I just recently got back from a 10 day trip to Romania. I had a tour guide for a good deal of the time but also had a few days in Bucharest and Braşov to wander around on my own. (Well one day or 2 I was with a friend who was from Romania so that helped!) I took three cameras: Nikon P900 superzoom, Sony RX100 IV Which is always on my belt pouch, and the Sony A7Rii with 2 lenses: Sony 28 f/2.0 and 24-240. Lots of batteries for all of them and chargers. I also took lots of SD cards, mostly 128gb San Disk. Usually I back up the shots after each day with my laptop to a small 3 TB external drive but this time I just used a different SD card each day. I usually don’t bother trying to work on shots as I’m too tired from walking around all day shooting and this trip was no exception.
I never used the P900 this trip tho last year I got great shots with it in Paris and Budapest. This time I wanted to carry around less as I was doing way more walking around. The A7Rii with the Sony 24-240 has turned out to be the best setup for daytime shooting. I can get Good lowlight shots with it but if I had a chance to get back to my room I’d swap to tgex28 f/2.0 for night shooting. (Or if my wife didn’t mind carrying my extra lens in her purse.) The 28mm lens was also great for shooting people as they didn’t seem to notice me as much when using it. When were we in a restaurant etc Is shot with my Sony RX100 IV which I always have with me. The shots are amazing with it. I could probably shoot everything with this camera and still be happy though I like the 42mp of the A7Rii if making enlargements. But really the RX is amazing.
When climbing in tiny stairways in castles the 24-240 is heavy and it’s a lot to deal with sometimes but I really want the range of it’s zoom to always have options. To be honest though 70% of my shots need to be wide angle. I just bought the 21mm adapter for the 28 f/2.0 and will probably be happier with 21mm on my next trip. It costs way more but the 12-24mm would probably be the way to go. I saw lots of wide views that needed a wide lens. I used the panorama shooting feature with the A7Rii many times. It shoots multiple shots as you pan and it stitches them for you. It shoots this in jpg’s so I also cover my bases and shoot RAW and snap across a scene for me to manually stitch the larger files later (photoshop will do it) if I want. For a while I’ve tried using two cameras, one with the zoom, one with a wide lens and then you have options fast, and no lens swapping but it makes you stand out too much. This does work on model shoots but not while traveling. I also never carry a backpack and have extra SD cards and batteries in my pocket. And biz cards. I use a Black Rapid camera strap.
The video with both the A7Rii, and the RX100 IV is amazing and always looks great later. I try and remember to shoot just a little bit everywhere so later I have a video to show of my adventure and of course add photos into it.
I have albums of my travels on my Facebook page http://tinyurl.com/allenfreemanfacebook and see my work at www.afreemanphotography.com
Let me know how you deal with gear on the road!
