Daily Archives: June 5, 2015

8 years, 10 months ago 13

Locked and Loaded……..

I’m packing and getting ready to fly to Spokane where Jack Graham will pick me up so we can drive down to Colfax and run the Palouse Workshop! Each location requires it’s own set of gear or at least as few specialty items for the kind of work you plan to do! When traveling by air you have to find a way to get all the gear there and take the cameras and lenses on the plane with you. I fly Southwest for several reasons but one of the most important is they always fly 737s. I know this airplane well and know my loaded Think Tank Airport Security Version 2.0 will fit in the overhead bins! I also pay the fee to get on the plane early in the A’s so I know I can get an isle seat with an open bin, about midway back through the plane. Why midway back? The most comfortable ride in turbulence in over the wings.

Back to the gear. Every nature, landscape trip requires the big three; a wide angle zoom (mine is the Fuji 10-24 f 4 – 15-36 equiv.), a mid range zoom (the 16-55 f 2.8 – 24-85 equiv.) and a telephoto zoom (the 50-140 f 2.8 – 70-200 equiv.). I also packed my 18-135, which goes everywhere with me, my throw back to the Nikon 28-300 kind of super zoom!! The special lens for this trip is the Nikon 300mm f 4.5 IF-ED manual focus lens with an adapter to Fuji X mount (equiv, 450mm) The shot below was made with the compression affect of this lens, and with focus peaking, it is easy to get tack sharp focus points.

The other lens I always carry is the Fuji 60mm Macro with three auto extension tubes from Fuji; the 11mm and two 16mm. That combination of lens give me courage from 15mm to 450mm and the ability to shoot close-ups to life size and little beyond.

I carry a Watson charger ( B&H and Amazon carries it) that charges two batteries at once with a very good LCD readout of the progress. It also features replaceable plates for many different batteries. A portable hard drive (2 TB) for back ups. In the top pockets of the bag I have the extra lens caps, body caps, cleaning supplies, allen wrenches, etc, etc.

I’m also taking a Fuji X-T10 and the new 16mm f 1.4 and 90mm f 2 to shoot in the Palouse as well! I will post images all this coming week, have a great weekend!