Travel Cameras & Lenses

I was on one of the Olympus FaceBook sites yesterday where a woman* photographer (this is a relevant piece of information) was asking what lenses she should take on a vacation trip to the Far East?

Seems a friend was willing to loan her a bunch of Olympus lenses including some PRO zooms and other big lenses. But the funny part of all this was our photographer friend said she wanted to travel light LOL.

The first thing I think she should think about is how much weight and how many lenses and camera bodies she was willing and able to carry. The answer would also prompt the question about what camera bag especially how big was she thinking of taking or buying.

Now let’s come to the woman* part of this equation.

When I went to Brazil on a vacation trip a few years ago when I was younger and still shooting Nikon I loaded a Think Tank ShapeShifter backpack with just about everything I owned. I had two camera bodies and four or five lenses plus a big flash and batteries and filters and charges and cables and the list went on.

It was almost impossible to carry all of this equipment and I am certain that I was over – way over – the carry-on weight set by the airlines. I could barely lift the loaded camera bag and my wife couldn’t get it off the ground. Unless our woman photographer is also a weightlifter she might have a hard think about what she should take.

So how do you know what to take?

The easy way to tell is look at your past photos. Most of shoot the same way regardless of where we’re shooting and even to a point what we’re shooting.

When I went to our friend’s Instagram page 99% of all of her photos were shot with a lens set to slightly wider than normal which is of course 35mm on a full-frame camera.

So when it came to Olympus digital cameras I’d recommend she take one lens and that would be the 12-40mm f/2.8. I’m betting she’d never use the 7-14mm which is a beast or the 75-300mm or any of the other PRO lenses.

Now I’m not saying she shouldn’t take more than one lens but she should be thinking about how much all this equipment is going to weigh.

But there is another even more serious issue and that’s theft. When my wife and I are in a foreign country we’re very serious about protecting ourselves and our equipment. When we went to Brazil we stayed with friends in a very safe community but even then we travelled with a PacSafe anti-theft device.

A lot is going to depend on where you’re staying. A major hotel is usually pretty safe but a news story last week included an item about a couple on vacation staying at a private home where a ground-floor window was smashed and they lost a lot of cash but what was worse was their passports were stolen. If you have several thousand dollars of camera equipment you could be in real trouble especially if you didn’t have insurance.

There are some situations and countries where you might want to take a decent point-and-shoot like a Ricoh GR III or a FujiFilm X100v. Both of these APS-C sensor cameras are pocketable (more or less) and will be more than suitable for a lot of your vacation shots while best of all not very tempting to thieves.

As for me on our next vacation trip I am either taking my small Olympus PL cameras (which we took to Italy) which with a couple of lenses will fit into a standard messenger type carrier bag or maybe a Ricoh or a FujiFilm or maybe we’ll go big like our friend the woman photographer and load up the new WANDRD All-New PRVKE Photography Travel Backpack & Photography Bundle which will take my two Olympus bodies and all my PRO lenses LOL.