A Reader Question about Travel Cameras

A reader recently posed some questions about choosing a camera system for travel. I’m sharing and edited version of his post here along with my response. He wrote:

I wanted to ask for your camera intellect on something I was thinking about. Canon was closing out the 5DS-R completely so they were selling brand new 5DS-Rs for a very low price.. So I bought a brand new one and it’s been terrific and I don’t regret it.

I want to do some travel, including some overseas, as soon as COVID allows. I don’t want to drag around a 5DS-R and a bag of heavy lenses all across Europe and elsewhere on a long trip. I also don’t want to invest heavily in another cameras and lenses. Because I have several Leica-R lenses that I use on my Canon with a lens adapter, maybe that would be a good alternative because I already have most lenses I would need…

My response:

I’m afraid that I have no experience with Leica cameras, or at least so little that it probably isn’t helpful.

My travel kit for urban trips, including those long European visits, is based on a Fujifilm XPro2, one of their excellent APS-C cameras. I mostly work with a set of small primes, though I’ve been known to carry at least one larger lens for occasional use, too, though I would usually avoid this for travel.

My most used lenses are smaller Fujifilm primes. To produce a very small camera/lens package I most often have the little 27mm f/2.8 lens attached. I bring along the 14mm f/2.8 for wide angle needs. For flexibility, and because I do night street photography, I also put the 23mm and 35mm f/1.4 lenses in the bag. Recently I’ve carried the 90mm f/2 rather than the 50-140mm zoom on occasion. On long trips I may add a small “travel tripod” for occasional use — it is nowhere near what I use for my regular photography, but it will do in a pinch… and it isn’t too heavy/large to bring along.

The primes work really well for me because so much of my travel photography leans toward street photography. But another photographer could easily prefer to use a couple of zooms, and there are quite a few options along those lines, too.

I sort of have two ways to think about gear weight and size. The first has to do with the total amount of stuff I’m willing to bring — in other words, what portion of my overall luggage I’m willing to devote to camera gear. The list you see above reflects this criterion. I can fit the camera and lenses into my carry-on, under-seat bag for flights. If I bring that travel tripod, it goes in my second, larger carry-on bag in the overhead storage on the flight. (We travel light — entirely carry-on luggage even for weeks-long trips.)

Once I’m on location I virtually never carry all of the gear with me on the street. For much daytime photography I might have the 14mm, the 27mm, and the 90mm with me, and I leave the other lenses locked in a hotel safe. If I want to go really light I take only the 27mm. For night photography I switch out the other lenses for the two f/1.4 lenses.

I prefer to not use a full frame system for travel. The better APS-C cameras are more than up to the challenge of hand-held photography — I can confidently make 20″ x 30″ prints from their files. And the overall size/weight savings is significant.

It isn’t a Leica… but on one memorable occasion in Altstadt Heidelberg I was walking down a backstreet near the university with my Fujifilm when a young fellow walking toward me stared intently at my camera, stopped, and exclaimed, “Leica! Cool!” — about my Fujifilm gear. ;-)

Of course, everyone has their own preferences when it comes to what works for travel photography, and you might just plain like the Leica stuff. That’s fine, too!

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, Amazon, and directly from G Dan Mitchell.

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