Camera, Video, lights, what to bring.

Those of you who know me, know I can't spell, I love music and photography is a little more then a hobby for me.  The spelling part,  well, I'll do the best I can while blogging and hope spell check can decipher what I type.  Music,  Apple made that easy.  My entire studio can just about fit in a mac laptop. Maybe I'll get one of those roll out midi keyboards and play on the trip.  However, when it comes to Photography, and packing for that cross country trip,  I was lost.   

One camera,  two camera's, three camera's?  How many lenses should I bring.  What about video, that could be fun.  After months of thinking,  playing,  experimenting and watching a million youtube videos,  I finally made my decision.

Camera,  I am not bringing my best camera.  It's heavy, it's expensive, and it's,  well,  heavy.  I'm also not going to bring my smallest DSLR.  It's does not do well in low light.  So I settled in the middle, I bringing my Nikon D7000.  It does fair in low light, it's small,  and it has video.   BOOM - ALL THREE in one shot.

Next comes lenses.  I got primes, wide, tele, fast, and even a bunch of older manual lenses.  But  space on the bike is limited,  so I am in the same situation as with the camera.  I settled again on something in the middle.  It's light, f3.5 - 5.6,  so it's not that fast,  but it has an 18mm to 200mm zoom.  The images are average, but again,  it does it all, it's small, and light.

For backup and portability,  I also have packed my Cannon S95.  Fits in a pocket and takes good pictures.

Video,  ok,  I may have gone a little overboard in this department.  I packed two white Gopro's and a Sony HDR-AS15.  I also have a large assortment of mounts and little tripods.  The G2 hat is also a mount,  "hat-cam".  So why so many.

The plan is to put one Gopro on the helmet and have it snap a shot every 2 seconds.  I'll then turn the stills into a time laps video.  Six hours of riding will be reduced to a 12 min video.

The second Gopro will be used for video of what ever captures my eye at the time.   Both of the gopro's have water proof cases.

The Sony will be mainly on the "hat-cam", walking around, seeing the sights and maybe even some interviews with some locals.

The red radio is a weather radio,  that may come in handy, or it may be just one more thing to carry.  Not sure how that will work out.

Last are the chargers for all the different batteries. Why can't their be just one battery that does it all :( .

I also have a light stand attached to my bike that I will use for a tripod.  Light stands are WAY lighter then tripods. And also a lot smaller most of the time.  Not the kind of thing you want to use in the wind.

Oh, the furry little thing that looks like a cat toy,   external microphone for outdoors,  cuts down on wind noise.

That's it for today,  3 days to go to the journey begins.

Duane