Inside My Camera Bag | Geert Weggen

As long as I can remember I have loved nature in all its forms. Since childhood I felt more comfort in the honesty, silence and harmony of nature than in the company of people.

I wanted to be a forest protector when I was a child, and I spent a lot of my childhood in nature. In the 80s I started to take photography courses. I bought darkroom equipment and Russian cameras. When I was 16 I was a photographer for a youth magazine, but my interest in photography waned, only to be picked up many years later when digital photography came around.

For 10 years I focused on digital photo art and in 2003 I started to focus on wildlife and nature photography. I was winning contests, being published in magazines like National Geographic, newspapers like The Times, and appearing on TV in France, so I decided to become a fulltime photographer. I loved this work and it is great to share with others the beauty I see and capture.

Most of my photos are sold through agencies or as stock photos. There are several books published with my work. Unfortunately, all the awards, publicity, and millions of monthly photo views does not mean there is a lot of money coming in. Therefore is my entire equipment low budget.

I captured many award-winning photos with the cheap Nikon D3200 (which appears as best dslr under $500) with a Nikon DX Nikkor 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6 lens. After that I started to use the Nikon D7100 and the Sigma 150-500mm f/5-6.3 HSM DG APO OS. It was wonderful to come closer to the animals. This lens had sharpness problems on the 500mm end, so I never shot photos over 450mm.

After that I bought the Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM C lens and Sigma TC-1401 1.4X teleconverter, which gives me 850mm. This was a big step up, bringing me much better quality for shots between 500mm and 850mm.

Because most of my animal shots are taken in my outdoor nature studio I use flash, and my camera is almost always on a Beike PRO QZSD 888 tripod. I use 3 Meike MK-910 I-TTL Flashes and the Meike MK-GT600 remote triggers. With that I use Eneloop rechargeable batteries. They are amazing and a very good investment.

I use Sandisk extreme pro memory cards 280mb/s and cheap cleaning gear and camera remote.

For my landscape photos I use Canon D6 with the Canon 24-105mm f/4. I won this set in a photo contest and it improved my landscape photos much. Lens and body work very well together.

For macro I use the Sigma 105mm f/2.8 macro. It is a very nice lens that I use for my flower and insect shots. Sometimes I use it with a Meike extension set.

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