Sidney Diongzon is a YouTube creator, storyteller, speaker, teacher and more. He has to be ready to capture a story at any moment, so having an organized kit that allows him to shoot efficiently is a must. “I take such pride in my camera bag and how it’s organized,” he says. “And it’s not just for show. For me, I just need to know where everything’s at.” He dives into each piece of gear and how it's strategically packed more in this video replay of his What’s In My Bag LIVE event. Watch the video below and keep reading for more information about the Sony Alpha cameras, Sony lenses and accessories you’ll find in his kit for content creation.

YouTube creator and storyteller Sidney Diongzon has to be ready to capture a story at any moment. See the Sony Alpha cameras, Sony lenses and accessories in his storytelling kit.

Cameras & Lens Combos

Sony Alpha 7 IV & Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 G Master II: “Oh my goodness what a beauty of a camera this is. And attached to it is the new Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 G Master II lens. And I really think this lens and this camera body is such a perfect combo especially when it comes to stabilization.”

“The reason why I really like the Alpha 7 IV is because I really think it’s the perfect hybrid camera. It takes amazing photos at 33 megapixels. It shoots amazing 4K video and since my main camera is the Sony Alpha 7S III and that’s the camera that’s filming this livestream right now as well as my 16-35mm f/2.8 G Master lens. This camera, the Alpha 7 IV is just such a good complementary camera because the colors just match so well together. Both cameras can film in 4K 10-bit 4:2:2 video and so it’s the perfect duo, it’s like Batman and Robin. I’ve already pre-ordered it and can’t wait for this camera to be officially in my camera bag.”

“This [the Sony 70-200mm f/2.8 G Master II] is such a beauty of a lens. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t such a big fan of telephoto lenses before the Mark II version of the 70-200mm mainly because of camera shake. For me, I love shooting handheld. If I can get a shot without putting it on a tripod or without putting it on a gimbal, then I’ll do it. If I can do it handheld, then I will do it handheld. And because there is MODE 3 stabilization on the 70-200mm f/2.8 GM II, it feels like I am shooting on sticks, like I’m shooting on a tripod with certain shots, and it’s really, really great.”

Sony Alpha 7S III & Sony 16-35mm f/2.8 G Master: “As I said before, my main camera is the Sony Alpha 7S III and the 16-35mm f/2.8 G Master lens. Such a great combo, especially for vlogs. I just love that wide-angle look, it’s so good. It’s a light setup, I can carry it with one hand.”

Sony ZV-1: “We have the ZV-1 being the top-down camera. I love the ZV-1 as a camera for an overhead rig because it’s so light. I don’t have to pack a ton of sandbags on the C-stand, worrying if the camera is going to fall over on my head (that happened one time). The ZV-1 is perfect for that. The ZV-1 is also great for auto focusing especially when you use Product Showcase. You know, oftentimes when you show a product on camera, the camera might focus on your eyes, it might prioritize focus on your face a bit more. But with the ZV-1 when you turn on the Product Showcase, even if your eyes are in the frame, the camera is so smart it will detect if a product or an object is in front of the camera and will focus on that.”

Accessories

Joby GorillaPod and Quick-Release Plate: “I’m sure many of you are familiar with this little bendy tripod. This is the Joby GorillaPod, made famous by the one and only Casey Neistat. It’s great for vlogging and if you attach a light camera on it like the Sony ZV-1, you can actually wrap this thing around a stop sign, a tree branch – and I’ve had to do that a few times when I didn’t have a big tripod with me. This is absolutely great. Now I attached a quick-release plate on this and it’s the same quick-release plate that I use for all my tripods, all my gimbals, all my stands, and it just makes it easy and quick to set up my camera on any one of those stands.”

Rode VideoMic Pro+ & Dead Cat: “I love this microphone, it’s great. This hairy thing is actually called a dead cat, or in Australia it’s called a dead wombat, don’t ask me why, just film terms. But basically it just reduces that nasty wind sound that you hear. I’ve taken this mic to the mountains, I’ve taken it to the Arctic and even though it was windy I didn’t hear much wind sound at all so this is great.”

Variable ND Filters: “Basically they’re like sunglasses for your camera. They help control the exposure without having to change your shutter speed or ISO. If you really want a low aperture shot, like an f/2.8 or f/1.4, you just attach this bad boy and you just twist it to increase the intensity or decrease the intensity. I love it and I use it a lot actually.”

Straps: “The first one is a camera strap by Peak Design. This is the Peak Design Slide camera strap. This is great – super comfortable. Like the name entails, you can slide the adjustments of the camera strap which is really great. I don’t use it too often because, you know, YOLO, I like living life on the edge. But if I ever need it I have that. If I want a bit more freedom because sometimes wearing a camera strap can be a bit cumbersome, and if I still want to be cautious when I’m taking my camera out, I have this little wrist strap by my good friend Kitty from Atola Visuals. Her and Brian designed this camera strap, I believe this is the red panda. It’s really cute, really comfortable. And at the end of each of these straps are the Peak Design anchor clips which I have on all my cameras.”

Wandrd Tech Pouch: “This is where I pack all my tech-related items like power chargers, cables, adaptors, things like that.”

Sony TOUGH Memory Cards: “The one that’s in the Alpha 7 IV is the 64GB version with a read and write speed of 300MB per second. This is the v90 version and the reason why you want to get a v90 version with a camera like the Alpha 7 IV or Alpha 7S III is if you’re doing high-performing tasks like filming 4K 10-bit video 4:2:2, if you want to shoot RAW and JPEG photos continuously - that’s the card to get.”

SD Card Wallet: “This is where I store all my extra SD cards if i ever need to use it or SD card adaptors, Micro-SD cards, stuff like that. It’s a cool little wallet that’s slim and it closes with a magnet, so that’s pretty cool.”

Accessories Box With Wireless Mic, Light & Battery Bank: “Here I just store extra accessories. Here’s that wireless mic that we talked about before, the one that I have is the RODE Wireless Go, a nice little wireless mic that I just pack here. And the light that I bring is a great little travel light. This is the LumeCube Panel Pro. LumeCube recently came out with these barn doors and they’re really cool. What barn doors do is that they kind of help shape the light. So if you don’t want your light to spill everywhere then you can use these doors to control that. What’s really cool is you can also actually change the color of it.”

“So this is one of my favorite accessories ever. “This is the Battery Bank by Anchor. What’s great about this is not only can you charge your devices with USB and USB-C, but if you have one of the newer iPhones where you can charge magnetically on the back, there is wireless charging on top of this battery bank. Just simply place your phone and boom, it charges up. What’s really great is that this battery bank can also charge your MacBook Pro - it’s so good.”

Rocket Blower: “Basically you squeeze this bit over here and it just blows out of a puff of air. You can use this to blow off some dust from your lens or if there’s some dust on your sensor, you can blow that dust off your sensor. Make sure to put your camera down, you don’t want to do it up because you don’t want dust to enter. But if there is dust on your sensor you just put your camera down, and off to the side use this and it should take care of it.”

Lens Pens: “If you can’t fit a Rocket Blower in your camera bag, you’ve got to have a lens pen. A lens pen is great because you have this little brush here to brush off dust from your lens (or if you’re an archaeologist, just dust off a fossil and you’re good there.) Or you can use the wiper side and you can really clean and polish your lens.”

Gaffer’s Tape: “Probably the most versatile accessory to have in any bag is gaff tape. Gaff tape is amazing, it’s great. I first learned about it when I was in film school. Basically it can be used for pretty much anything. To tape things up, hold things together. Sometimes you have to rig up an overhead mic and if you can’t do it, just use gaff tape. Let your boom mic hang from the ceiling and just tape it there. What’s also nice about gaff tape is that there's no residue which is really good. Also if you have a lav mic and you don’t have a clip or the clip is broken, you can actually fold the gaff tape into a triangle and attach it under the shirt of your subject to hold the mic right there.”

Battery Wallet: “I have extra batteries for my Sony cameras. Because I’m using the Alpha 7S III and soon-to-be Alpha 7 IV, I just bring an extra set of Sony Z batteries with me and I’m good to go for a while.”

White Balance Card: “There are three different colors, you have black, you have grey and you have of course white. It’s small, it’s compact, and oftentimes when you’re trying to match the colors from one scene to another, it’s kind of hard to nail down the colors right. But if you threw up a white card or actually if you hold up all three cards, in post you can actually color pick the white card and on your computer, depending what you use, it will help you white balance any scene.”

Notebook: “The last thing in my camera bag is a notebook. A good old fashioned notebook to write down things. If you’re traveling somewhere, sometimes you don’t have the ability to write notes on your phone or tablet or whatever, so having a notebook, it’s always going to be there. It’s just really great to have.”

See more of Sidney Diongzon work on his YouTube Channel.