Equipment, Reader Questions

A Reader Question about Travel Cameras

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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.

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Photographs: Urban/Street

Free Couch

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Free Couch
A free couch and colorful pillows on the sidewalk in a suburban neighborhood.

Free Couch. © Copyright 2013 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

A free couch and colorful pillows on the sidewalk in a suburban neighborhood.

While walking in the neighborhood (which means anything in a radius of about three miles around our home) I often come across things that are… interesting. At this point I can point to homes occupied by hoarders, the best places to look for free garden produce left out for passers-by (which is why we have two loaves of persimmon bread in our freezer), cool house paint, the folks who imagine that putting a fake green carpet when their lawn used to be makes it “beautiful,” the neighborhood full of expensive and gigantic and extremely banal homes, and more.

I also come across quite a bit of suburban detritus. The things that we don’t want any more probably reveal a lot about us — perhaps more than we realize. (It is amazing that someone actually wants some of these things. We’ve had people pick up things like broken rakes…) In a few cases, I suspect that the give-aways may reflect past decisions that the owners eventually realized were, well, not examples of their best aesthetic judgment. Notice those pillows?

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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Photographs: Birds, Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Wildlife

The Cranes Return, Dusk

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The Cranes Return, Dusk
As the day ends, sandhill cranes return to the wetlands.

The Cranes Return, Dusk. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

As the day ends, sandhill cranes return to the wetlands.

Sandhill cranes are often the first birds I am aware of in the early morning and the last I look for in the evening before I put my camera away. In fact, the boundary between enough and too little light often comes during their evening return, so it isn’t unusual to end the day just watching them.

I’ve never quite figured out where they go during the day, though I suppose that some investigation would turn up the answer. (In a West Coast location I once found thousands of them in a dry, barren, out-of-the way place where I was virtually alone with them.) I’ll never forget the first time I experienced their evening return. At the end of a day of photography it was becoming dark — too dark, I thought, to continue. As I was about to pack up my gear I heard a remarkable sound coming from the southeast, a sound that I didn’t understand then but which I now recognize immediately as that of the returning flocks. A few moments later hundreds (more likely thousands) of them arrived, filling the sky, and then descending to nearby ponds.

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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Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

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All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Fall, Photographs: Nature

Autumn Weeds

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Autumn Weeds
Colorful autumn weeds with morning frost, Central Valley.

Autumn Weeds. © Copyright 2020 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Colorful autumn weeds with morning frost, Central Valley.

Yes, weeds. I had spent a few hours photographing more exalted subjects — migratory birds, foggy sunrise skies, big vistas, fall colors. Eventually it was time for a break, so I pulled into a parking area, poured a cup of coffee from my thermos and grabbed a snack. It was a very cold morning, so I stood along the sunny side of my vehicle, enjoying the slight warmth of the morning sun. And at my feet, right there in the parking lot, next to a fence, I saw some colorful, frost-rimmed… weeds.

As you would expect, I put down the coffee, grabbed a camera, and set about photographing the… weeds. I’m often reminded of something that another photographer once wrote: “There’s always something to see!” Those words, which seem pretty banal when considered from a non-photographic perspective, turn out to be pretty important. No matter where you are, there is, indeed, virtually always “something to see.”

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.

Blog | About | Flickr | Facebook | Email

Links to Articles, Sales and Licensing, my Sierra Nevada Fall Color book, Contact Information.

Scroll down to leave a comment or question.

All media © Copyright G Dan Mitchell and others as indicated. Any use requires advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.