Las Vegas NV – Escalante UT – Durango CO – Glenwood Springs CO – Fort Collins CO – Rapid City SD. With Victory Motorcycles.
This is turning into a bit of a tradition – packing the night before a motorcycle touring assignment for RoadRUNNER Magazine, fretting that I’m taking too much gear followed quickly by fretting that I’m not taking enough. Debating whether I should take the primes or the zooms this time; the primes won because I’ve got a good set of 49mm NDs and CPL. I do have the DA10-17 fisheye zoom, just in case. Putting all of it on my iPad2 and snapping a shot.
The big change from the last trip is the Pentax Q, of course. It gives me a three of a kind Pentax kit and now I’m just one body (645D) of a royal flush. The Q takes surprising nice images, particularly in good light with the 01 Prime. I’m less confident about the 03 Fish Eye, and I don’t have the zoom. Had those two pieces been around, I would have felt ok leaving the K-01 at home and using the little Q as the backup. Alas, I’m not quite there with that camera, so the K-01 with the DA40 get the nod.
One change that’s hard to see here is that I’m ditching the cool but fussy lens hood and caps of the DA21 and DA70, replacing them with screw-on metal hoods and caps. I’m tired of fussing with the fancy hoods while using NDs and CPLs. I’m also tired of losing them – they are expensive to replace.
Rounding out the kit is the Contour ROAM. So the K-5 and K-01 will be primarily for stills and the ROAM and Q primarily for video/time lapse. Wish me luck!