 days. The Alps and Med trip covered significantly more ground – nearly 78 miles – over 13 days, reflecting the longer duration and the sheer amount of walking through cities like Barcelona and Avignon.

WordPress Blog Updates

Same workflow as previous trips. The Z6II’s built-in Wi-Fi connects to the SnapBridge app on the iPhone for photo transfers throughout the day. The Jetpack for WordPress mobile app handles drafting and publishing the daily updates – usually on the bus between locations, sometimes over dinner. Sophie and Greg provided proofreading under the less-than-ideal conditions of a restaurant table at the end of a long day. Internet connectivity across Switzerland, Italy, France, and Spain was consistently good, making it easy to upload photos and post updates in near real time.

Photo Workflow

My standard Adobe Lightroom Classic photo workflow remains unchanged:

• Import as DNG to folders named by date and location
• Delete duplicates and rejects
• Geoencode
• Rename by date with sequential numbers
• Collections for Full Shoot and Web posts
• Post-process
• Caption
• Output using Jeffrey Friedl’s Metadata Wrangler Lightroom plugin to format captions including caption text, city, country, GPS location, camera, lens, and exposure information
• Reimport to WordPress with Katsushi Kawamori’s Upload Media Exif Date plugin so that uploads to the Media Library are sorted chronologically by date and time captured

Video Workflow

Video files are organized in Apple Final Cut Pro into events named by date and location. After import, files are renamed by date and time.

Wrapping Up

With all trip photo and video files transferred, onsite and offsite backups confirmed via CrashPlan for Small Business, and then the XQD and SDXC cards reformatted and ready for the next project. Now to figure out when I’ll sit down and edit the video – I’m a few trips and several years behind! In the meantime, time to start working on the packing list for New Zealand and Australia in the summer of 2027.