Reader “Paul” asks about gear for backcountry photography and how it may vary from trip to trip:
Dan, I’m curious. On your trips, what percentage of your pack is reserved for anything photographic in terms of weight? And what percentage is camping? Or does that change with your experience and knowing ahead of time what your photographic expectations are?
Great questions, Paul. The answer gets a bit complicated, but let me try to get to the heart of what I think is a question about how much weight/stuff to carry for various sorts of backcountry trips. (A longer article — My Backcountry Photography Equipment — goes into even more detail.)
Alpine Lake, Morning. © Copyright 2019 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
As you imply in your question, the answer varies — sometimes a lot — depending on a bunch of factors: how fit/young you are, the terrain you’ll cover, your willingness to bear weight for photography, whether your focus is more on miles covered per day or the photography itself, what you’ll do with the photographs after the trip, and more.
Over the years I have done multi-week Sierra Nevada trips (solo or with others), carrying packs of up to 75 pounds. I don’t do those any more, but few people would want to add 20 pounds of camera, lenses, filters, batteries, charger, and tripod to such prodigious loads. This is especially true if the plan is to cover much mileage — then the weight is even more of an issue and the time available for photography is even less.
At the another extreme are trips I’ve done in the past decade with a group of serious landscape photographers who use pack train support to get to a backcountry basecamp and then spend a week focusing exclusively on photography in that area. We tend to bring fairly large and sophisticated gear into the backcountry, but since the pack animals carry in all of the non-photography gear (and sometimes some of that, too) we can carry heavier photographic equipment on the hike to base camp. On these trips I actually augment my primary full frame system with a second cropped sensor system with one zoom lens that I could use if I had a failure of the primary system.
The photograph accompanying this article illustrates yet another case. Two years ago I did a three-day backpack trip with a group of non-photographer friends. I decided that I would use a minimal kit that would still produce very good results. I took a Fujifilm cropped sensor camera and just a 16-55mm zoom (roughly equivalent to a full frame 24-77mm zoom) and a small “travel tripod.
As to the question of “what percentage of my pack” weight is reserved for various photographic and non-photographic gear”… I’ll start with a confession: I almost never actually weigh the stuff. It is partly that I don’t want to know — I guess I figure that I’ll simply have to deal with whatever the weight of the necessary gear is. The lightest system I’ve carried probably weighed on the order of 7-8 pounds. I’m guessing that the heaviest may have been close to 20 pounds.
As to the pack weight of non-photographic equipment, over the years I’ve moved more in the direction of ultralight gear — but not the extremes of that approach. I carry a pack that weighs a few pounds empty, a “800-fill” down bag, simplified and light cooking equipment, a very light tent, and I reduce the amount and weight of clothing and other gear as much as possible. (The old saying is: “Watch the ounces and the pounds take care of themselves.”)
Gear choices are terrain and geography dependent, too. What works for me in the summertime (and early fall) Sierra Nevada would not work for Alaskan mountains or Southwest desert, for example. Longer lenses might be important in a wildlife-rich location. And over the years each backpacker will develop his/her own ideas about the appropriate balance of equipment and weight and comfort.
As to what photographic equipment to carry, I can share some thoughts about what works for me. However, I strongly believe that backpacking photographers need to figure out their own ideal compromises — and compromises are always necessary. Where we might pack an extra lens just in case if we are working from a vehicle, we might not when we have to carry it on our backs for miles over high passes. (Again, note that the relatively brief coverage in this article is augmented by my other longer article on the subject.)
My regular full frame landscape photography kit uses a relatively large DSLR, most often with four good-sized zoom lenses, using a large tripod, and a range of accessories such as extra batteries and filters and so forth. From that starting point, here are some thoughts on how I lighten things when necessary for foot travel with the full frame system.
- Use lighter versions of lenses. In a few cases I have both f/2.8 and f/4 versions of some zooms I prefer zooms for landscape photography), so I’ll take the lighter f/4 versions.
- Reduce the number of lenses. The first to go is my 100-400mm monster. I like the lens a lot, butI can put a small 1.4x TC on the 70-200mm f/4 and only give up little reach. Next to go is my 16-35mm f/4. I can usually get by with a 24mm maximum wide angle focal length. On one weeklong trip some years back I pared this down to just the 24-105mm lens. There were a few things that I couldn’t photograph in the way I might have preferred — but not that many, and I could usually find an alternative way to photograph them.
- Lighten the tripod. I have a lighter “trail tripod” equipped with a lighter ball head that probably saves several pounds. The tripod is a bit less “beefy” and not quite as tall, and the lighter ball head lacks a few adjustments — but it works just fine.
Another option is to go to a lighter system altogether, such as an APS-C cropped sensor system or a micro-four-thirds system. Not everyone can justify owning multiple camera systems, but if you can it may be worth it to make one smaller and lighter. I own a significantly smaller cropped sensor system — not only is the camera smaller and lighter, but lenses with equivalent reach are smaller and lighter, too. And with the lighter system it is possible to use an even lighter tripod!
Some will worry about a decrease in image quality. It is true that a smaller sensor with lower megapixel resolution cannot equal the image quality potential of larger full frame, high-megapixel systems or the new miniMF systems. However, here one needs to ask, “How much is enough?” My 24MP cropped sensor system provides image quality to support absolutely excellent 20″ x 30″ prints. Unless you will actually print larger than that, the extra weight of the larger system may seem a bit pointless.
Finally, it is important to give a nod to even lighter options. If your photographs will not be printed large and especially if you will mostly/always share electronic versions of them via email and the web, even smaller and lighter options can make a whole lot of sense. These range from smartphone camera up through all-in-one cameras with built in zoom lenses.
Hope that helps, and feel free to add follow-up questions if you want.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” is available from Heyday Books and Amazon.
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