As I am left with some extra frequent flyer miles from a previous line of work, I decided to end my summer holidays with a last-minute landscape photography trip to the Faroe Islands. This had been a goal of mine for a while and the prospect of escaping the summer heatwave was very enticing.
The trip focused on photography so most of my luggage was occupied by camera gear, the rest was filled with camping gear. The camping gear was unused during the trip since I quickly decided for a hotel instead of camping sites. When I go back, I will stick with camping since I spent very little time in the hotel.
I traveled with my Fuji X-T2 and three lenses, two of which I own and one rental which I wanted to test out to decide if I should buy it.
Fuji X-T2
This was a new camera bought after giving myself awhile to try out my last camera (a Nikon d700) which was ditched due to weight considerations. This is a small mirrorless APS-C sensor camera which offers weather sealing and a 24mp sensor. For me however the main reason for going with this camera is the weight, right now the body and two lenses weigh less than my old Nikon 80-200 2.8 lens did, leaving me with a massive weight saving in my hiking bag. However, there are a few things that I miss from my D700 mainly battery life, the fuji has decent stamina but to get close to the D700 I have to carry three extra batteries which is an annoying extra hassle. I also kind of miss the full frame sensor, something that I could have fixed by going with a Sony camera however the small format and the excellent controls on the fuji camera tips the scale for me.
The camera has a screen the tilts and flips sadly though it does not flip in all directions making the placement of the camera in a tripod crucial, at least if you want the benefit of a tilt screen.
Fujinon XF 23mm 2.0
This 35mm full frame equivalent lens is the focal range I’ve missed the most since last year’s switch from a X100 to the d700 so getting it back was I high priority for me. Luckily fuji have created some stunning lenses to pair with their mirrorless cameras. This one is no exception its weather sealed reasonably bright and provides excellent details. But as with the body itself the main thing for me is the handling of everything except manual focus. Fuji seems to have decided to go all in with focus by wire something that just does not work to satisfaction, this was a massive drawback on the x100t where the autofocus just could not keep up with moving objects and frequently missed. Fuji have rectified this with the X-T2 which focuses nicely especially when paired with a fuji prime such as this.
The focal range has always been a favourite of mine since it’s wide enough for most types of photography without introducing too much distortion. Compared to the 50mm range it do feel it makes the images a bit more interesting giving them a bit more depth.
Fujinon XF 50mm 2.0
This 75mm full frame equivalent lens have almost everything in common with the 23mm lens mentioned above. If anything separates them, I would say it’s the lens hood which on the 50mm is a lot more useful however it’s lacking a cut out for operating filters with the hood on.
As for the focal range I mainly use it for studio photography and as a short tele, for the later it’s lightly to short but the 24mp resolution of the X-T2 allows for some cropping to alleviate this issue. For studio work however, I find that it fits my two small studio spaces perfectly since the limited space makes any longer lenses hard if not impossible to use.
Fujinon 10-24mm 4.0
This is a lens I rented for this trip looking for a good wide-angle lens, my main concerns however were the dark aperture. This fairly obvious issue is followed by two slightly more hidden issues, size and weight. Even though the lens is fairly small compared to a full frame zoom, it is huge compared to the other primes and the X-T2 body. It is also a heavy lens bumping the weight up considerably, this is despite the fact that lens is not weather sealed and like the rest of fuji’s lenses uses a focus by wire system.
The short end of the focal range is wonderful, especially for landscapes. It’s been a few years since I had anything wider than 35mm (full frame) at my disposal and wide angel is a lot more fun then I remembered.
Three-Legged Thing Algot
This is the tripod I bought for my D700 and as such it is a bit too heavy for my new lighter camera. It is still an extremely good tripod and not really lacking in any major department. It’s designed to be flipped on itself for storage and transport, something that works well for storage but is a bit cumbersome while on a hike, luckily it can still be collapsed entirely in the regular way with the drawback of a longer total package.
For the trip to the Faroes I opted to bring the middle rod which is removable and reversible, which is useful if you want the camera close to the ground. On most of my other trips I have decided against bringing the middle rod, especially since the tripod even without it is high enough.
Filters
For this camera I have gone with screw on filters, since a 100mm filter kit would be very big compared to the rest of the system forcing me to carry a bigger bag.
This does however leave me with a bit of a step-up mess since all my lenses uses different filter rings. Currently I have solved this for the 50mm and for the rental 10-24mm lens but my trusty 23mm will have to manage without.
I am using a combination of a Syrp Variable ND and a small set of BW ND’s 3 and 6 stop together with a polarizer. This gives me a fair range on the ND abilities however I have had some issues with the variable ND on the wide-angle lens. I get the expected cross pattern, but so far, I have been able to manage with using ND 1-6 which on the syrp works well.
Lowepro Protactic 350 AW
This have been my main photography bag for a few years now and it offers almost everything I need. This is at the cost of a fairly high weight and some limitations in how you structure the internal cabinet. The later one of these issues exists only if you want to be able to open all the available entry points to the bag. With my move to a mirrorless setup I have been able to fit a lot more non-technical equipment in the bag making it a lot easier to bring along on day trips. Right now, I load it up with my camera gear, rain clothes, water and some tools. Making life a lot easier when hiking to and back from photo locations, sadly the tripod does not fit inside the bag and the length makes it unpractical to use the included tripod pouch that mounts on the back. I’ve instead opted to use the included straps and some extra cord to tie the tripod to the back of the bag. This works but is slightly unpractical when arriving at a location. I am therefore looking into using a short length of elastic bands instead of the extra cord I use which will cut out the tying and untying of knots every time I want to use my tripod.