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Travelling Light A horrid crunching as I tried to focus was the first sign of trouble. Then I couldn't get a sharp image of anything over a metre away. Our Karakoram trek had barely started: we hadn't even seen the glaciers yet - and already, during a bumpy, dusty jeep ride, something had turned my zoom lens from all-rounder into macro-only. I gloomily reviewed my remaining options: a 24mm, a 50mm and a 2x converter. It seemed a total disaster. This wasn't just the 'holiday of a lifetime': this was where I was going to stake my claim as an outdoor photographer. And now I didn't have a lens longer than 100mm. Seven weeks later, when I saw the processed slides, my overwhelming reaction was relief. Somehow I had some good shots after all. Still, it took a while before I could reflect calmly: how many shots had I actually missed? How many times had I actually seen something that cried out for that extra focal length? Maybe it hadn't been a total catastrophe, but it was a long time before I saw anything positive about it. I only began to get the message after subsequent trips, when I carried three times as much gear, but didn't get three times better pictures. Maybe, I began to think, less is more. Traveling light has some obvious advantages. Roads don't go everywhere - thank goodness, or there'd be no wild places left to photograph. But the further you get from tarmac, the more you need to think about what you take. It's easy to throw everything in the back of the car; it's another story when everything goes on your back, up hill and down dale. If you're climbing K2 or crossing Antarctica, every gram is critical: it may even be a matter of life and death. For the average landscape photographer, saving weight is more a matter of comfort. But comfort counts. Being uncomfortable is not an aid to concentration. And traveling light also means you can travel further, or faster. It may mean getting to the top of the next hill before the light goes, and being able to breathe when you get there. But it isn't just about comfort. My Karakoram lens disaster
didn't save me any weight - I carried that dead zoom for several weeks
before throwing it down a crevasse when the going got really tough - but
it did make my life simpler.
First, it was physically simpler. My small selection of gear could be instantly accessible, allowing me to react quickly to changing light or to opportunities like a line of porters forming a particular pattern. The saving in time also meant less disruption in the rhythm of the walking.: no small factor on a month-long trek which included some 12-hour days. But life was also photographically simpler. With just three lens options - 24, 50, or 100mm - I usually knew straight away which lens to use. As time went on I found I was 'seeing' more and more shots before looking through the viewfinder. Seeing like this makes photography infinitely more intuitive. It's a major part of the process of visualisation, of which Ansel Adams wrote so eloquently. To anyone who has trouble with framing (a much better word than 'composition') or 'finding' shots, I would advise dumping most of your lenses, especially the zooms, and going out with just one or two fixed lenses. It should bring home another lesson too: there's a vast difference between zooming in on a subject and physically getting closer to it. With long-range hindsight I can now see that my 'disaster' may ultimately have done me more good than harm. Many lessons learned on that trip have stayed with me, including the subtler benefits of traveling light. However, traveling light doesn't mean throwing everything out, willy-nilly. Paring down is fine, but paring down to the point where you can no longer get the results you want defeats the object. So part of the process is being clear - but realistic - about what you do want to achieve. Just remember you can never cover every possible eventuality. I might have got a good shot of a Himalayan Brown Bear if I'd had an 800mm lens ready for instant action. But if I'd tried to carry an 800mm lens and a suitable tripod I probably wouldn't have survived the trip. When working out what you need to carry, start by looking
at what you actually use. If you regularly carry x, y and z but they hardly
ever leave your bag, you can probably manage without them. But if you
regularly use everything, just because it's there, think again. You'll
also find that if you carry less, you'll become more flexible and imaginative
in the way you use it.
Recently I found myself on the 'wrong' side of the camera during a day scrambling in the Lake District. On the other side was Matthew Roberts, who shoots regularly for Trail and Country Walking magazines. I noticed that Matthew was using just 20mm and 180mm lenses. Later I asked him about this choice. He responded: 'I rarely get frustrated by not having a particular focal length available. I generally find I think of pictures which suit the lenses I have with me. There is never just one shot in a particular area. There is always something else you can do with a different focal length.' I've recently found that the 'less is more' attitude works pretty well for mountain biking too. I bought a 17-35mm zoom because I wanted something wider than my existing 20mm, but I've found that I use it at its widest setting at least two-thirds of the time. Which makes me think that a 17mm prime lens would be lighter and probably more robust. When biking I carry a flashgun as well - the mountain bike market loves shots that mix flash and daylight, and they are great for giving a sense of speed.
I also asked Tom Hutton, a regular contributor to mbr (Mountain Bike Rider) and many other outdoor mags what he used. He just carries one lens - a 24-120mm zoom - for his Nikon F100, plus a flashgun. But he added, 'The camera's bombproof but the lens isn't; I actually have two so I'm covered when one's being repaired.' There is a real trade off, especially in more extreme situations, between lightness and robustness. In really extreme situations an SLR and a couple of lenses may be far too much to carry, but even in extreme mountaineering or adventure racing, most people want some record of their experience, and some need shots of professional quality. The obvious solution would seem to be a compact, perhaps with a zoom lens if you can manage the extra 50 grams. Digital cameras are also beginning to stake a claim, but battery dependence and doubts about how well they'd stand up to extreme conditions mean they are still unproven.
When I really want to go light, I'm still inclined to
dig out my ancient Olympus 35RC. Yes, it's a bit chunkier than most modern
compacts, but it has rangefinder focusing and the option of full manual
exposure control. Admittedly it only has a fixed 42mm lens. This does
keep things simple, but I would like something wider. Certainly, if it
ever needed replacing, I would be looking seriously at the Voigtlander
Bessa range and the few other 35mm rangefinder cameras still available.
At the other end of the scale, what happens when you have a major assignment for which a huge range of shots may be required? Can you still manage with just a couple of lenses? I faced just these choices when I took on my biggest project yet, documenting the Scottish islands for a major 'coffee-table' book. This didn't only involve landscape photography: there would be architectural shots, (everything from cathedrals and stone circles to a public loo!), wildlife, indeed a bit of almost everything. This might suggest taking everything bar the kitchen sink, but I knew that many locations were only accessible by long and sometimes rough walks. I also wanted to get around by bike where possible. As a landscape photographer, I'm bound to care about the landscape, and minimising car use makes environmental sense. But it also made practical sense: on the smaller islands the slower speed was never a problem and sometimes an advantage: on a bike you see more, and 'tune in' to the landscape much better. It also means you can stop anywhere, which you can't do in a car. For quality's sake, I wanted to use medium format wherever possible and after careful consideration I bought a Mamiya 7. This rangefinder camera produces 6 x 7 cm trannies yet is lighter than some 35mm SLRs (admittedly most things are lighter than a Nikon F5!). My budget wasn't bottomless and I had just two lenses. The 43mm wide-angle - equivalent to around a 21mm lens on 35mm - became my main landscape lens as well as being used for many other shots indoors and out. I also took an 80mm standard lens. However, I couldn't use it for everything. For wildlife shots, for instance. I still needed 35mm gear. And yes, I did carry both systems most of the time. Clearly this isn't everyone's idea of 'Traveling Light', but it all went into one small backpack, and without being superhuman I was able to do some long days with it. I used various lenses for the 35mm system, according to circumstances. In prime wildlife areas I carried a 300mm f/4 (a lot more portable, and affordable, than an f/2.8) plus 1.4x and 2x converters. I could usually squeeze in a 50mm macro lens too. On other occasions the 300 was replaced by a 70-200 f/2.8, a versatile lens for general 'long' shots.
For ultimate quality, I aimed to use a tripod as much as possible. However, most ultralight tripods are virtually useless as soon as they're faced with a bit of breeze, or the mirror-slap of an SLR (monopods are often better, and don't overlook the humble bean-bag). Instead I took a deep breath and splashed out on a carbon-fibre model. The total weight of all the gear, including a few filters and rolls of film, and the bag itself, was around 9 kilos. This doesn't include food and water or spare clothing, which were obviously needed on longer outings. This was quite manageable when walking, or cycling on the road. Of course there were times when this was too much. And for many other projects I don't need both formats - and I certainly wouldn't carry both unless I needed to! But this same outfit (minus the 300mm lens), and the same old faithful backpack, served me well on a six-week trip to Australia, including some ocean sailing and a trek in the Outback. In these unfamiliar settings, especially when fighting seasickness, it was reassuring to have gear that I knew inside out. Which brings us full circle. Light is also simple. Carrying too much gear doesn't just weigh you down physically, it can also clutter you up mentally. But lightness isn't everything. If my experiences illustrate anything, it's that the choice of what to carry is always a compromise. And you have to balance lightness with quality. If the gear doesn't stand up to the conditions, it can rapidly turn from 'light' to 'dead weight'. And if it you can't trust it to deliver the results you want, what's the point of carrying it at all? Travelling light still needs to mean travelling right.
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