Climbing Mount Kinabalu | My Photography Equipment

© 2013 Wazari Wazir | Climbers at Mount Kinabalu | Sabah | 24 mm f/2.8

Actually I really have nothing much to write about but since you are here, I might share with you my camera equipment that I brought during my recent Mount Kinabalu trip. I don’t have any of “what’s in my bag” kind of a picture because nothing much to show really.

Basically I carry all of my photography equipment to the summit of Mount Kinabalu. I took my Canon 5D Mark II, with 24 mm f/2.8 and 50 mm f/1.4 lens together with not so expensive, Fotopro Tripod with me.

BUT, the only lens that I use for the whole trip is just 24 mm f/2.8 lens. Why? Because I’m too lazy to change lens and once you are too tired of climbing, you really don’t want to waste your time changing lens, actually taking a camera to take a photograph  sometimes can be a huge burden.

Basically I just travel light but in this case, it is not light enough, normally climbers rarely carry a tripod with them to the summit of Mount Kinabalu, if you have climb once, you will know what I mean, it is very hard to find someone carry a tripod to the summit. It is such a burden.

Even though you can always pay a porter or your mountain guide to carry the tripod for you, it is quite cumbersome to use it, and maybe you will only use it for one hour or less because once the sun is rising a bit high, you no longer need to use a tripod because you can always use faster shutter speed to prevent camera shake. You just need the tripod during the sunrise, few minutes of the sunrise.

About the lens, I don’t have any other lens actually, the reason why I just use 24 mm lens is I wanted a wide view of this place. To those of you who wanted to be a little bit more creative with your work, maybe you wanted to bring much more wider focal length than 24 mm, 14 – 20 mm lens on a full frame body will get you a better shot. For Canon we have 16-35 mm, Nikon will have 14 – 24 mm. For Non Full Frame camera, anywhere between 10 – 16 mm range will do just nice.

Actually the choice of camera equipment, especially the lens that you wanted to bring is totally up to you, what’s visual story that you want to take, what’s your personal interest and you must also take into consideration on whether you can physically carry all of your camera equipment by yourself. Even a single camera body without any lens attached will feel too heavy up there.

I just wanted to share with you my tips on how to get the most photograph while climbing a mountain, don’t keep your camera inside your camera bag. Just put it outside or cover your camera inside your jacket, or your windbreaker. So you will have an easy access to your camera if you happens to see something that attract your eyes and you want to photograph it.

If you keep your camera inside your bag, trust me, you will be too tired to open your bag, take some photograph and put it back, it is too time consuming and not practical. You can also use a “belt pack” kind of camera bag, for easy access, where you have a pouch to put your camera for easy access.

Before you start your journey, you need to ask yourself, what kind of a pictures that you really want to take, look at all of the photographs of Mount Kinabalu on the internet, find what interest you and get to know on how they took it what lens that they bring and so on and so forth, and then decide for yourself on the photograph that you really wanted to take up there.

Most people can easily carry a 5 Kg of camera bag on a flat ground for hours but it is not the same when you climb a mountain, especially above 2000 meters and beyond.