33-Days on the road with a mixed bag of camera gear

If you've been following the blog lately you'll know we've just finished a 33-day trip that started on September 28th and finished October 30th. We traveled over 4,500 miles stopping in Albuquerque NM only long enough to take delivery of a gently used Leica 135 f/3.4 before heading west to Gallup NM for 2-nights then working our way north staying 2-nights in Ouray CO and 1-in Vernal UT. We arrived in Jackson WY on October 4th and while we originally intended to depart Jackson on October 23rd we kept extending our stay until October 28th.

We had 3 totally different types of cameras with us. Sandy had her Canon 1DsIII and an assortment of lenses and I had the Leica M9 with lenses and of course the Cambo/P45+. I consider these cameras different in that while the Canon and Leica are both full-frame 35mm digital cameras they are different in that one is a DSLR while the other is a Rangefinder and of course the Cambo WRS1000 which is a technical camera and the Phase One P45+ medium format digital back.

I was asked a question regarding the percentage of usage and it got me thinking (which at times can be a bad thing) so I just finished looking at the metadata using the filter for focal length and came up with some numbers to share.

We left on our trip September 28th and returned home on October 30th; during this time we shoot a total of 5,481 images. 65% were shot with the Canon 1DsIII, 30% with the M9 and 5% were shot with the Cambo/P45+. I was also curious as to which lens I used the most with the M9. 24mm 35%, 35mm 7%, 50mm 13%, 90mm 11%, 135mm 29% and 5% where I goofed and didn't reset the lens selection after shooting the 135 so no focal length was available.

While not wildlife photographers we still enjoy shooing critters and we had an abundance of Buffalo, Moose, Elk and others and used the 70-200 with a 1.4 converter as well as Sandy's new 135 with and without the converter and the new 135 for the M9 got a workout as well. I'd have to say I used the Leica 135 better than 60% on wildlife with the rest shooting landscape.

I'm in the process of loading and backing up 155GB of data from the trip. Some of the data are images that we've worked up on the laptop and have shared on this blog. We also have many images that haven't been shared that will be processed and test printed prior to adding them into our web gallery. Likewise there's a few images from this trip that will appear in our next DVD (Vol III).

Keep watching this site as we plan to continue sharing.



Don