melcat
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 p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Travel and only bring iPhone. Fulfilling? (please note edit in #1) | |
The desire to make pictures of the natural world is very old and in many of us. Look at that rock art. You'd be unwise to try to deny it if you have it.
I'm not in your carrying situation (I routinely carry 1Ds Mk III + 2 lenses on a 22km walk) but when I do need a "lightweight" kit, for example if I'm expecting extreme weather and need to be able to move quickly for safety reasons, that's the 1Ds Mk III + 24–70mm f/4 IS. In fact the lens was bought for that purpose after I retired my 5D: before that I'd been using the 5D and a very lightweight Olympus lens on an adapter, and I didn't want to carry that adapted lens forward to the new body with its larger mirror.
After I got the 24–70 I discovered just how flexible that lens is for landscape. It seems it was made for hikng, complete with the macro mode.
Setting ISO and shutter speed shouldn't be time consuming. Keep the ISO set to 100 (sunny) or 400 (for deep shade) and set the custom function so that ISO changes in 1 stop increments instead of the default ⅓ stop, to make bouncing between those two speeds easier. You will do this bouncing as you walk along, when the light changes, not when a shot comes into view. Put the camera in Av mode and centre-weighted, and set the aperture to f/8 or f/11 depending on your style. The lens has IS so even if you screw up it's a flick of a switch to turn it on. Wear the camera+lens on a strap over your shoulder with no case—it's weather sealed. I routinely shoot like this without even taking my backpack off.
I've been sceptical all along about how worthwhile for you that heavy 100–400 would be. I suggest you go back through the slides you have of wildlife from your previous trips here and look at them with a critical eye. Is it just a tiny parrot, too small in the middle of the frame? It's one thing to get a "record" shot of some creature you saw, but quite another to get it in good light, doing something interesting. I reached the point some time ago where, if it's just a record shot, I'd rather savour the moment watching the thing through good binoculars than take a picture.
Personally, I don't regard keeping different hours from your travelling companions and shooting at dawn and dusk as any kind of a solution, but then I've always detested dawn and dusk lanscape photos. Also, it's winter and dusk is either late afternoon down south or dinner time up north.
If you plan lunch so it's somewhere scenic the photographers in the party can be off doing that without holding the others up. Also, you're more likely to see wildlife if you stop and sit down than when you're moving. The noise a party makes when it moved tends to scare the wildlife away. So a nice long meal break/picnic can provide a good experience for both the photographers and the people just watching.
I also own a Sony RX10 with its 1″ sensor and have never even considered it for that rôle. It ruined enough shots on photowalks around town with its lousy dynamic range and mediocre lens. Let me add that in the beginning it was easy to persuade myself that I'd just been unlucky with the conditions on the day, but after a while I concluded there really were approximately no days it could handle to my satisfaction. You have only a few weeks. I think you're right to restrict yourself to cameras and lenses you already own.
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