Matthew Botos

It goes without saying that Colorado is full of photo opportunities; I took about 1300 shots during the week. Given the scenery, they were mostly landscape and nature, with a few portraits to remember the trip by.

The most useful piece of gear I took - and I took almost all of it - was actually a circular polarizing filter. It did wonders in making the sky bluer, taking the glare off lakes and streams, and cutting some of the haze off distant mountains. The runner up was a strap for my sunglasses, so I could just drop them from my face and replace them with the viewfinder.

Least useful were the 50mm prime lens and external flash; I never used the lens, and most of the fill-flash was actually done with the on-camera flash. I even got creative at dinner and used a white plate to get an on-camera ceiling bounce!

Though I didn’t get many dramatically lit sunrise/sunset shots of the mountains, shifting cloud shadows and storms provided a good variety of light. Similarly, wildlife shots was also “take what you get”, which after a while led to me driving with my telephoto lens in my lap in case something appeared at the side of the road. A number of animals actually did, from elk to small ground squirrels. The best way for spotting them was actually to keep an eye out for other groups of people looking at something

Hiking with the camera was fairly pleasant; the Burton Zoom 28L with Canteen chest pouch held plenty and kept the camera handy. One useful tweak was weight distribution: it felt much better with the tripod in the side water bottle pocket and heavy snacks moved into the half-full lower camera compartment.

Two recurring problems were dust and sharpness. The dust may just be an unavoidable part of being outside, though the polarizer seems to attract it more than other lens surfaces. Landscapes taken at large f-numbers look good resized, but at 100% lack front-to-back sharpness. That held true even with a tripod and test results confirm it’s the lens, so maybe I’ll try renting a better wide-angle for the next trip.

View the Colorado Photos