Traveling Light These Days! Guest post by Bob Coates

Intro by Skip Cohen

Bob Coates has been a good buddy for a whole lot of years. One of the things that's fun, when your friends are artists, is watching the transitions they go through as their style and creativity change. Personally I think Bob has done some of the most beautiful and diverse work of his career over the last couple of years.  Some of that has to do with the way he shoots today and the fact that he's traveling "lean and mean" with his LUMIX gear.

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Thought I’d share what my shooting kit is these days for a couple different scenarios. Panasonic Lumix has made me lean and mean. My favorite camera for travel and for hiking is the Lumix GX7. It has all the features I like and has an extremely low profile. The screen tilts up and down for low angles or overhead shooting. The screen is quite viewable even in bright sunshine, but just in case there is a 90 degree moveable viewfinder. The camera is capable of in-camera HDR or up to a seven stop auto-bracket, in-camera Panorama, and a host of other specialty settings I’ve been enjoying putting it through its paces.

Let’s start with the hiking kit as you see pictured above. 45mm Leica DG Macro-Element f2.8 Aspherical lens for going after those close up details like flowers. Added to that the Lumix Vario 12-35mm f2.8 for the medium to wide angle scenic landscapes and the  Lumix Vario 35-100mm f2.8 to help compress longer distance scenes or trying to reach a bit further.

Note the mini-tripod. I tend to hike more often traveling light which means no full size tripod but with the mini I can place on or lean against a rock, tree, car or fencepost to help steady the camera. Very handy indeed. Of course, a fully charged spare battery is always in the kit. The Westcott twenty inch Five in one which folds to a very manageable 8 &1/2 inches, rounds out the equipment list. So I’m covered from 24mm to 200mm – 35mm DSLR equivalent along with a MACRO and it weighs less than four and a half pounds.

Conversely, my DSLR weighs four and a half pounds with a single lens.

Wildflowers captured with the 45 mm macro

For travel I swap out the 45mm  Macro for the 7-14mm f4 Asperical lens which covers me from 14-200mm 35mm DSLR equivalent and the kit is still well under five pounds.

Both kits are supported by the Tenba Mirrorless Mover 20 bag which fits comfortably on my belt and holds all the lenses and gear including spare cards, cleaning cloth, etc.