VolkStudio Blog

In Prague Old Town. Photo by Tatyana Volk.

On my trip, I took a Canon 5D2 body with vertical grip attached. I couldn’t find the battery door at the last moment, so ended up with the extra weight and bulk. With the grip, the camera doesn’t hand as flat against the body. Bought a better strap in Prague, it proved still inadequate. I plan on converting the camera to work with Magpul sling.

Lenses: 24-70/2.8, 90 tilt-shift and 200/2.8. The 200mm got the most use, but not finding the 72mm polarizer at the last moment proved a real problem in Budapest due to massive haze. Humidity and smog limited visibility. I even held the 77mm filter by hand in a few photos. I wished that I had acquired the 70-200/2.8 IS before the trip despite the greater weight. 90 got a lot of use as well, with 24-70 used almost purely as a snapshot lens for family pictures. 5D2 again proved a technically excellent camera with awkward menu-driven secondary controls. Zooms definitely win for travel use, as long as they are good quality fast zooms.

My mother brought her Panasonic G2 with 20/1.7 and 45/1.8 and that was the ideal travel camera. A longer third lens would have helped, but overall it was the sweet spot for weight/size/capability/noise. The lack of mirror vibration, the articulated screen and the tiny size really helped.

In retrospect, I think that a smaller, more action-oriented body would have been better. Almost all images needed either the full tele capability, or (less often) full wide, or else full rise of the 90mm. I brought four batteries but never used up more than two in a day. Video with a magnified LCD hood but without a tripod proved unusable.