That camera completed the Triple Crown without ever running out of battery or storage space.

Carrying a camera while backpacking creates a lot of small challenges that other hikers don’t have to deal with. One obvious change is that you need to find a way to carry your camera, and doing that will likely add extra weight to only one side of your pack. Those solutions are simple. Most of these problems aren’t complicated, but it takes time to figure them all out. This lesson functions as a catch-all for the miscellaneous odds and ends that don’t fit into other lessons very well. When you combine this with the advanced topic of workflow on trail, you’ll be ready to hike thousands of miles while focusing on photography without distractions.

If you aren’t backpacking, this lesson may have a few interesting points. Most of this is written for multi-day or multi-week trips without access to home.

• How do I carry my camera?

  A lot of hikers wear a Capture Clip from Peak Design. It’s a simple clip that fits onto the shoulder strap of most backpacks. It leaves the camera readily accessible and easy to grab quickly, but it lacks any protection for the camera at all. You’ll see the Capture Clip more often than anything else, but I prefer to wear a holster. Hyperlite Mountain Gear makes a Camera Pod which accommodates most cameras. The HMG Pod uses two small carabiners and be clipped onto just about anything. There are a variety of holsters and fanny packs of various quality. The Capture Clip is convenient but leaves the camera exposed to the elements. Holsters and fanny packs offer some protection for the camera and offer more versatility. I almost always wear a holster on my left hip. It’s easy to store my camera with a lens on it as well as a few small accessories.

• What kind of camera/lens should I get?

  If you come across older articles, you’ll read that DSLR cameras take better images but mirrorless cameras are lighter and more convenient. Within the last few years, mirrorless cameras have started breaking barriers. The overwhelming majority of backpackers carry a Sony Alpha camera. The a6 series are all good choices. They’re lightweight, they get decent images, and they’re relatively inexpensive. A used or refurbished Sony a6000 can be found for about $300. For photographers with a bigger budget, the Sony a7R2 is excellent and the Sony Alpha 1 is second-to-none. As for lenses, photographers typically want to cover three ranges: a wide angle lens like 14mm, a mid-range lens which might be 24-70mm, and one telephoto lens that could be 100-400mm. Many studio photographers will insist that only prime lenses are acceptable, and a lot of backpackers do hike with one or two prime lenses. After hiking across the country three times, here’s my conclusion: there is no need to carry a telephoto lens on a thru hike. I carried one for over 8,000 miles and barely ever used it. I’ve hiked over 5,000 miles since then, and I’ve never missed the bigger lens. They’re way too heavy and bulky to lug around for limited use. A wide angle lens would occasionally take great shots. If I were to carry two lenses, I’d add a 14mm f1.8 ultra wide. For now, I only carry one mid-range lens. 16-35mm is great, 16-50mm is great, 24-70mm is great. I wouldn’t carry a lens bigger than around 100mm on a long thru hike. It just isn’t worth the extra weight.

• What else do I need?

  It’s extremely important to me that my camera never runs out of battery. I like to have one extra camera battery. I also need my battery pack to be at least 20,000mAh. Most airlines allow battery packs up to about 27,000mAh. When you’re searching for battery packs, be sure to check ounces per mAh. Sometimes it’s lighter to carry two 10,000mAh batteries than it is to carry a single 20,000mAh battery. The vast majority of thru hikers use NiteCore or Anker 10,000mAh batteries. I also carry a small tripod. Joby makes excellent, lightweight tripods that are under one pound. I like it because it lets me use a remote shutter and long exposure. I prefer to shoot waterfalls with around 1/13 exposure or even up to 1/10. That’s well beyond the limit that I can hold the camera perfectly still and the images would be blurry without the tripod. They’re also good for astrophotography, but only up to about 10-15 second exposures. You’d need a star tracker for anything longer than that, and I would never carry a star tracker on a thru hike.

  • Extra camera battery and enough chargers

  • Extra battery power to charge extra devices

  • Tripod

  • Cleaning kit

  • Additional SD cards and waterproof case

  • Transfer cable to move files to phone/tablet

  • Phone/tablet and an app to edit photos

  • Pod, holster, or Clip to carry the camera

  • Filters

• PhoTransfer cable to move files to phone/tablet

• Phone/tablet and an app to edit photos

• Pod, holster, or Clip to carry the camera