ShowcaseWest Coast Trail, 7 days, one lens (long, sorry)

Finally did it. Pachena Bay to Gordon River, 75km, seven days, the A7CR and the 20-70 f/4 and nothing else apart from a spare battery and too many granola bars.

Day one was the classic: fog until noon, then the sun burning through over the sea stacks past Michigan Creek. The 20mm end was the right call maybe a dozen times all week and that was one of them. The rest of the trip I lived between 35 and 50.

The ladders. Nobody describes the ladders properly. Some of them are taller than my house, and you are not taking photos halfway up one with a 20kg pack, so the camera rode in a chest pouch and I mostly shot from the top looking back down. Got one of my buddy Dev climbing out of a ravine in a green rain shell that I really like. He's tiny in the frame and the ladder just keeps going.

Tsusiat Falls in the evening, beach camp, everybody's socks drying on the driftwood. My favourite frame of the trip is exactly that, a row of socks with the falls behind them. Not sure anyone else will care.

The weather turned on day five. Two days of proper rain. The camera got wet, it was fine. Shot almost nothing in that stretch except the boardwalk planks shining and a raven that followed us for an hour.

Months of planning, seven days on trail, about 1,400 frames, maybe 40 I'm happy with. If you're thinking of doing it with a big zoom kit, don't.

Happy to answer questions if anyone's planning it for next summer.

The row of socks with the falls behind is the best photo you've described and I haven't even seen it. Those are the ones that end up on the wall... Everybody photographs the falls, nobody photographs the socks. Did a much less heroic walk on the Pembrokeshire coast path years back and the frame I still like is a tea flask on a rock. Sounds like a cracking trip.

Reckon the socks are the winner too. Also "the camera got wet, it was fine" is all anyone needs to know about weather sealing, ppl stress way too much about it. Did you take a rain cover in the end or just wing it? Asking because I'm doing the Overland Track next year and everyone's telling me something different

ellie_v said:

the camera got wet, it was fine

Ha, socks it is. Dev will be thrilled to hear he got beaten by laundry.

On the rain thing, since a couple of people have messaged me: I did take a cheap rain cover and never used it. On the wet days the camera lived in the chest pouch with a lens cloth stuffed in beside it, came out for a shot, went back in. Wiped it down every night in the tent. The bigger problem was condensation, not rain. Day five the lens fogged up from the inside when I took it out of the warm pouch into the cold, damp air, and that was it for twenty minutes. Lesson learned, I left it on the outside of the pack after that so it stayed the same temperature as everything else.

Batteries were fine. Two lasted the week at about 200 frames a day with the screen off and the EVF only. Would take a third if I was shooting more.