Ultralight Photography

As you might imagine I quite often take camera gear out into the wilderness. It doesn't take much of this before you start to wonder seriously about the weight of the kit that you are carrying. After all there is not much point in having a base pack weight of under 5Kg if you then place 5Kg of camera gear onto it.

Naturally then, over the last year or so I have been looking at ways of shedding the pounds so that any camera kit that I take is minimal and sufficient.

Let's now take a look at what the options might be and how they compare.

• Traditional 35mm SLR Camera Kit
• Semi-compact digitical camera (with case+bats)
• Compact/Slimline digital camera (with case+bats)
• Camera-Phone (no case)
• Disposable 35mm Camera (no case)

Traditional SLR Camera Kit

My traditional kit (which has not seen daylight for several years now) shapes up something like this:

You can see that the minimum I could take with me would be over 1Kg and if I wanted to do any work in low light I would have to add at least 300g or more to that. The flipside of this weight were excellent photos - much better than could be achieved by a compact 35mm camera in practice.

Semi-Compact digitcal Camera

When I first looked at digital cameras I wanted a camera that was smaller and lighter than the SLR (easy) but I also wanted to be able to fully control the exposure sometimes and move away from point-and-click. Although this was on my essentials list in practice I found that generally what I wanted to do is to under/over-expose and leave the rest to the camera.

Most of the time the program modes on a camera would do what I want without me needing to think.

Immediately then, by going to even a heavy digital camera I have saved myself at least 500g and freed up some valuable pack space.

The only issue I had with this camera-setup is dropping the camera :-( and that shooting in low-light was difficult.

Compact Digital Camera

This year I have decided to review my camera strategy and most importantly what I want from my camera gear given that I also want to do some 'real' photography with it. To do this then requires some compromises either on price or performance. I have decided to compromise on performance.

For the way that I use a camera I wanted to have one that was small and light (relatively), had good battery life (so no need for spares), I could control exposure somewhat (and deliberately over/under expose) and that had a zoom lens.

There are plenty of cameras that could perform this function. My choice was a Nikon Coolpix L6 which is not lightening-quick but will work at ISO800 (dim light) and will last for up to 1000 shots (allegedly) on just two AA Lithium batteries.

Being able to use standard batteries was important to me because it meant that I did not need to worry about charging a camera or running out of battery power.

Now the minimum weight of my camera kit has dropped from 466g to 208g and the physical size has also dropped by 2/3rds. Crucuially however I can now afford to safely use a lightweight tripod and so can once again afford to do low-light shooting.

It is worth mentioning that you can buy some very cheap point-n-shoot fixed-focus digital cameras that use internal batteries and internal memory. They will be probaly weigh a lot less than mine but the limitation will be the number of shots that you can take (maybe a dozen) and the battery life.

Next there are some very nice slimline cameras from people like Sony and of course there are the Olympus µ cameras which can also come with waterproof bodies.

The key thing is to buy a camera based on what you expect to do with it and not just on weight alone. For most people most of the point-and-shoot digital cameras that are around will be ideal for what you want.

Magazines push very hard whatever is the latest thing but over 99% of the population only ever use point-n-shoot.

As far as pixels go then only a year or two ago 3-4 Mega-pixels was classed as good enough for most people since it will go to A4, now the goalposts have moved. However if 4MP was good enough then it should be good enough now. At the high end cameras are now offering 10MP. The only people who might use such a resolution are going to be displaying their work professionally. Everyone else will buy 10MP because is more than 4MP and that must be good, right?

Camera-Phone

For shorter trips I think the Camera-phone has to be the current best ultralight option.

The lightest phone that I can buy is a Motorola F3. It weighs in at 71g, is a basic phone that has very low power consumption and is ideal as an emergency phone.

My current phone (for daily use) is a Sony Cybershot variant. It has a 5MP camera built into it and a battery life that is impressive - at least a week on standby. With a rugged case it weighs in at 167g for which you get a camera, a radio, an MP3 player and a pair of headphones.

Here is a sample pic (click to enlarge):

It's not perfect but it's at least as good as the compact digital camera that I would otherwise take - A Nikon Coolpix L6.

The only real issue might be over sucking battery life out of your emergency phone. If you are worried about htat then just take a spare (fully charged) Li-Ion battery in a suitable container. A battery is very small and light and will not lose charge of any significance over a week.

I think that my current phone will last for a week of being switched on and taking photos provided that I switch it off overnight or when I don't plan to take photos.

For multi-week trips then things become more interesting. The charger for it weighs 180g - about the same as a lightweight camera.

I think for now that unless you are planning to publish photos (and probably want an SLR) a camera-phone is well worth investigating as a viable photography option. 5MP is more than adequate for most purposes and allows plenty of scope for cropping and zooming.

Disposable 35mm Camera

I've put this one in last just for completeness. For £5-10 you can buy single-use cameras that use 35mm film and a fixed-focus lens (or focus-free as the marketeers love to wrongly call it) and typically a fixed exposure.

The cameras are very light and take passable photos sometimes.

I think waterproof disposables might have use but beyond that I would not bother.

Summary

In terms of weight and simplicity I think a Camera-phone is now a clear winner at least for shorter trips of a long weekend or say under a week.

For trips greater than a week the issue is always going to be batteries.

Most modern cameras now use Li-Ion battery cells that are good for maybe 400-1000+ shots depending on the make. Some manufacturers such as Nikon still produce cameras that require standard AA or AAA batteries.

Unfortunately the higher quality cameras tend to use Li-Ion batteries.

In practice however a fully charged camera will easily last two weeks or more of a typical trip unless you are taking lots of photos. 400 shots is after all more than 10 rolls of film in old-skool and that is a serious number of photos.

There are solar-powered device chargers that you can buy that work like Power Monkey - you charge a LiIon battery with a solar cell and then this is used to charge your device. Many of these things are not waterproof and the waterproof versions weigh a lot more - 200g+ for a full outfit.

Last year for trips I was taking a Nikon Coolpix L6 + a Motorola F3 phone on multi-day trips. This year I'll generally be taking just a camera-phone. The weight saving is close to 200g and the picture quality is about the same or better!

For high-quality photos a decent digital SLR will still beat hands-down the cheaper pocket digital cameras - with better colour and metering but for everyday happy-snaps a camera-phone is just fine.