My $60k F1 Camera Bag!

Ever wondered what it takes to become an F1 photographer? Well it takes a lot of professional camera kit. Allow me to run you through what’s inside my F1 camera bag. Everything from Canon R3 to amazing mirrorless lenses. If you want to know more about F1 photography and my F1 photography equipment make sure to watch the entire video about my camera bag review now!

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Follow my journey as an F1 photographer here https://youtu.be/RGaczJaBcjs

Good day I’m Kim ilman and I’m an F1 photographer and this year I’ll be heading away for some 24 races and 4 days of testing that’s 100 days on track for about 12 hours a day at the end of the year I will have shot probably around 500,000 images but what equipment

Do I use well you’re about to find out in this video so where do we start well let’s start with the camera bodies Canon R3 I take two of the Sensational camera beautiful autofocus what I love is that you can actually lock the focus on someone’s eye and then reframe the shot

And it stays in focus on that person’s eye this shoots up to 30 frames per second which is pretty handy when it comes to Motorsport this is far lighter than the old 1dx Mark III it has an articulated screen that’s invaluable when it comes to shooting from low

Angles it takes two different memory cards a CF Express one of these and an SD card one of these now I’ll typically shoot J pegs of this card over the whole 4 days won’t ever touch it on the other card I’ll shoot Roars and I edit the

Roars so at the end of the race I’m left with every single picture I’ve taken on this card which I download and store just in case somebody comes back in 5 years and says oh I want a frame before the one I saw on your website which

Means I can go back and actually find that albeit it will be a JPEG file and the third camera I take is the one that I’m shooting this video on it’s a Canon R5 I don’t use that much on track it puts out a much larger file which is

Great if I’m going to do something that needs really high resolution but it’s certainly not anything like the Canon R3 which is more designed for Motorsport let’s talk lenses and I’ll start with this 600 I don’t take it to all Races but certainly when my son joins me at a

Number of races this year he will bring this lens this is a fixed 600 mil shoots at F4 image quality is astounding next up a 100 to 500 mm lens which is very good for Bright Light although not so good at night because at 500 mm it’s

F7.1 but it’s so much lighter than carrying a 6 or a 500 next up my favorite lens at the moment this is Canon’s 100 to 300 and I only shoot Canon well when I say only I’ve got one lens which I’ll get to in a minute which

Is not a cannon lens this is fantastic at f2.8 for the whole 100 to 300 range it’s a little bit heavier than I would like this is the 70 to 200 mil lot smaller still 2.8 but obviously it doesn’t go to 300 and I think for Motorsport photography the 100 to 300 is

A better option for me out on track now almost always I’ll have a 70 to 200 or a 100 to 300 on one of my cameras on the other camera it could be a 135 mil because this is F2 this allows me to shoot very soft backgrounds and I like

To use this on the grid on a Sunday I’ll often use this 50 mil lens too on the Sunday out on the grid because at f1.2 it throws the background completely out of Focus but this lens is quite remarkable this is a Japanese lens that somebody gave me last year it’s probably

Worth around about 1,000 Aussie doll but this is an F1 lens I mean not Formula 1 I mean f/1 its aperture is that low have a look at what it does to the backgrounds but I need an ND filter to shoot in bright light if I want to shoot

At those lower stops so there are the seven lenses I take to almost all Races sometimes I might swap one out and might put instead a 45 tilt shift or a 24 mil fixed or even a 14 mil fixed oh and there’s one other lens and it’s on this

Camera right now it is the 15 to 35 mm lens next up let’s talk about battery charges here are the three that I take the one on the left for the Canon R5 the middle one for the r3s and the right hand one is for my Pro Photo flash let’s

Talk about that now it’s a great flash unit very expensive and I think probably Canon’s caught up with Pro Photo now but I’m stuck with it and I quite like it and there are a couple of light shaping tools that attach to the front magnetically batteries I take two Pro

Photo I take four for my cameras two in the cameras at all time and two charging and two for the R5 One in the camera and one always on charge and where do I charge them in the media center we get a desk a chair internet at every single

Race in a dedicated media center and I will set up all of my kit there and pretty much leave it at the desk well certainly batter is charging on the desk some races you have to be a little bit more careful and you might lock stuff up

But in general most of them you’re pretty good and i’ thankfully touchwood never had anything go missing or stolen or lost stuff to use one of these lenses on my new r3s you need an adapter ring so I have two of those and a two times

Converter so a 600 mil lens becomes a 1200 mil lens and the one to 300 becomes a 200 to 600 let’s talk about other stuff for instance these black rapid straps I love them I’ve always use them I don’t know anyone can have a camera just slung over their shoulders it just

Doesn’t seem very safe and the beauty of this is when I got a camera on here I can quickly bring it up and shoot bring up this one and shoot and the other one just hangs and coming up shortly you’ll have a chance to win one of these

Fantastic black rapid straps along with about another $1,200 worth of merchandise details coming up shortly this year I’m taking one of these with me a YuYu it’s uh essentially water that you freeze inside this thing you stick it around your neck you might have seen some of the F1

Drivers walking around on hot days and I think if I’d had one in cata last year I might have been in a lot better condition and likee the black rapid straps this will be one of the items in that giveaway pack coming up shortly now this year I’ve got a couple of extra

Cameras one of them being this little go three what I love about it is it becomes very small you might have seen my recent video where I used a clamp and had it on my hat and walked around with it that is the camera and I can record and then

Play it back through this looking forward to some great results out of that also I’ve got one of these insta 360s which you can do stuff like sticking that in your mouth and get some amazing shots wear it on your head that’ll be great for some of my videos

And you’ll see and notice those shots without a doubt coming up this is a pretty important piece of equipment it allows me to suction onto say a window or a smooth surface and put a camera whether it be my phone the instago or the 360 and enables me to get some very

Interesting angles and if there’s no way to suction it I can always clamp it using this small rig attachment and if I need to mount my phone anywhere I can use one of these because I’m ramping up my video content this year I need radio microphone so typically I’ll use these

Road mics with a little microphone in white and black when I’m out shooting on track I will normally take two cameras with lenses around my neck and then often in this think tank bag I’ll Place another couple of lenses and a whole host of other tricks that I may or may

Not need and that bag has lasted me 7 years now and has not missed a beat it gets wet gets thrown around it’s tough It’s Made of I guess canvas but yeah I love the thing for those of you wondering if this and my camera is heavy

Yes you certainly would not want to be holding it to shoot so I need a monopod and I’ve got a gso monopod which is lightweight has a rubber foot on the end but that is the weak link because often I lose those rubber Footers and once you

Get a new one and replace it on That Metal spike it never stays on As Good As the First Time next up I want to talk about this a stream deck it is one of the most important pieces of equipment that I have now for many years I struggled with putting in keywords

Because what happens is when I’m shooting at a track let’s say I shoot for an hour and a half and I get th000 photos I’ll come in I’ll bring them all in I’ll quickly pick out the 120 that I want bring them in edit them and then I

Have to keyword them so I have to write Max for steppen Red Bull Racing number three now of course you’d never want to do that manually because it’s going to take too long and with 120 photos to keyword and probably only got a few minutes this is where this comes into

Its own I’ve programmed it such that I look at a picture of Max and I press the top left button I look at a picture of Oscar piastri and I press the top right hand button and automatically from that one touch that information is uted into

My keyword section on my laptop then I can output that to my ProStar pic.com website and you when you search can put in ven Norris whatever and you’ll get all of the images I’ve shot with that driver’s name in it it’s also vital for my video editor that he’d be able to

Find pictures this also does so much more than keywording I can set up macros to Output pictures to certain websites to different clients send emails to people pretty much anything that takes multiple repeated keywords can be done on a stream deck laptop wise I’ve got the latest MacBook it’s a what 15in

Screen and is particularly Hardy and on my Mac I will have things like all the races up the top here all of the drivers names and down here all of the team names that has to be replaced cuz I’ve still got Alpha T and um Alpha Romeo in

There which of course are now yeah you know what they are other stuff um gaffet tape a 2 tbte hard drive card readers I take two Hollywood fashion tape what’s that about occasionally I need to mount a microphone underneath the shirt so I use double-sided tape and that stuff is

The very best earplugs particularly when I’m working in pit Lane where it’s very loud it’s vital to have good earplugs and these were made specifically for my ears cost me about $170 but they’re Immaculate and I keep them in a little pouch around my neck so

That I’ve got them all the time no matter where I am another weakness on the Canon r3s are these little dovers that sit here and cushion your eye from your camera they fall off and they fall off very easily and I was going through probably one every race meeting for um a

Good seven or eight months and then somebody gave me these rubber bands I don’t know whe you can see that but this is a rubber band that simply tightens the seal not lost one sense but I always take spars on the subject of power I always take one of these multic

Converters and I also take multiple Apple figure8 plugs for all the countries some of you ask whether I shoot shoot with polarizers and I do on sunny days what does a polarizer do well it’s quite remarkable it well this is a shop without a polarizer and this is one

With the colors tend to pop a bit more the sky is always a darker blue if it’s used in sunshine and if you’ve got a situation where there’s a window changing the polarizer which can be done on the circular turning ring on the outside changes the look from being able

To see through the window to seeing just reflection and what is this contraption in the middle well that is a graduated filter and typically when we’re shooting at night when you’ve got quite bright lights in the bottom half of your shot because that’s a track and then you’ve got not

Much light at the top I will turn that upside down and darken the bottom half of the photo oh and finally on filters I do take STAR filters to night Racers so that all of the lights that illuminate the track turn into these stars and you

Can get four point stars six and eight point now I carry a small light for doing my videos and and I used to use this one from Loom cube but do not buy it because this one had a problem it was still within its warranty and these

People refuse to talk to me I’ll take my iPhone 15 with a quadlock cover because I love it and on the back of this cover it’s got this little magnetic thing and I can do stuff like this put on the wallet I use that all the time but

There’s a whole host of extras for the quadlock but certainly I’ve never ever had any incident because this is tough as Nails uh yes so I’ve got two iPhones one’s a backup then I take a Samsung because this is how I transmit my photos from the camera to my websites or my

Clients and I’ll give you a quick rundown I’ve done a separate video on this before but essentially when I take a photo I go into the back and I look at the picture and if that’s the one I want to send I hit the set button bang automatically that photo is transmitted

Via this to my Dropbox that means that I can get my normal phone or this one if I want cuz they both have Instagram open I can bring up the picture I can edit it in Lightroom on my phone I can then post it while I’m still in the padic to

Instagram and look if the internet’s good I can have a picture up within realistically 4 minutes 3 minutes if I don’t need to do much of a caption and I voice a text my captions and if you’ve read them sometimes you’ll realize that there are mistakes and I’ll tell you

What happens in most of those cases is I’ll be madly typing or voicing to text something and then something else will be coming over here I’ll go right oh buger it I’ll just hit that I’ll hit send so then it posts and I take these photos here and then I go oh better

Check that post and I’ll come back and I did one once where I said Antonio G of an Nazi da da da and I came back 3 minutes later and it said Antonio the Nazi so people are go what do you mean what do you mean well that’s just my in

Atttention to detail and because I’m doing most things myself I sometimes let things go through unchecked but I correct them quickly other thing things in this picture an Australian power board rather than me having to get power adapters for four different things I just use this I plug the power board in

And I can use all of the plugs from Australia without having to change them over you should do that too if you travel a lot I take two pairs of glasses because inevitably I’ll lose one or break one at some point on a trip also take sunglasses which have prescription

Lenses in them I take a leather man and this is absolutely invaluable when I’m traveling because often times I’ll have to repair stuff on camera kit I’ll need knives I’ll need pliers file scissors knives SS and screwdrivers but get this it comes with all of these other

Screwdrivers it’ll be hard for you to see but there are eight extras in here with a different head on each end and changing from a Philips head to say an allen key is as simple as that and of course it doesn’t go in my hand luggage

That goes in my suitcase why all of the marker pens well I do numerous signed photo collaborations with drivers and it’s important to have a number of different pens because sometimes we’re signing white on black and sometimes black on yellow so I’ve got to have a variety available and what is the gloal

Me well that’s another device for sending pictures from my camera direct to my websites I used to use that exclusively but now I find I get much better what’s the word flexibility by using this Samsung phone and thank you to Michael Anthony who does my it and

The company he has uh introduced so many ways to save time because when I’m at the track I need to do the maximum possible so being able to save a second here and a few seconds there is vital but often it’s internet that slows us

Down and while in the media center we do use the Wi-Fi sometimes it’s better to use this cable here and connect direct and when we’re lucky we can get upload speeds of some 600 megabits per second and a couple of final things in this picture those green items there with the

White heads uh camera sensor cleaners luckily for most races we have Canon and Nikon in the media center there to service our cameras lend us gear and to fix any hiccups we may have but not all Races so on the old occasion when my sensors are dirty and I have to take to

Them myself I find those are the best option and memory cards the ones on the right the CF Express cards are worth for a 500 gig about $500 the ones on the left the SD cards yeah a fraction of that maybe I’m thinking probably $20 but those big

Cards 500 gig for CF Express allows me to shoot a lot of photos in very quick succession and the camera stores them all and these images are sized about 23 megabits what software do I use for my workflow I use two photo mechanic and Lightroom photoch mechanic is a very

Quick way for me to go through a thousand photos and just pick the ones I want to import into Lightroom once I get them into Lightroom then I would spend probably no more than about 5 seconds per image editing unless it’s something important and I might take a couple of

Minutes there or after the the day events I could take 15 minutes but most of the time my workflow pretty much dictates that I work quickly and hence I only spend a few seconds per picture I’ll bring every photo in and I’ll use one of my presets which is Turbo and

That typically gives my photos just a nice little Edge it’s not hugely different but straight away the image looks better CU if you’re a photographer you’ll know that when you shoot raw they come out of the camera looking pretty flat and you can get my preset packages

By heading to Kim il.com going to the shop and purchasing them when I’m in the padic and I don’t have my good video camera that I’m shooting this video on now I’ll always have my phone with me and I take out one of these Road microphones put a wind sock on it

Because that’s vital in just about any sort of wind condition that sits at the bottom of my phone and gives me Sensational audio a reminder too that you can get your hands on my 2023 best of photo book and this 2024 calendar at my shop at kim.com where you

Can also buy a photo book on every single race for the last I think it’s 2 and a half years and on every single driver they’ll be sent to most countries around the world oh and here’s a whole lot of stuff that you want to have a

Look at thanks for watching and stay passionate we got to sh I got to sneeze come on I can’t I sneeze no I can’t sneeze bu bua bua