If you are like me, you take A LOT of pictures on your your trips. Not only that, sometimes I make photography the main purpose of visiting certain destinations. Not every one of my readers would do the same, and I wouldn’t necessarily advise visiting a slaughterhouse in Nepal at a crack of dawn, for example, just for the heck of it unless you are serious about photographing it. Whatever your interests are, in this day and age, photography – from smart phone selfies to pro shooting – is the inevitable part of any trip just about anywhere.
Normally, I don’t recommend bringing anything too expensive on a long backpacking trip, but there is one exception to that rule that I make for myself, and it is my photo gear.
Sure, for simply documenting your trip, you are perfectly fine bringing just your mobile phone. Most of the smart phones these days have a camera that is similar to most compact point and shoot cameras, and therefore, don’t worry about carrying a camera on your trip. You would be able to document wherever you are or whatever you are doing by your phone just fine. Get a selfie stick, for goodness’ sake, even though I personally abhor those.
But if photography is important to you, if you like to be creative, know how to get the most out of a serious camera and a good lens, and especially if you plan to print any of your pictures, you would need to bring a camera, so let’s start with that.
People often ask me what camera to buy for travelling. It’s like asking, what car to buy for commuting. There is no universal answer. In the world of photo gear, quality does directly correlate to the price, and so only you can answer the question of how much of photo gear you can afford to buy and take with you. One huge consideration is weight. The high quality DSLR cameras are heavy, and so are their lenses. There are many travelers who carry a backpack dedicated solely to their photo gear, and that’s going to put a big damper on your trip, not to mention an object of constant concern whenever you visit a destination that is less than safe. You will need to find a perfect medium – for you – between the weight and the bulk on one hand and the quality you require on the other. There are quite a few entry-level DSLRs that are popular with travelers, and with every year, their quality improves. However, entry-level lenses might not offer much better image and resolution quality than a high-end smart phone. And most good DSLR lenses are not exactly light, so the whole package will start creeping into your luggage weight, especially if you take more than one lens. Over the years of lugging some heavy DSLRs with me on many trips, I have become a big fan of mirrorless systems that offer a great combination of quality and small size. Some of the smaller ones, such as Olympus and Panasonic Lumix, might not necessarily have the same image quality compared to full-frame sensor cameras, but the size of the set and extremely advanced features such as lightning-fast autofocus would more than compensate for it. I am a proud owner of the first generation Olympus OM-D EM-5 camera, which is my backup, and it’s still going strong after over 5 years of ownership – that’s an eternity for a digital body! The newest version of that camera, OM-D EM-5 Mark II, offers even better features and an even better sealed body, which actually makes it a near-perfect travel camera considering it’s light weight. It’s sibling, Panasonic Lumix G9, is even more advanced and offers a packfull of features as well, and upon a brief test, I was more than impressed with it, especially the autofocus.
If you are willing to spend more money, there are some higher-end mirrorless systems offering full-frame sized sensor, such as Sony A series. I myself currently use a 42 megapixel Sony A7r Mark II camera, although there is a later generation of this camera if you want the latest and the greatest. These cameras offer some of the best image quality I’ve seen, and, uniquely, easily work with almost any other lens, particularly with any of the numerous Leica M-mount manual lenses via a small and inexpensive adaptor, such as Metabones.
But we will talk more about lenses in one of the next posts.