Four days, one lens.

I've always manged to pack light in my travels since I first started moving about the country.  Even when my travels started taking me across the world, I've managed to get around with only a 22" carry on and a messenger bag to almost every continent (Antarctica yet to go!). However, when it comes to photography I'm often inclined to bring everything I own.  And I mean everything.  Tripod(s), extra camera bodies, lots of lenses, filters, chargers, diffusers, light stands, flashes, batteries, backup to the backup memory cards...you get the idea.  When shooting a project for a client, this kind of preparation is usually necessary.  The trouble is when traveling for leisure, most of this stuff becomes a burden especially when traveling by air.  My brother and I recently flew our dad out to Montana to celebrate his 60th birthday for a few days of fishing just with the boys.  Along with my fly fishing gear of course I was going to bring along some photographic goodies.  So in the spirit of packing light, this is what I brought along:

  • Nikon D300 body
  • Sigma 18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 lens
  • Zipshot tripod (really light & small)
  • Extra battery & charger
  • 2 CF memory cards
  • Lenspen for cleaning
  • Neutral density filter & polarizer (62mm)
  • Dry bag (for the camera while on/in the river)

That's it!  I wanted to challenge myself to use a single lens in a variety of conditions and something like the Sigma 18-200 allows me to do just that.  Of course, with lenses of this nature there are drawbacks that you must be willing to trade off.  It isn't as tack sharp as say my 70-200mm f/2.8 and the aperture varies with the focal length.  So at 200mm you are certainly not going to get f/3.5 out of this lens.  That said, it's a still an excellent compact option without worrying about changing lenses while standing in a rushing river!

In the end, it was a wonderful four days of fishing with my dad & bro.  Good beers, good meals and great story telling all around!  I was glad I brought along just the one lens and will do so on future trips when packing light is essential.  Hope you enjoy the pics, my wife and I will be heading down a little closer the equator this week with the same basic setup and hope to bring back some great shots.  Stay tuned for another post soon concentrating on the specifics of packing light and the gear itself.

82 | 365

In essence, this is actually a picture of failure.  Yep, for the first time in 82 days I failed to take a picture of any sort whether it has artistic merit or not.  Nada, zippo, nothing.  So I am doing double duty today and playing a bit of catch up.  Both 82 & 83 will be from today, March 25 and unfortunately once again from my iPhone.  I'm finding this little project of mine is a bit more work than I first suspected.  Especially after long days of work and little motivation to even pull out the camera phone for a not-so-artsy shot. Nonetheless, this has been a fun exercise so far and it has at times pushed me to take better compositions and dedicate more time to my work of choice. I also just recently grabbed two new camera bags, a Lowepro Slingshot 102 and a Crumpler Six Million Dollar bag, both of which will help me bring along my fancier cameras with me on trips to support my photographic endeavors.

So for now I present 'yesterdays' pic #82 from what we call ACARS on our aircraft.  A minor glitch in the reporting of our flight times made it appear we invented the ability to teleport today.  It actually shows our flight time as zero after we arrived at our destination.  Possibly might have had something to do with my sub-par landing, but that is neither here nor there.

So while some days you may be stuck with seeing some bland camera phone shots, stay tuned for more as the warmer months approach and I get outside for some hopefully high quality goodness.  Cheers-