How much photo gear do you carry?
How much camera gear do you carry on long thru-hikes?
I carried a Ricoh 35 mm SLR back in the old days. "Graduated" to ever-smaller point and shoot digital cameras over the years.
Depends on when, where, and for how long. Most extended hikes, I now carry a point and shoot and a small gorilla tripod. Have recently upgraded to a small, relatively inexpensive dSLR with a short zoom lens, won't be a financial disaster if it gets damaged, so will probably carry this more often now.
In the past I have hiked with no camera (never again), disposable (never again), film SLR with short zoom lens (heavy, but GREAT slides), and point and shoot film.
Am I fickle?
I use a nice, compact Vivitar digital...you can see the results in my gallery.
Any blurry ones are due to unsteady hands or having it on the closeup setting...
Good point and shoot with manual controls (Canon G7), gorillapod, stick pic, polarizing filter, spare battery and card. On any hike longer than a week, add the battery charger.
1990-carried 2 SLR (1 w/ chrome, 1 w/B&W), a 28mm,50mm, 85mm,135mm and a straight 200mm, small flash, shutter release cable and small tripod plus 4 rolls of each film between maildrops. I shot 16,000 frames on that year long trip and about 11,000 of them were on the AT. I might add that I didn't have to pay for film.
2002-zoom capable point and shoot with print film. I shot 840 frames.
2007-PCT- small tripod and a very versatile digital. I shot 380 frames south of Kennedy Meadows and 2,600 frames from Kennedy to Yosemite.
I carried WAAAYYYYY too much gear for a thru in 1990 but just enough for a great photo trip. I still can't get over some of the shots that I got and I have a degree in photography.
I say...carry what you need to get the shots that you want. Some may say that the gear is too heavy and too much bulk but, if you are a photographer, it is worth it. Lug the gear and get the shot instead of sitting home later and saying "you should have seen this!" My next hike I'm going back to film...far more latitude working the shot.
geek
I found that if I carried my DSLR I took fewer pictures than if I take my G9, so I mainly take the G9, will take the DSLR or SLR on shorter more photo intense trips.
I use to have a Minolta X-700 SLR with several lens from 28 to 400 mm, a flasy and a slave flash, motor drive. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comffice
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Then I bought a Sony digital when they first came out (the size of a thick Tom Clancy paperback book) it was heavy, ran on a special battery ($50.00 to $70.00 to replace) it took great pictures, but it eat batteries like a kid eats candy. It also needed a battery specific charger to recharge batts.<o
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Now I have a point & shoot digital that has a 6-X optical zoom and 10 digital zoom and internal flash. It takes more pictures off 2 AA alkaline batteries then the Sony did with it’s $70.00 battery. <o
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I found I was not always taking the Minolta or the Sony with me as they were big and heavy. With the newest camera I take it all the time. It fits in my shirt pocket. Yea it doesn’t take the quality pictures the Minolta did, but it is with me a lot more then the Minolta was. <o
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Now I try to make sure all my electronics run off the same kind of batteries so I can keep going easily when away from electricity.
About a 4 ounce 8 Mpixel Cannon point-n-shoot and a tiny (sub 2ounce) tripod. Camera works on 2 - AA batteries so I carry an extra set of AA's on long hikes.
'Slogger
The more I learn ...the more I realize I don't know.
I am on my third digital point & shoot and as luck has it I have tried several different name brands. Fuji & Olympus work best for me, the new models have an adaquate anti shake for you caffiene lovers. I drilled a hole in the top of one of my hiking sticks & glued in a headless bolt to make a mono pod. One of the digital P&S to avoid is the Kodak, the software is downright inconvienent when trying to open for editing.
Dogs are excellent judges of character, this fact goes a long way toward explaining why some people don't like being around them.
Woo
I have a point & shoot Fuji and the software with it is super easy to use. Just plug the camera into the USB cable and it transfers over to the hard drive in seconds.
This is the norm nowadays. Cameras use the USB Mass Storage Class driver, and appear as a hard drive when connected via USB. In Windows (and probably in Macs also) the USB Mass Storage class driver is part of the operating system. Bottom line, if you have your own favorite image editing/viewing software, there's no need for camera-specific drivers at all.Originally Posted by Bob S
I, like most, carry a point and shoot digital camera and download the pictures to my computer. I like to use Picasa by Google because it's so darn easy and you can upload to web albums for free instead of sending 10 emails with two pictures each.
As for tripods, I highly recommend Gorillapods or knockoffs. Perfect for hiking and pretty light. http://www.joby.com/products/gorillapod/original/
You can get them for next to nothing on eBay.
Cabin Fever
You need God—to hope, to care, to love, to live.
I had two film cameras on my thru and both died due to moisture. Now I carry a water proof olympus. I'm not a camera nut. I still haven't developed all the film from the PCT. Pat hauls many boxes of pictures around. She takes pictures of everything. I never go back and look at old pictures. I like the digital because I can delete the bad pictures or the ones I don't care about...which is most of them. The best vistas I ever saw I had no camera or interest in being a photograper. I think I have a camera because I'm supposed to.
My waterproof Olympus (850 SW) is an utter POS. Even at ISO 400 the images are like 40 grit sandpaper. I should've taken it back but now it's too late.
Mine is the Olympus stylus 850 sw 8 mp . I think it's the same camera.My waterproof Olympus (850 SW) is an utter POS. Even at ISO 400 the images are like 40 grit sandpaper. I should've taken it back but now it's too late.
I accidently tested the water proof feature in Sweden. It seems to take good pictures so far. All those features are wasted on me but the people that I give it to to take pictures for me seem to like them.
I carry a nice little point and shoot with me, just picked up a new one actually. Got a Panasonic Lumix TZ-4 with the Leica lens, works fantastic!
I do use the camera specific software and it does it all. I plug it in and turn the camera on and it’s all transferred to a folder with the date of transfer and then it wipes the memory card clean (I checked the box to clean the card and it remembers to do it every time.)<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
A window then opens up a picture editor if I want to use it if not I just close out the window.
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I have several USB devices and have an understanding how they work, and I am very familiar as to how to transfer files (I started with DOS and have a good idea how it works.) But it’s still nice to have Fuji’s software kick in and do it whenever I plug the camera in to the computer
OMG! That would make me normal. Heaven forfend!!!
I just plug the USB cable into my camera and use it as a disk drive, too...it works just fine.
I prefer a camera I can keep in my pants pocket that is easy to pull out and use, in case a bear or other interesting critter shows up.
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