[pct-l] camera

[David Harris]

Joe,

I spent a lot of time considering this and settled on a Panasonic
Lumix waterproof/shockproof camera for 2012.  It's holding up great
and takes publishable pictures, although it's obviously not an SLR.
There are new models every year, so check for the latest.  The weight
is under 6 ounces, which is about 2 oz more than a decent light
nonshockproof camera.

I've been doing outdoor photography for guidebooks and have burned
through half a dozen nice Canon compact cameras in a decade because of
the wear and tear from the trail.

Light weight needs to be #1 or you won't want to carry it on a
thru-hike.  It sounds like you are aiming toward SLR with your mention
of multiple lenses, but I don't recall seeing a thru-hiker north of
Big Bear still carrying an SLR. I also don't recall solar units north
of Big Bear, although I've heard a few people claim to carry them all
the way.  It's just so much lighter to carry rechargable batteries.

I found the simplest solution to charging and downloading was to put a
USB cable and the battery charger in my bounce box, which I received
every 1-2 weeks.  I take gazllions of pictures and carried 2 spare
batteries to get through long stretches like the Sierra. I also
carried two 8 GB memory cards.  I seem to recall this added about 2.5
oz to my Sierra pack weight. Normal people could live without all
this.

Although this unit didn't have explicit aperture/shutter priority
settings, it has enough control that I could set the exposure on one
part of the picture and then move to another and get a useful range of
exposures.

Many cameras have geotagging, but the Panasonic geotags were rarely
reliable on the PCT.

Happy hiking,

David


Message: 18
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 09:22:36 -0800
From: Joe Roth <jroth2353 at gmail.com>
Subject: [pct-l] Best camera to use during a thru hike..
To: "Pct-L at backcountry.net" <Pct-L at backcountry.net>
Message-ID:
        <CACmM4ZAyWtYrHUz8u_m0OTNBD77XHnjYiguAHDaPTVGgQCYa4Q at mail.gmail.com>
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My wife,(seaglass) and I, (hawk) are thru-hiking the PCT in the spring and
am shopping for a camera. What is the most common light weight camera used
on trail to capture wide angle and zoom images?  I am narrowing the list to
the following;

1. light weight
2. easy to download to a blog site
3. raw capable
4. both wide angle and zoomable lens
5. auto, aperture and shutter priority settings
6. rechargeable using solar unit
7. lots of memory

Thank you.