What's In My Bag as a Concert Photographer (2026)

Gear lists are usually aspirational — what someone would bring if the bag had no weight limit. This is the opposite: the actual kit I carry for North Sea Jazz, MOJO, Radio 538 and club shows across the Netherlands. Everything in here has earned its place across a lot of festival days.

Two bodies: Canon EOS R5 Mark II × 2

I shoot a pair of Canon EOS R5 Mark II bodies. Two identical bodies, for two reasons:

• No lens swaps in the pit. Three songs is not the time to be changing glass in the dark while beer rains down. Wide zoom on one body, tele on the other.
• Redundancy. When a label or festival hires you, "my camera broke" is not a sentence you're allowed to say. The second body is the insurance policy that pays for itself the first time you need it.

Why this body: the stacked 45MP sensor crops far enough for editors, silent shooting without LED banding, and AF that holds a singer through haze and backlight. Real-world reference: my shots of Kane at Ahoy were ISO 2500, f/2.8, 1/800s — clean, straight from the pit. Full camera recommendations for every budget are in my concert camera guide.

The glass

Canon RF 15-35mm f/2.8L IS USM

The RF 15-35mm f/2.8 is my pit workhorse. At the barrier you're two meters from the artist — 15mm turns that proximity into drama: full stage, light rig and crowd energy in one frame. Most of my portfolio comes off this lens.

Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Z

The other body carries the RF 70-200mm f/2.8 Z — the newer black, internal-zoom version. Faces, drummers, and festival stages where the pit is ten meters out. The internal zoom matters more than it sounds: nothing extends, so it handles fast and stays balanced all night.

Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8L IS USM

The 24-70mm f/2.8 completes the trinity. In the pit the 15-35/70-200 pair does most of the work, but for events, corporate work and backstage this is the lens that stays on.

Canon RF 10-20mm f/4L IS STM

The RF 10-20mm f/4L is for the shots where even 15mm isn't wide enough: barrier shots that swallow the whole stage, the light rig and the crowd in a single frame. It's f/4, so it's a lens for the big lighting moments rather than the dark verses — but at 10mm, nothing else delivers this perspective.

Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1L IS USM

The RF 100-500 is the specialist: big festival stages, shooting from the FOH tower, and anything where the pit is a rumor. It stays in the roller until it's needed — but when it's needed, nothing else does the job.

Cards, readers and the edit machine

• CFexpress Type B + SD cards — the R5 Mark II writes to both simultaneously, so every frame exists twice the moment it's taken. Client work rule: one card failure may never equal lost photos.
• Two card readers — because the moment your only reader dies is always the night of the deadline. Redundancy isn't just for bodies.
• MacBook Pro, maxed out — the mobile edit bay. Same-night delivery means culling and editing happen backstage or on the train home, not "tomorrow". A maxed-out machine earns its price back in Lightroom's AI Denoise alone.

The small stuff that saves shows

• Spare batteries — more than you think you need; cold outdoor festivals eat them.
• Earplugs — you're next to the PA for hours, every show. Hearing damage is the one gear failure you can't replace. Non-negotiable.
• Profoto A10 — flash is banned in virtually every pit, and stage light is the picture. But concert work comes with events, backstage portraits and meet & greets, and for those the Profoto A10 earns its (considerable) price: round-head light quality in a hot shoe flash.

The trolley: Peak Design Roller Pro

All of it travels in the Peak Design Roller Pro — the biggest quality-of-life upgrade of my recent seasons. Festival days mean trains, shuttle vans and backstage corridors; a carry-on-sized roller that swallows two bodies, five lenses and the MacBook means I arrive at the first band without my back already gone. In the pit itself it's two bodies on straps and nothing more — the roller stays in the press room.

After the show

The other half of my kit is software: the shots go through my own Stage Fix presets for LED color correction, and delivery runs through my own download portal so clients have their gallery the next morning. The full editing chain is in my Lightroom workflow guide.