Peter McKinnon's Camera Bag, Deconstructed

The bag as biography

Peter McKinnon has over 6 million YouTube subscribers, and he built that audience doing something deceptively simple: being genuinely excited about cameras and the things you can do with them. His gear list isn't just equipment — it's a window into how he thinks about his craft.

His bag on Teed has 25 items. That's a serious kit. But what's interesting isn't the size. It's the choices.

The Canon commitment

McKinnon shoots Canon. Specifically, the Canon EOS R5, which he's paired with RF L-series glass. This is a full-system commitment — body, lenses, and accessories all designed to work together in the RF mount ecosystem.

The R5 is a telling choice. It's not the absolute newest Canon body, and it's not the cheapest. It's the one that gives you 8K video, incredible autofocus, and the kind of image quality that holds up on a 4K YouTube upload where millions of people are watching. For someone whose livelihood depends on image quality, the R5 hits a specific sweet spot between resolution, speed, and reliability.

But the lenses tell a richer story than the body.

Reading the glass

A photographer's lens collection reveals what they actually shoot. Wide angles mean landscapes or environmental work. Fast primes mean low light and portraits. Long zooms mean they need to reach out and grab a shot from a distance.

McKinnon's RF L-series selection covers a deliberate range. The L-series designation matters — these are Canon's professional-grade lenses with weather sealing, faster autofocus motors, and sharper optics. They're also significantly more expensive than the non-L alternatives.

The spread across focal lengths suggests someone who doesn't specialize in one type of shot. McKinnon's content ranges from cinematic B-roll to talking-head tutorials to outdoor adventure footage. His lens kit has to handle all of it, sometimes in the same shoot. You can see that versatility encoded in the focal length coverage — there aren't redundant lenses doing the same job.

The filter philosophy

This is where McKinnon's bag gets specific. PolarPro filters show up in the kit, and if you know PolarPro, you know these aren't generic UV protectors from Amazon. PolarPro makes cinema-grade ND filters and polarizers designed for video shooters who need precise light control.

ND filters are essential for video in a way they aren't for photography. When you're shooting video, your shutter speed is largely locked (the 180-degree rule), so you can't just crank the shutter to compensate for bright conditions. You need glass in front of the lens to cut light. The quality of that glass directly affects the quality of your footage — cheap NDs introduce color casts and reduce sharpness.

McKinnon choosing PolarPro over cheaper alternatives tells you he's prioritizing image integrity at every point in the chain. Body, lens, filter — no weak links.

What 25 items means

Most camera bags you'll find online have 8 to 12 items. Pros tend to carry more because they need to handle more situations, but 25 is substantial even by professional standards.

That number likely includes lighting, audio, and support gear alongside the camera and lenses. This is the full production kit — everything you need to walk into a location and produce content at the level McKinnon's audience expects.

The interesting thing about seeing it all in one place is that you start to understand the system. A YouTube video might show a lens in isolation. A gear list might mention a microphone in passing. But when you see all 25 items laid out in a bag, you see how they relate to each other. The camera body connects to the lenses connects to the filters connects to the support gear. It's an ecosystem, and every piece was chosen to work with the others.

Why this bag matters

Peter McKinnon's influence on photography and videography is hard to overstate. Millions of people have bought cameras, learned editing techniques, and started YouTube channels because of his content. His gear recommendations carry real weight.

Having his complete kit documented in one place — organized, visual, and shareable — is useful in a way that scattered Amazon links and timestamped YouTube comments aren't. You can see the whole picture. You can compare it against your own setup. You can understand the philosophy behind the choices.

That's what a good bag does. It turns a pile of individual products into a coherent story about how someone does their work.