Every piece of this kit earned its place by replacing something that failed. What we shoot with across China, what each thing is genuinely bad at, and why you should buy drones here rather than at home.
Nothing here was chosen from a review site. Each piece replaced something that broke, overheated, ran out of battery on a pass at 4,500 m, or turned out to be unusable with cold hands. If you’re planning to film your way across China, this is what has survived.
Main cameras
DJI Action 4
The workhorse. It goes on the handlebars, the chest mount, the dashboard, and into weather we wouldn’t expose anything else to.
Good: genuinely excellent audio for its size, very stable, long battery life, quick-release mount that works one-handed, and the batteries double as chargers — which matters when the guesthouse has one socket. Flattering framing for talking to camera, cheaper than the GoPro equivalent, and no need for separate cold-weather batteries.
Less good: GoPro still wins on colour in bright daylight, and low light is where this camera gives up.
Worth knowing: the Action 5 exists if you need more headroom, but the 4 has never been the limiting factor for us.
Sony A7S III
The one that comes out when the light gets interesting.
Good: extraordinary in low light — temple interiors, night markets, blue hour on a rooftop. The colour rendition needs almost no grading, and one zoom lens covers most of what a travel shoot demands.
Less good: the plastic lens barrel is fragile. We cracked one, and it wasn’t a dramatic accident.
Audio note: we don’t mount a mic on it. Sound gets recorded on the Action camera and synced in the edit — fewer cables, fewer failures.
Drones
DJI Mavic 3 Pro
The serious one, for the shots that justify carrying it.
Good: triple lens with real optical zoom, holds position in wind that grounds smaller drones, and the polarising filter keeps water and sky looking like they did in person rather than oversaturated.
Less good: bulky. On a trip with three flights and a night train, you will resent the case.
Controller: the RC Pro is steadier and far more usable in bright sun, at the cost of more weight again.
DJI Mini 4 Pro
The one that actually comes on day hikes.
Good: small enough that carrying it is never a decision, and the footage is good enough that you rarely regret not having brought the Mavic.
Less good: measurably behind the Mavic 3 Pro on image quality, and no 3× or 7× optical zoom — which is exactly what you want for compressed mountain shots.
Controller: pairs with a phone, no extra hardware.
💡 Buy DJI gear in China. Prices are lower here than anywhere else, DJI Care is available at the counter, and you can usually claim the tax refund on departure. If a drone is on your list, buy it on day two of the trip rather than before you fly.
Other cameras
DJI Osmo Pocket 3
Good: remarkably stable, strong in low light, decent onboard sound, and small enough to hold at chest height in a crowd without anyone noticing. Ubiquitous in China — you’ll see them everywhere.
Less good: the gimbal is delicate. Bumpy roads and cycling will eventually cost you one.
Verdict: if you’re not shooting action, this is the most capable thing per gram in the bag.
Insta360
Good: shoot everything, reframe later. Useful for moving vehicles and situations you can’t compose in advance.
Less good: average audio, average video, and the reframing workflow adds real time in the edit. Not our first choice for anything.
Everything else
The backpack
Unglamorous and the item we’d replace last. Look for a rear-panel opening, a laptop sleeve that isn’t at the back, and side access you can reach without taking the bag off — that last one is what you’ll actually use twenty times a day.
Memory cards
Small, fast, sold everywhere. We carry six, because the failure mode of running out of storage in a place you’ll never return to is unrecoverable — and because cards die without warning.
DJI Mic Mini
Sounds excellent. We rarely use it.
In genuinely noisy places an external mic is the right answer, but the extra unit, the extra battery and the extra thing to forget mean it stays in the bag more often than it should. Honest assessment rather than a recommendation.
The phone
The best camera you have is the one already in your hand, and modern phone video is close enough to a dedicated camera in good light that the distinction stops mattering. Ours doubles as the drone controller, the maps device, the payment method and the translator.
Downside: expensive, and the thing you cannot afford to lose in a country where your phone is also your wallet.
If you’re starting out
Don’t buy this list.
A phone and one small camera will take you a very long way, and the footage you get in year one will be limited by where you point it rather than by what you own. Add things when a specific shot becomes impossible without them — that’s how everything above ended up in the bag.
- #china essentials
- #photography
- #gear
- #drones