Doing a dry run with the camera equipment planned to be used for an extended photography tour, is always a prudent thing to do. Our initial gear assessments can have us lean in a certain direction. It’s not until we get out in the field and spend some time doing a dry run, that we can put our thought process to the test.

In a recent article, I outlined my initial gear assessment for an upcoming, extended photography tour. My initial thoughts had me leaning pretty strongly towards the M.Zuiko PRO 12-100 mm f/4 and M.Zuiko 75-300 mm f/4.8-6.8 II zoom lenses. As noted in that previous article, bird photography is not the primary focus for our upcoming tour. Capturing the occasional bird image would be the only reason for me to bring a long telephoto lens.

My initial thought was to travel as light as possible, and potentially forego the need for a camera bag, using my Cotton Carrier Lens Bag instead. So I packed up my planned 2 lens kit, along with some accessories in my Cotton Carrier Lens Bag, and headed off to 40 Mile Creek.

It didn’t take more than 10 or 15 minutes of trying to do some quick, practice lens changes on my E-M1X for me to realize that my goal to travel ultra light was not going to work out as well as I had initially thought it would.

While I regularly enjoy using the Cotton Carrier Lens Bag to carry additional batteries, memory cards, teleconverters, and a lens cleaning cloth… I found it awkward to use when trying to quickly change out a couple of medium sized lenses.

Plus, the fumbling around between lenses created an unneeded risk of potentially dropping a lens during the change process. My dry run led me to decide that using my Tenba laptop backpack would be a more practical… albeit much larger… solution.

Another important part of my dry run was to push my M.Zuiko 75-300 mm f.4.8-6.7 II pretty hard with some additional in-field testing. I did this by creating some practice images. These were focused mainly on late breaking birds-in-flight.

I was able to get some good BIF images, but my dry run created more questions than provide answers. I realized that I have become spoiled by the quick and accurate auto-focusing performance of my M.Zuiko 150-600 mm f/5-6.3 IS.

This lens is too large for me to bring on our upcoming photo tour, but it did cause me question whether I would be happy with the noticeable auto-focusing lag when trying to photograph late breaking birds-in-flight with the M.Zuiko 75-300 II.

I was finding that by time the 75-300 II would grab focus, late breaking subject birds were already past me some of the time. This was more noticeable in lower light, or when a bird was flying directly towards me, or at a sharp angle. At one point during my dry run I began to question whether I needed to bring any lens for potential bird photography at all.

Or… if focusing my efforts on landscape photography with the M.Zuiko PRO 7-14 mm f/2.8 and PRO 12-100 f/4 would be a better pairing for my needs during our upcoming photography tour. I was not expecting this conundrum to surface… but I’m glad it did.

As I continued my dry run, I reminded myself that it was critical to remain open minded, and not allow myself to get wrapped up in cognitive dissonance created by my previous line of thought. The objective of my dry run was to get a deeper understanding of the practical ramifications of my lens choices, by trying to replicate how I would be shooting during our upcoming photography tour.

I began to question whether bringing my M.Zuiko PRO 12-100 f4 IS was actually a ‘no brainer’ decision. I wondered if the M.Zuiko PRO 12-40 f/2.8 and the M.Zuiko PRO 40-150 f/2.8 with MC-20 teleconverter would be a better overall solution. So, I went back home and fitted my E-M1X with the M.Zuiko PRO 40-150 mm f/2.8 and MC-20 teleconverter… then returned to the harbour for more field testing.

Doing a dry run can cause some internal mental gyrations. Re-assessing our needs and questioning our previous assumptions is not always easy to do. It is a healthy process… which  eventually leads to the right decision.

Technical Note

Photographs were captured handheld with the camera equipment  noted in the EXIF data. All images were created from RAW files using my standard process in post. This is the 1,423 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.

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