Electronics

Electronic and photography gear is always changing, but it seemed like Jim and I had a pretty good mix of electronics and photography gear when we did the John Muir Trail last summer (2016). 

Here is our gear:

This was the photographic gear for the two of us.  Not shown is the iphone 6 that I had, and Jim also had an iphone.  We used the iphones and gopro for slider time lapses, and the camera for stills and time lapse from the tripod.  These pieces are:

Sony a6000 camera, with the Sony 10-18 wide angle lens.  The camera body, this lens, rubber cover, and strap and battery weighed 1 lb 8.4 oz.  This camera rivals DSLR cameras, and has the same sensor as many DSLR cameras. It does time lapse, videos, 11 exposures per second, face recognition and registration, and lots of in-camera special styles.

Sony kit lens, 16-50 mm. Since camera has smaller than a DSLR size sensor, this a "crop sensor", 10mm on this camera = 18mm full sensor size camera, 18mm = 28, 50mm = 80.

Tripod is the Joby Gorillapod. It has a level, is about 12" tall, and weighs 6.9 oz.  Its sturdy enough to support the Sony a6000 with the heavy wide angle lens. Photography was important for this trip, so we had more camera gear than most, and we tried to keep the weight down.  This is not the actual tripod we took, but I'll take it next time.  The tripod we took was the Sirui 025 carbon fiber tripod. It weighed 1 lb 14.9 oz, so the Joby is a big weight savings.

SPOT beacon, at 4.1 oz.  We intended to take this but confusion at the start caused us to leave it in the car, much to my wife's consternation.

Suntastic sCharger5 Solar Panel: This panel worked great! I had it on the back of my pack near the top, and when we got to camp we set it up for good solar exposure. It recharged my camera battery, 2 iphones, and sometimes the gopro, each day!  It was essential, as otherwise my camera battery was about at 30% at the end of one day.  If I took time lapses with my iphone, it drained the battery pretty fast.

Anker 6700ma storage battery: 4.8 oz.  The solar panel charged this battery and we used the battery after dark to charge the camera and iphone batteries. This combination worked like a charm.

GoPro with plastic case: 5.0 oz.  We took movies with this, as well as with the iphones and Sony camera.

Cable to connect the solar panel and battery, battery and camera: 0.7 oz

We also brought a DIY camera slider which was sturdy enough to support the GoPro or the iphones, and weighed 26 oz. I'd like to leave it behind next time, but it makes some unique video clips.  It was made up of tent poles, tent stakes, end blocks, and a camera dolly, all made of coreplast and styrofoam. The slider is shown in detail here.  Some clips from the slider are viewable in the video Jim put together below.