In a word… brilliant. I recently went on two mostly walking holidays – one to the Grand Canyon and Bryce Canyon, and one travelling around Newfoundland.
The big advantage, of course, is the weight. I’m still using my GF1, with four lenses (wide 7-14mm, 20mm prime, 45-200 medium zoom and 100-300mm for wildlife). Even with all four lenses in my rucksack, the weight was hardly noticeable and I’m really not used to carrying anything at all on my back… (read: sofamonkey).
I love taking photos, both for the images that I nerdily fiddle with back home, and for the memories that my goldfish mind loses rather quickly without a photographic reminder. But I travel with my boyfriend who, whilst happily tolerant of the odd snap as long as it doesn’t include his face, would understandably get a bit bored if I had to stop every 50 metres or so to take off my rucksack and pull the camera out. So I needed to find a solution which would keep my camera handy at all times, while not impeding walking or scrambling over more tricky terrain, something that was easy to carry but also secure for the camera and lenses.
This is my double-strap solution:
Firstly, a sling-style strap from Black Rapid which screws into the tripod mount at the bottom of the camera and slings over the front of the body, leaving the camera to dangle just behind the hip. For a less strenuous trail without a pack, this is a good solution – the camera bounces much, much less than on a longer neck strap, the weight is comfy for long periods on a shoulder and the camera is at a perfect height to just grab with one hand to steady it on more tricky terrain. To take photos, it just slides up and down the strap and you can limit its range of movement with stoppers on the strap. For general walking, it seems to sit there just fine. (I don’t carry a tripod for hiking, just travelling with a small Gorrillapod for sunsets and night photos – but if you did want to leave the tripod mount free, I believe there’s an adapter which lets you attach both strap and tripod.)
However, the sling is impossible when wearing a rucksack and it seemed silly not to take advantage of the pack’s straps. Op/tech has the perfect solution – it makes these little clips (the reporter/backpack system connectors) which fasten onto each shoulder strap of a rucksack and then click into male and female connectors, attached to the camera’s side strap lugs. The camera then hangs on your chest but since the straps are short, there’s hardly any bouncing when you walk. The straps are long enough though that you can lift the camera to eye level to shoot, both portrait and landscape.
Two notes: the reporter just clip around the straps rather than into them, so need to be placed on the rucksack above horizontal straps to stop them falling down vertically. Then there are a male and female connector which fix to the camera’s strap lugs – the ones on the GF1 are a bit tight, so you won’t want to put them on and take them off constantly, but it was a 5 minute fiddle to attach them with tweezers and they aren’t too huge to leave in place.
In combination with the sling strap, shortened a bit and hung around the neck, this is a perfect hiking solution – with the pack on, the camera fastens onto the shoulder straps of the rucksack, so all the weight is distributed there. It was so comfortable and secure that I felt I should put the camera away only once in 10 days of hiking, when fording a river with a bed of slippery stones.
When I wanted to sit down and have a snack, the camera unclicked from the reporter straps and the sling strap took the weight around my neck instead, leaving me free to take off my pack and keeping the camera secure at all times, without having to find a rock to put it on.
For the moment, I’m still putting the lenses in the rucksack itself, which means setting down the pack briefly. This wasn’t much of an issue as changing lenses inevitably involves a brief halt in walking anyway, and it’s a good excuse to drink/snack in any case. Plus the challenge of capturing the best shot possible, with the currently mounted lens, did my photography good I think.