Backpacking with camera gear

Craikeybaby

Craikeybaby

Messages
7,645
Name
Lewis
Edit My Images
Yes
Early next year I'm going backpacking in Central America and I'm sorting out what I'll need to take, so any tips/experiences would be appreciated:

My plan so far is:
Body + wide zoom, mid prime and yet to be bought 100mm macro lens as I feel that my 70-200 f2.8 will be too heavy. I will also be taking my Canon S90.

I've also decided to leave the Lee filters & tripod at home for weight reasons, although I will probably take a Gorilla pod, is the SLR zoom version without the head usable? It would be a shame to get away from all the light pollution over here & not be able to capture the night skies.

For backing up my Images I'm planning on using one of those memory card dumping devices as I do not want to take a laptop with me. I'm thinking of shooting RAW + small jpeg, so that i can upload images to Flickr etc to keep people at home updated.

With all of that in my bag I'll have to pack light for everything else, so any tips on that front are welcome too!
 
Craikeybaby said:
For backing up my Images I'm planning on using one of those memory card dumping devices as I do not want to take a laptop with me. I'm thinking of shooting RAW + small jpeg, so that i can upload images to Flickr etc to keep people at home updated.
Click to expand...

Several problems with those memory card dumping devices.
1) they are expensive; you can buy a lot of cards for the same money.
2) they need power. Most have woefully short battery life.
3) Single point of failure. If it stops working than you have nowhere to download your images. If it gets stolen or goes pop then you lose all your images.

Most people I know have ended up going the more cards route.
 
It will be as a back up to the cards, I won't be deleting anything off them until the files are safely in Lightroom & my back up system at home.

Hardware I got for the back ups cost me £20 on eBay, with a spare HDD from work = bargain.
 
I walked the Salkantay trail this summer carrying too much kit ;)

Don't know where you are going, but even in Puerto Maldonado ("Gateway to the Amazon") which is a slightly dodgy frontier kind of town in Peru there were plenty of shops that could copy cards to CD. Or add pixies to the background and print posters for you.

Gorillapod zoom weighs 300 grams. The focus weighs 500. There's a chap selling a Gitzo 1541 in the classifieds that weighs a kilo. If you can afford it, take one fewer shirt and that ;) I have one and it holds my Hasselblad pretty well.

As for cutting down weight.....don't take stuff you don't need ;) Srsly, a cotton T shirt weighs about 250 grams. So 6 shirts weigh 1.5 kilos. 3 weigh half of that ;) Buy the über techie ones from Rohan and they weigh 55 grams. Saving 100 grams on something may seem stupid but every 10 times you do that it's a kilo. My pack with clothes and stuff for 3 days, sleeping bag, spare shoes, camera equipment and tripod came to around 9 kilos. 2 litres of water and it felt heavy in the mountains.
 
Cards are made up of 4GB & 2GB, so should be fine in that regard.

The point about the tripod is an interesting one, I've been looking at lightweight Feisol tripods, but is carrying the tripod outside the bag going to attract the wrong sort of attention?

Packing light sounds good, I've got a few merino wool tops than can be worn for days before they start to smell.
 
Stack of Sandisk cards are already in my FStop Guru, Satori EXP should be with me at the end of the month.

I hadn't thought of the 70-200f4, I'm sure my Dad could be persuaded to swap his for my f2.8 version while I'm gone.
 
Hmm Satori + Large ECU are less than 3 kilos. That's pretty good.

Personally I use a regular hiking backpack and some padded wraps. Even lighter and very comfortable to carry.
 
I'll be taking Satori & small ICU, their other packs I've tried do carry like a regular hiking pack, I wouldn't want to carry a normal camera bag around for long periods of time.
 
I'm back, so I thought I'd update the thread with how I got on and what worked etc, in case somebody searches in the future.

Kit:
In the end I borrowed my Dad's 70-200f4, which worked well due to being smaller and lighter than the f2.8 version (although he's still got my that, must get it back!). I also took my 50mm and 17-40mm. I took about an equal number of pictures on each and the same again on my S90. The 5D worked fine, glad I had a small body, rather than my old 1D.

I hardly used the GorillaPod which I'd bought for this trip and certainly missed having a proper tripod, especially for the sunsets.

Backups:
I didn't delete anything off the memory cards and wend back with 4GB of empty cards. I copied the cards to my homebrew back up device each evening. However, I don't think I'll be using it again, as I'd also taken a book and a magazine with me, I really should have just taken my iPad which would have been lighter and smaller than those 3 items.

Bag:
I'll probably put something more detailed in the review section, but the FStop Satori was great! I didn't want to go down the normal backpacker route of large rucksack and smaller day pack because that would have made carrying all my camera gear quite tricky, so in the end I went with the Satori EXP, with the small ICU in the bottom, with everything else just about fitting on top of it. For flights I put all my clothes/toiletries etc in a foldable holdall that I could check in and used my Satori EXP as handluggage, as it was mostly empty this didn't pose any problems, although it is technically bigger than maximum carry on size and it fitted fine in overhead lockers. There were a few times when my bag went in the back of a minibus, which would have left me without my camera, so I was able to use the ICU as a separate mini camera bag (combined with a strap from an old LowePro bag attached to the D rings on the ICU), this also worked well for short walks. I had taken my camelbak drinks bladder, but ended up not using it.

If anyone has any questions fire away!
 
Yeah, threads like this just cost me 300 quid.....

I was at Focus for 4 days and never got away from the stand. Sunday morning I took 5 mins to nip over and see the F-stop bags. 4.5 mins later I was walking away with a Sartori..... :)

I think I may have got the wrong kit. I bought a Sartori with extra large ICU and small ICU. Ordinarily I prefer a smaller pack but the Sartori looks really small when it's all cinched up :) Will probably buy some other ICUs for it.

Outrageously good build quality (probably better than my Osprey) and lots of clever features. It also has that cool trick of good packs that it feels much lighter on than when you pick it up. I tried a pack with 20 kilos of Nikwax in it and it felt like less than 10.

Regret not spending more time on the other side of the stand too - as I was leaving at 5:30 I tried on a Paramo jacket and really liked it.....
 
Nice one! I didn't get a chance to go to focus. I've got the small and medium, as together they're about the same size as the extra large.
 
Actually just checked and I got the medium. If I'd thought about it a little longer I would probably have got small and medium for exactly the reason you say.

Very very nice kit though. Might look at getting a Guru as a day pack/urban backpack.
 
I'm still going through them, I'm back to the day job with a lot of catching up to do!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top