Snow Capped Ridges – Western United States

I’m going on a quick trip to Madison, Wisconsin and Chicago and I need to figure out what camera to bring. With all the cameras I own it can be fun and daunting to narrow down the selection. I often bring two, sometimes 3 cameras. I decided to go light this time, reducing one potential headache of holiday travel.

It took me a couple of days to think things over. There are so many thing I like to shoot and the challenge of having so much gear is that there’s always a better camera for specific purposes. If left unchecked, it’s easy to bring a slew of cameras which somewhat negates the benefit of small and light mirrorless systems.

I have a few new cameras that I haven’t talked about, which I will reveal next year. It was tempting to bring my newest toys but I opted to take just the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II. My main lens, the super-wide and super-light Olympus 9 – 18mm f4-5.6. This should be perfect for Chicago architecture. I’m also bringing the tiny Panasonic 14mm f2.5 prime for lower light situations. Finally, the 40-150mm telephoto for compressing some architectural details.

That’s the great thing about micro 4/3 and the slower (non-pro) lenses. They are so light, the 3 lens set plus the camera body only weighs 2 pounds. That gives me a 18 to 36mm and 80mm to 300mm range with uncompromising image quality.

Of course, I’ll have one more camera with me — the ever popular iPhone. For many people, that’s the only camera they need. The photograph above, I shot that last year with an iPhone 5. That’s already 3 generations old. The latest iPhone 6s, I’m sure, is even better.