Equipment Recommendations

The Weminuche ride will provide a great variety of subjects. You’ll be shooting everything from landscapes to cowboys to dusk/night scenes and close ups of flowers.

Camera - Whatever you have. For those of you with a DSLR, bring a couple of lenses, if you have them.
The macro feature on your lens will work well for tight shots of columbines, and paintbrush. Or, if you want to get really close, you might bring an extension tube or close up filters.

Tripod - Highly recommended.

Cable release if you have one.

Speedlight or External flash unit- again if you have one and want to explore some flash techniques.

Cable for shooting your flash off camera.

Filters- With the exception of lens protection filters, the only one I carry these days is a polarizer. However, if you have some filters you want to play with, by all means, bring ‘em.

The biggest challenges we’ll face are POWER and STORAGE.
Run out of either and you’re done, that’s all, game over, nada mas.

Solutions:
Bring several extra camera batteries, and make sure to top them all off Monday night before we head out. My cameras eat batteries quickly, so I’ll be taking 6 and still holding my breath.

Get extra cards. I’ll pack about 32 gigabytes of compact flash storage.

A word of caution- there are cards, CF, SD and others which have huge capacity.

I stay away from them.
If something goes south, I’d prefer to lose just a chunk of my images rather than a whole trip.

I like 4 GB cards because they back up nicely onto a standard DVD.

I shoot Canons and have found Sandisk cards dependable and trouble free. Every failure I’ve had occured on Lexar cards. Nikon shooters tell me it’s the opposite with them.

I've heard good things about Kingston and Hoodman cards as well.

Count on afternoon thunderstorms which, in turn, will bring us fabulous sunsets!
Just in case, we get caught out it’s a good idea to have a garbage bag to throw over your gear.

Here’s a tip: get a box of trash compacter bags. They are much thicker and more durable. Roll two bags tightly and secure with a couple of thick rubber bands which you can use to secure around your lens. I even put my sleeping bag in one to keep it dust free.

Camera Manual - Remember that booklet looking item nestled at the bottom of your new camera's box. Might still be there. Kidding aside- modern cameras are laden with many redundant features.

Yet, some of the functions are truly valuable and the manual will help us put them to work.

We’ll use some of that afternoon tent time to get to know our tools better.
Questions?
Call 970-247-2415 or email at

Yikes!