The Guide to Photography on the Pacific Crest Trail

Hiking the Pacific Crest Trail is a life changing and beautiful experience. Putting aside the friendship, freedom and adventures, the beauty of the trail alone is enough to make this trip worth taking.

Every bend in the trail, every pass, every twilight, presents the possibility of incredible beauty. Whether you are already an avid photographer or you have entertained the thought of getting into photography, I want to present you a detailed article of tips, gear selections and overall how to have a pleasent and rewarding experience hiking the PCT as a photographer.

This article contains Amazon affiliated links. The purpose is really not to try to sell you stuff. The article is designed to be informative and helpful. The links are to things I have actually used and liked. If you do buy anything linked in this article, I will get a small commission at no cost to you. See it as a free thank you if you enjoyed it. 😉

DSLR vs Smart Phones

Let’s get this out of the way first.

No, smart phones do not take as good photos as cameras.

You can argue that a smart phone is more convenient and it’s good enough for you but this is for people seeking more than good enough.

• DSLRs have way larger sensor than smart phones. As a result of larger sensors, they have better high dynamics range and better low light performance, allowing you to take photos that are impossible for phones.

• DSLRs generally have higher megapixels than phones and have better quality megapixels and more advanced sensors, producing sharper and more detailed images.

• DSLR has the benefit of wide range of apertures, higher max iso and longer shutter speeds. It gives a lot more creative options than phones.

I understand that people do not want to carry cameras and smart phones definitely do a good job. If you have been entertaining the idea of bringing a camera, I hope this gives you a good idea of why cameras are better than smartphones.

Intro to Photography

A lot of people think it’s very very difficult to understand photography and they never have the time to learn it so they stay with automatic mode.

Let me explain how easy is it to get started with photography. This will get you started. The important thing to getting better is practice and reading blogs online whenever you can.

There are three important settings

Aperture: controls how large the lens opens up and the amount of light the camera let’s in, also controls how deep the field of focus is. Low F number means large opening, lots of light and shallow field of focus, vise versa. (the number and the size of opening is inverse)

Portrait: use low F stop (ex. F 3.5) to make the subject pop out more and blur the background.

Landscape, use high F stop – F 9-13 but generally don’t go higher, the quality deteriorates if you sent the aperture too high. One exception is to achieve the sunburst effect, you need higher F stop.

Shutter speed: how long the shutter stays open. The longer it opens, the more light it can take in.

Use high shutter speed to capture action without blurring and use low shutter speed to show motion or capture darker scenes.

ISO: determines how sensitive the sensor is to light. The higher the setting, the most light the sensor can capture. With higher iso unfortunately comes with grains or noise in the photo.

ISO, shutter speed and aperture together controls the exposure of the photo and each of those three settings achieve a different secondary effect to the photo.

I personally like to shoot on Aperture priority, which let’s the camera adjust ISO and shutter speed for the chosen aperture. This way I can quickly adjust my depth of field to focus more or less of the scene and create special photo effect.

Photography gear for a thru-hike

Camera:

I’m not going to speak too much on particular brand recommendations. The camera you get should have a few things to take full adventage of your trip.

• Full manual settings
• Shutter speed that goes down to 30 seconds
• The ability to charge through micro USB
• weather proofing

I used the Sony a6000 at the start of the trip and then I switched to a sony a7iii after the desert because I wanted a full frame camera to pursue photography further. The a6000 is a really solid camera for sure.

The Sony a6000 on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2xMS4tD

Lens

Again, can’t really talk too much about the specifics but a wide angle lens is super important. I wish I just gave in and got myself a wide angle lens on the hike. There are so many beautiful sceneries that only can be captured by a wide angle lens. Do yourself a favor and look for a 18 mm full frame equivalent lens.

I used a 28-70 mm full frame.

Tripod:

The reason tripod is important is that it allows you to shoot sharp images with a very low shutter speed. This allows you to get better shots of running water, sunrise and the night sky. Instead of increasing iso to get more light, you can now use longer shutter speed instead to create images with less noise.

There are three ways to go about this. No tripod, small tripod or full size tripod.

No tripod is for people who do not plan to take many long exposure shots. you can still manage some of the shots by placing your camera on the ground and use rocks and other objects to set it properly.

Using a small tripod, you lose the hassle of setting your camera using rocks but the drawback is that it’s hard to get a shot at eye level or get the camera to shoot over the low brush that might block a scene. The upside is that they are very light and easy to set up.

The tripod I used: PEDCO ultrapod II: https://amzn.to/2ItEBLG

A full size tripod is the best for user friendliness but it’s heavy. It’s also what I used to get some of my best night shots on the Pacific Crest Trail because it gives you so much more creative freedom. I would only carry it after you are comfortable with the weight of your pack and got some trail legs.

The tripod I used SLIK mini II, $65 and 1.6 pounds: https://amzn.to/2OhQmdp

Remote trigger

Not recommended. I brought one along for a bit and rarely used it. A lot of camera now have time lapse functions where it takes a photo every set number of seconds. You can use this feature to do self portrait. Most cameras also connects to your phone and makes for a good enough remote trigger.

Filters

I rarely used them and I would say the only one to consider is a polarizer. It darkens the shot allowing to get flowing water in bright conditions. better and also helps you to remove glare off of water surface. It was not used very often for me.

Peak design capture clip:

This is probably the most useful thing I have carried. It clips your camera onto your backpack’s shoulder strap and with a press of a button, your camera is in your hands and ready to shoot.

Trust me, you are not going to want to put your bag down to take out your camera everytime you see something beautiful so the capture clip is the perfect solution for getting photos on the go.

Unless you are someone who falls face first a lot, you will be fine with your camera on your shoulder strap. You will also soon get used to putting down and picking your pack without hurting the camera. It’s really not too much of a hassle. The best camera is the camera that’s in your hands, don’t baby the camera too much.

Check out the peak design camera clip: https://amzn.to/2xLfEXW

Camera Case:

The one I used is called USA Gear DSLR Camera Case. It’s good because it’s simple and light and offers enough protection from the other stuff in my pack and setting it down in camp. You don’t need a super beefy camera case.

Buy it here: https://amzn.to/2NQhZL6

Battery life

Even for a mirrorless camera (has worse battery life than traditional DSLR), I found that the battery consumption was not that much. Most of the time, I can do one or two stretches before I need to charge it, depending how much night shooting I do.

Extra camera battery is totally not necessary, just use one large powerbank to charge everything. I carried 20,000 mah power bank and that was overkill still. I ended up going down to a 10,000 mah power bank for a large section.

Other gear

Here I’m actually not going to talk about camera gear anymore. Let’s talk about the rest of your stuff.

For someone pursuing photography on trail, you are going to have to carry all this weight that other people don’t have to carry. So it’s very important to go light on the other gear. Your camera gear is your luxury so try your best to get rid of other stuff to reduce the weight of your pack. Your success and enjoyment definitely depends on your pack weight. Having the flexibility to hike bigger miles and being less tired at the end of the day will help you get those cool shots as well.

Post Processing and Managing Photos

For someone getting into photography, post processing is a very important part. I am not just talking about Instagram filter. Also this is not about over modifying photos. It’s about pouring what you saw and how you felt into the final photo..

Shoot RAW

RAW camera format is the data that the sensor captures without any modifications from the software. What this means is that all information is kept and gives you a lot more creative freedom than JPEG where you can make bigger adjustments to lighting and colors.

Importing photos to your phone

The best way to import your photos is using a device called USB OTG cable. Basically turns your phone into a receiving USB port like how you would plug your camera into a computer using a USB cable. First check online to see if your phone is compatible with USB OTG.

Search USB OTG on Amazon and find the right one for your phone by the port your phone uses.

Lightroom

I do all my editing on lightroom mobile. It’s not free but for 15 dollars a month, you get one of the most user friendly photo editing apps. The biggest adventage of Lightroom over other softwares is that it gives you 1 TB to backs up your original photos once you import them to lightroom. This allows you to easily organize your photos, see your edits and not have to worry about physical storage.

Lightroom also allows you to export to your phone in a compressed size to easily share on social media without taking too much space.

Photo editing tips:

• Spend a lot of time on light. That includes exposure, contrast, blacks, shadows, light, whites. Play around and understand what each does.
• Vibrance and Clarity should be used sparingly in most situations.
• If there’s a lot of smoke or haze in your photo, use dehaze to bring back some of the details
• If an area of the photo does not look what you like or you want to bring attention to a subject, use local editing to make adjustment just to an area

Parting tips and tricks

• Buy this app called photopill. It contains all the tools that a photographer would ever need. The coolest features are that it can tell you when the sun and moon rise and set. It also has a VR program that shows you where the celestial bodies and milky way are at what time so you can plan accordingly.
• The hardest part about getting night photography is getting up. Check photopill for the time to wake up to get your perfect shot. Just do it, get up and see the stars, you won’t regret it.

• Don’t be afraid to pull a short day and camp at a pretty spot.
• If you are buying a new camera, get insurance. It’s good to have that peace of mind.

Hope that was helpful to people who are interested in taking a camera to hike the Pacific crest trail. There’s no better place to do it, no better opportunities where you can use your camera day in and day out, watching yourself grow in skills. Photography pushes you to seek out beauty and understand it, capture moments that inspires and encourages. Go make yourself an adventure of a lifetime.